Apple’s 27-inch Mini-LED monitor could face a disappointingly lengthy delay

The back panel of the Apple Studio Display monitor
(Image credit: Apple)

Apple’s rumored 27-inch monitor which is said to sport Mini-LED tech won’t be out nearly as soon as previous chatter from the grapevine suggested.

MacRumors spotted a tweet from Ross Young, a well-known leaker (and CEO of Display Supply Chain Consultants), indicating that the 27-inch monitor has been pushed back considerably by Apple.

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As you can see, word is that rather than being launched in June as originally intended (presumably that meant WWDC, which takes place early in the month), the display may not pitch up until October 2022.

Young explains that the delay is due to the lockdown in Shanghai, as production was supposed to be handled there (by Quanta), but Apple has been forced to switch to a different location. That’s obviously not a trivial change, and so if this is indeed the case, we can certainly expect a few months to be added to the waiting time for this 27-inch screen.

Note that Apple’s MacBook Pro production is also in the same boat, according to a recent report.


Analysis: Studio Display Pro to doubtless be an expensive proposition

In theory, this could be an Apple Studio Display Pro, a higher-end version of the new Studio Display, the main difference being a big one – the addition of Mini-LED, of course.

The rumor mill (including Young) originally believed that a 27-inch iMac Pro was inbound, but there was apparently some confusion around this, and previous mentions of such an iMac were actually based on leaks pertaining to this 27-inch Mini-LED monitor. Although there are still some folks on Twitter questioning whether this might still be an all-in-one computer from Apple, rather than just a display.

If it is a Studio Display Pro, we can of course expect it to be pricey. In the above tweet, Young was asked by one commenter about a ballpark for the price tag, but the leaker only replied that it would be “expensive”.

That’s no surprise, though, given that the Apple Studio Display is already a pricey proposition itself, starting at $1,599 (£1,499 / AU$2,499). We could expect a serious Apple premium added to any Pro version with Mini-LED, with that perhaps more or less doubling the price tag to around three grand.

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).