Reviews for Apple Thunderbolt Display (27-inch)

Initially, the negative reviews posted gave me pause before I purchased Thunderbolt.
Spoke to the Apple sales people several times about the posted complaints plus
they assured me about the return policy.

Purchased the monitor and it performs great. The color is amazing. I use it everyday.
I have so much more real estate to work with.

Fantastic job Apple.

Purchased to match my 2012 Mac Mini. Works great but need to get use to the smaller font with this high resolution monitor. Also, the ethernet port on the display was labeled incorrectly when hooked up to my router. Had to delete and rename to "display ethernet port" and all is now correct. I like having the hub on the back of the monitor to hook up my firewire 800 Time Machnine hard drive and another USB hub.

I too have had a thunderbolt 27″ fail, in fact two of them. The first one was less than 60 days old. Smack dab in the middle it had subpixels fail with a line running vertically and horizontally and everything below the horizontal line was flickering really bad. Made an appointment with the gunnies bar and ended up with an exchange for a band new unit. I felt really good about how well they handled it. However, in less than one week the second monitor from the exchange died! This time no video, however, the display sound, ethernet, and other ports still worked. Again, made an appointment with genius bar. This time they didn’t even remove the monitor form the box to look at it. They just took my word and brought back another brand new monitor. I’m now on my second day on the third monitor and continuously have my fingers crossed. Yes, apple support was excellent and kodos to my local genus bar, but the reality is I’d just would like a monitor that works!

The Thunderbolt Display looks gorgeous, but don't let the looks deceive you this: this monitor is actually a steaming pile of garbage. I've gone through three in less than a month. The first was shipped with a giant crack in the glass panel. The next two have constantly flickered when plugged into my 13" MacBook Pro, and sometimes shut off completely until I plug them back in. Save yourself some time and money and just buy a cheaper display from another manufacturer.

I don't know what's going on with Apple, but I've been a Mac user for 20 years, and I've noticed a significant decline in the quality of their hardware over the past five years or so.

...but this product joins the trunk full of apple products I'm accumulating that needed repair barely 1 month out of warranty. In any case, the cable assembly that splits into a TB connector and power supply is defective. A few weeks ago the display went dim. Then the monitor went semi-comatose: Speakers worked but not the screen. So I tried using a separate tb cable to the open port on the back. That brought the screen back to life. So now I have to wait 3 days for an appointment at the local 'genius' bar (sounds so silly to say that, doesn't it?) and then a likely $150 repair bill.

I've had two of these monitors completely fail on me now. One was a bad LCD panel ($962 to fix) and 6 weeks past the warranty period. Thanks good ness for extended warranties with the credit card company I purchased it with. The second just failed today. A loud pop and the screen is dead. Not the computer as I have another monitor and tested the computer.

Apple's quality control has gone down so much over the last year or so. Sure it si great while it works, but 2 monitors in 2 years is a pretty lousy track record.

Avoid it!

Just took delivery of my new display, purchased from a store here in New Zealand. Perhaps a minor issue, but my son bought one a couple of months back (different store, same city) and the picture within the display featured on the box is quite different - both "Milky Way" images but one is markedly different from the other.

That apart, one annoyance is that, using it as I do with my MacBook Pro, any time the monitor goes into sleep mode I have to unplug the monitor from the MB and re-connect. I use bluetooth keyboard and mouse and neither is able to shake the display from its slumber. Any way to overcome this?

I'm a scientific programmer working in the field of astronomy. I program all day long and the Thunderbolt display is absolutely wonderful. It is wide, crisp, and has exceptional contrast. It syncs perfectly whenever I remove and reattach to my MacBook Pro, never any hassles. I also have an older Cinema display for my home system. It is good also, but it has lower contrast and runs quite a lot warmer than the Thunderbolt. Three cheers for Apple on this one.

I currently have a 27" iMac and a 17" MacBook Pro I just purchased the 27" Thunderbolt Display and have it situated right>left on my desk with the 27" and use my laptop to travel and work remote. The display was not exactly what I thought it would be. The biggest disappointment that needs to be fixed immediately is the lack of being able to use full screen apps without the other (secondary) screen going blank. With that being said it is pretty amazing having 54" of desktop in front of you. You can really get a lot of work done, not to mention the amazing appeal it gives your workstation. I am able to run excel permanently on the secondary screen (biz costing) as well as my icalendar (biz scheduling) While working off of the dock and all other applications on the primary screen. For that use alone the money is worth it. Now only if it was a touch screen as well. My employees love it and it saves a lot of time. FIX THE FULL SCREEN APP PROBLEM. I honestly almost returned it when I bought it I could not believe the instant disappointment something so simple and obvious got missed as the first thing I tried to do was watch a movie while I worked lol.... This was a major mistake and my loyalty to apple may change if they are to out there to realize the importance and release a update very soon. If you have one of these I know that you know exactly what I am talking about. With that being said apples concepts in the past never really focused on the full screen application. It is 2013 I have 27" x 2 = 54" of screen I want to be able to USE IT ALL.

It's a beautiful screen to look at. High resolution, high contrast, good built-in audio and ports (no USB3 though), thunderbolt connection to macs so it just works, no headaches here.

You will get headaches from the mirror finish. It's effectively unusable in anything but a dark room. It's possible to force brightness way up to drown out the reflections, but this is akin to staring directly into a bright light - seriously not good for you.

It's a gorgeous looking device, but it's going back to Apple store tomorrow. Not willing to gamble with my eyesight.