If anything for most users this thing is amazing (but expensive), and for the few users who were "tricked" into thinking this is a $5000 reference monitor it's not good...

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Bleed is non-existent, right off the bat. In fact it doesn't make sense it'd have bloom and backlight bleeding, aggressive HDR produces bloom... so the same aggressive HDR would hide BLB.

Bloom is also a complete non-issue for most users. I use this monitor primarily to consume text and casual media... I got weeks at a time before remembering this monitor had HDR enabled full-time when some super thin loading spinner or something appears on a completely black background while the brightness is cranked to max but the room is kind of dark... it essentially takes a torture test to get the FALD to be problematic

Off-axis color accuracy, again, complete non-issue for most users. If I was producing Avatar 2 it might be an issue, but compared to any "normal" monitor it's a complete non-issue, especially when the trade off is exactly 0 backlight bleed, which is 100 times more annoying.

For "most users" there's no better productivity monitor. Even a $20,000 reference monitor would be useless for us since we're not going to be able to drive or configure it...

But it wasn't even close. ( And I am still somewhat pissed off about it)

If it's actually the best in enough areas to make it worthwhile, then that's great, and maybe it is worth the cost to some people. Maybe something like the Dell 8k monitor is a better fit for more people in the market for one of these, at a cheaper cost ($4k with a stand), more pixels, and similar feature set (if lacking some named features). Maybe not. I probably don't know enough to accurately judge, but it sure looks like Apple's trying to fleece some people that want the brand name to me.

During the launch, Apple generously rewarded it with the title "best Pro display on the market" and directly compared it to a 35k Sony reference monitor.

The problem is, Apple's screen is unusable as a reference monitor. The screen is not uniform, has a strong "vignette". The backlight zones create blooming artifacts. Color accuracy is fairly good, but not better than something found in a low-end BenQ.

Not only is it not the best pro monitor, it's not a pro monitor at all. It literally cannot be used as a reference monitor. It's basically a 6K LCD screen with all the problems that come with LCD.

You can't; that's the point. There are no 6K monitors besides the ridiculous Apple one and the Dell 8K probably needs to be run at 2.5x which I don't know if macOS even supports.

It's nothing compared to the XDR. I have no idea why this person thinks the XDR is bad for everyday users.

- I got one as a programmer who mostly looks at text. If you didn't tell me it has HDR always enabled I wouldn't have known, they've done an excellent job with managing bloom on non-HDR content.

- The resolution makes text milky smooth in a way that I always though 4k was this whole time

- 60hz has never bothered me despite regularly switching between this, the 144hz monitor, and a 360hz monitor....

- Accelerometer is neat enough, I have mine on a gas spring monitor arm and can be occasionally helpful to rotate

- Build quality is unmatched by all the gamer aesthetic stuff out there. Remove "backlight bleed" from your vocabulary.

I got Dell's "5k" ultrawide before the XDR, and at the time M1 Macbooks couldn't do fractional scaling at that high of a resolution.

The result was essentially a wider 32" 1080p screen. And while the text was crisp, the space efficiency was absolutely awful.

I can't even imagine the 16:9 version of that...