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It's like dating a glamour model on cocaine. It's beautiful, more wonderful than you'd ever expect, but trouble.

I've just had the second one blow up on me, a day out of warranty. The first acquired a repeating set of lines all across the screen and had to be switched for a new one. In spite of the apple repair approach for these being a direct swap, I couldn't get a replacement without waiting for a long turn around.

The second, only hours ago just went black and is seemingly unrecoverable. Not only that it's exactly one day out of warranty. Double grrrr. I shall be buying two cheaper monitors in future!

32 of 39 people found this useful

I have had a 30 inch display for about a year, and it is splendid. Brilliant colours, massive viewing area, and nice rich blacks. I would recommend this to anyone, with no problems yet. 10 / 10 Apple.

25 of 27 people found this useful

This display is fantastic - I haven't seen any evidence of the so-called 'dancing pixel' problem. It is truly a great piece of kit. I do however have one minor issue with this purchase.

The display has 2 FW400 ports and 2 USB ports on the back - designed for iPhone / iPod dock and iSight attachment etc. All of the connections for the display travel down one wiring loom that runs to the back of your Mac. This loom connects to the Mac using a DVI, a USB and a FW400 connection. The problem is the new Macs do not have a FW400 port and therefore the FW ports on the display cannot be connected.

After some digging around I found that Sonnet make a small converter to change the FW400 plug to a FW800 one. I went to my Apple store to get one and they do not sell them. They told me they "currently had no solution in store" (or online).

I would have thought that when you spend £1100+ on a display Apple could include a £10 adapter in the box so you can actually use the display as it is intended... or at the very least sell one in store. I now have to wait for mine to be delivered so I can hook up my iSight and audio interface. Doh!

Oh yes, be warned. In a small room you won't need any additional heating - this thing throws out a lot of heat :)

46 of 49 people found this useful

Great quality display - let down by dead pixel lines issues and dancing pixels issues. I was told by Apple support that these problems have been fixed. Dead pixel lines (black vertical line down) maybe, but NOT the dancing pixels. This is horizontal and vertical, often yellowish, flicking pixels, looking like a negative image at times. To add to this, changing from a blue tint to a pink tint (very subtle) can also accompany this fault. At worst, the pixels will dance aggressively in heavier colour, looking very grainy, then suddenly reverting back to normal (up to an hour or so), then back to flicking (and so on). This starts to grind on you while working. Regardless how old your 30" monitor is, this can happen and if out of warranty, like mine, you are stuffed, and will get a very large repair bill. Apple do not acknowledge this issue despite many users comments saying it does! Be warned, a very expensive product (not saying its bad when working!) with a potential of a very expensive repair. Is it worth the money with that risk??????????? Like a previous customer said, 'luck of the draw'! For a top of the range product, I consider a 'luck of the draw', an issue within itself. A £1,173.00 of an issue!!!! Good luck!

74 of 82 people found this useful

I have 2 of these. One purchased 8 months ago and has always been perfect. One purchased last week.
The one purchased last week arrived with the 'blue lines' problem (lines in solid blue) and was too pink. The replacement which arrived 2 days ago has too much anti-glare coating on the screen, making it very visible when working with white backgrounds.
Overall an excellent display, its the luck of the draw.

80 of 100 people found this useful

Many people (myself included) have suffered severe "dancing pixels" problems with this display. Seems that some problems are software-related, but most are only solved by changing the display, some have even had to do that two to three times and even then the problems have been persistent. At that point I myself decided to give up and returned the product. Otherwise this is a fantastic display, but these problems make it very annoying to use.

I am still going to buy a new Cinema HD when these problems have been dealed with and Apple has made an announcement that the problems are gone. I hope that it is not only the new background image that has been changed from last month...

Check out apple discussions for more information.

224 of 303 people found this useful

the display itself looks wonderful, but i wonder when, and if, Apple are going to bring out one with an in-built iSight camera (as it has on all laptops and iMac's for quite a while now)

45 of 57 people found this useful

I got my 30" Cinema Display delivered this morning and I am in awe with it!

It is surprisingly lightweight for a display this size so I had no problem lifting it onto the desk top. The picture is perfect, crisp and clear. It provides me with 4 times the screen real estate I used to have with my old 19" CRT, which is great for software development. The colours are perfect. Pixels are crystal clear even at the highest resolution.

The only small glitch is in the installation manual. Although the diagram shows it, it doesn't emphasize that, if you are connecting it to a PowerMac G5, you absolutely have to connect it to DVI port #2 otherwise you won't have access to resolutions higher than 1280x800, which would be a shame.

73 of 90 people found this useful

I'ts been a very long time since I bought anything IT related that was perfect - I mean faultless in every way. The 30" CD is and I'm delighted with it. The ATI Radion X800 XT that I also bought to drive the display works fantastically and I can run World Of Warcraft at full res (2560x1600) at high refresh rates.

No dead pixels, bright, contrasty, fantastic. I really have been blown away with the screen and can heartily recommend it.

28 of 41 people found this useful

I have been using my 30inch for around 3 months now and all I can say is it never fails to impress, Ok it's not cheap but for me it's worth every penny. Great for imaging and video work, can only assume the first reviewer doesn't actually own one!!

If you can afford one buy one NOW!

14 of 26 people found this useful