Apple has long been rumored to update its Studio Display, which made its debut in March 2022 alongside the Mac Studio, and yesterday, rumors indicated that the upcoming monitor will feature refresh rates that could go up to 90Hz. This isn’t the first time we heard this rumor.
Back in November 2024, an anonymous listener of the podcast “Upgrade” claimed that Apple’s future iPad Air, iMac, and Studio Display models could adopt refresh rates that could go up to 90Hz, which would be a solid, happy medium between the standard 60Hz refresh rates that those models currently have and the brilliant 120Hz adaptive refresh rates, known as ProMotion technology, that’s used in many flagship Apple devices, including the iPhone 17 lineup, the iPhone Air, the iPad Pro, and the MacBook Pro.
That rumor seems even more credible thanks to a MacRumors tipster who discovered several code references from a leaked internal build of iOS 26. However, just a heads-up, that internal build was from early 2025, which would be about a year ago.
I would still hope that this next-generation Studio Display will have ProMotion technology that could refresh up to 120Hz for the first time. After all, Thunderbolt 5 can support 5K resolution at 120Hz with no compression, which means these Mac models with Thunderbolt 5 can take full advantage of the Studio Display’s full resolution and refresh rates:
- MacBook Pro with M4 Pro or M4 Max
- Mac mini with M4 Pro
- Mac Studio with M4 Max or M3 Ultra
This would mean complete parity between the MacBook Pro’s built-in display and the Studio Display in terms of refresh rates.
However, it should be noted that Apple may want to cap the refresh rate to 90Hz due to bandwidth considerations, as the Studio Display has built-in USB-C ports for you to plug in external drives and other peripherals. Other features that could be coming to the next Studio Display are the A19 or A19 Pro chip, HDR support, and mini-LED backlighting. Hence, we might as well call it the “Studio Display XDR.” Mark Gurman expects this Studio Display XDR to launch in “the first half of 2026.” So it would make sense for Apple to launch this monitor alongside either the upcoming MacBook Pro with the M5 Pro/M5 Max chips or the upcoming Mac Studio with the M5 Max/M5 Ultra chips. So we won’t have to wait too long to find out.
