The teardown kings of iFixit have set their sights on the Studio Display, Apple’s new 27-inch 5K monitor that we had the opportunity to test. When announced, this model differed from traditional LCD monitors by the presence of an A13 Bionic chip, which is also used in the iPhone 11.
In the video below, testers served as guinea pigs to try to decide between the Studio Display of an iMac blindly (device open from behind). And many were fooled by the presence of two large fans, speakers and power supplies in Apple’s monitor. Inside, it looks a lot like an iMac with an Intel processor.
In addition, the two devices are disassembled in the same way, by first removing the LCD panel. However, the Studio Display is 50% thicker than an iMac M1. At 1 min 50 s of the video, we can see that the 12 megapixel camera module of the monitor is very similar to the front module of the iPhone 11, which also has a 12 megapixel sensor.
iFixit testers found the Studio Display’s 27-inch LCD panel to be identical to the iMac 5K’s panel. But the monitor mainly has two thin and separate power supply cards (see 2 min 40 s), which require active cooling provided by the two fans. The use of these components explains the thickness of the Studio Display, while the iMac uses a power supply separate from the screen.
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The dismantlers then access the motherboard (see at 3 min 10 s) which contains the SoC A13 Bionic, as well as 64 GB of storage. Access to the six speakers is more difficult, as they are glued. Finally, the disassembly of the three USB ports, as well as the Thunderbolt port is rather simple.
Source : Youtube