I want to see Apple offer 24-inch and 27-inch external displays at a reasonable price

Apple will release a new external monitor at half the price of the Pro Display XDR this year, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman predicts in his latest “Power On” newsletter. But that would still be way too expensive.

The Pro Display XDR (pictured) costs US$4,999 (not counting $999 for an optional stand). Half of that would be $2,500 — and that’s still too much by half for most of us.

An opinion piece you should read at 9to5Mac suggests Apple offer an 24-inch external monitor for $999. The op-ed says Apple could do this by taking the same display that’s in the 24-inch iMac, remove the computer and the chin and ship it as a display.

I think that’s a great idea. In fact, I’d love to see Apple offer that and a 27-inch (or 30 or 32 inch) external display for $1,299. That’s the same price of the LG UltraFine 5K. But let’s face it: that monitor and the LG UltraFine 4K display, which Apple promotes as its endorsed external displays, look cheap with their plastic bodies (although the image quality is great).

An external Apple monitor is long overdue. The Mac is back and bigger than ever, so we need good external displays to go along with them.