The Apple Thunderbolt Display Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 23, 2011 2:56 AM EST- Posted in
- Displays
- Mac
- Apple
- Thunderbolt
- Thunderbolt Display
Testing the Pieces
Before we get to the display and Thunderbolt specific testing I wanted to confirm that the individual controllers in the Thunderbolt Display were just as capable as those in the Mac it was connected to. For the most part, they are.
Following in Brian Klug's footsteps, I created two RAM disks - one on a MacBook Air and one on a MacBook Pro. I connected both systems to my local GigE network and copied giant files between them. I measured over 780Mbps going from the MacBook Air to the MacBook Pro, and 832Mbps in the other direction (images below). That's about as good as it's going to get.
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Next I tested performance over FireWire 800 and USB 2.0. For FireWire 800 I used a Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II configured in RAID-1 and measured peak read speed from the device. For USB testing I turned to a Corsair Flash Voyager 3.0 (USB stick) and a SF-2281 SSD connected to a SATA-to-USB bridge. In both of the USB tests I measured write speed to the USB 2.0 devices. Apple appears to have chosen its FireWire controller well as performance was only off by 2MB/s compared to the FW800 port on the 15-inch MacBook Pro. USB 2.0 performance wasn't nearly as good however, I maxed out at 16.4MB/s and saw typical rates closer to 15MB/s:
| Transfer Rate Comparison | |||||
| FireWire 800 | USB 2.0 (stick) | USB 2.0 (SSD) | |||
| Apple Thunderbolt Display | 70.0 MB/s | 14.1 MB/s | 16.4 MB/s | ||
| Apple 15-inch MacBook Pro (2011) | 72.0 MB/s | 21.2 MB/s | 32.2 MB/s | ||
Both the audio controller and FaceTime HD cameras interface via the Thunderbolt Display's internal USB controller. It's likely that one of those devices is forcing the controller to negotiate at a lower speed and thus ultimately limit peak USB 2.0 performance through the display. Note the gap in performance is much smaller if you're looking at transfers to a USB stick vs. an SSD. I happen to have a lot of SSDs around so I tend to use them as glorified USB sticks, I suspect the majority of users won't notice much of a difference due to the lower overall performance of standard USB sticks.
FaceTime HD Camera
Although Photo Booth in Lion captures at 1080 x 720, using iSightcapture I was able to confirm that the sensor in the Thunderbolt Display appears to be able to capture 1280 x 720 natively. Quality is what we'd come to expect from the current generation of FaceTime HD cameras.
I tested the camera both in Photo Booth and in a FaceTime chat with our own Brian Klug. The experience worked fine in both cases.
FaceTime seems to have issues when one party is in a noisy environment but that doesn't appear to have anything to do with the Thunderbolt Display hardware as I duplicated the issue on a MacBook Air as well. If you're curious, the problem I'm talking about occurs when the party in a quiet environment is trying to talk to the person with a lot of background noise. The quiet party will hear audio just fine but the noisy party will get a lot of broken up audio from the other side. It seems like FaceTime is trying to do some active noise cancelation that ends up doing more harm than good. I confirmed it's a FaceTime software problem by calling Brian via Skype without any issues.
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V4lkyri3 - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
Maybe I'm slow to the party, but I'm loving this video review Anand.Valkyrie.
mfenn - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
Agreed!GeorgeH - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
It was a very well-done video, everything from lighting and sound to the presentation was very well done.Hopefully you use video reviews as more of a supplement where it's appropriate though (case reviews with videos would be great.) I can read much faster and than I can listen, and it's much easier to search and reference text.
dragonsqrrl - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
+1! Love the way Anand and reviewers have been using these video's to supplement the written content, it's a great added bonus.And I agree, it would be great for things like case, monitor, and smart phone reviews, things of that nature, but not so much for a hard drive or SSD reviews, for instance. And it seems like that's precisely the way the video reviews have been used thus far.
Great stuff...
Operandi - Monday, September 26, 2011 - link
For one it is a very concise version of the full review, and it complements it very well. Just the quick and dirty info on what Apple has been up to, and as this will do nothing for me as a PC user I now know I can stop there; if I want more detailed info I have the full review at my disposal, pretty cool. The other obvious benefit is the video format itself has advantages over still images for products such as this.Also great work on the video and audio production, it looked and sounded great. The set is almost too minimalistic though, might want to experiment there.
tech6 - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
+1 - Nice work - looks and sounds professional. More please.leodc - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
You are are quite a fluent speaker, Anand! You spoke continuously for more than 5 minutes without meandering, drifting.... Impressive.ImSpartacus - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
I agree. I love how he leaped into the anecdote without throwing an annoying intro on the screen. Anand's performance was engaging; I love listening to where he thinks the industry is going.B3an - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
It's well made but it annoys me how he puts this much effort in to Apple products and only makes a video of this quality for something by Apple. Also in Anandtech articles theres very often better quality photos for Apple stuff, in comparison to other articles for anything else. More effort is put in to lighting, location, and camera shots. On a whole Apple articles just seem better presented and it just makes the site seem bias and like some fanboyism exists.Stas - Friday, September 23, 2011 - link
Or they just get paid to do it right. Other articles they do on their own initiative. I'm sure, if a company stepped in and paid for a review, they would do it just as well, as Apple's.