The long wait for a new Apple Thunderbolt Display may or may not be over soon

Enlarge / LG's 5K UltraFine is currently the closest thing to a 5K version of the old Thunderbolt Display. But Apple could change that sometime this year. (credit: LG)

It has been a long, sad decade for fans of Apple's first-party external monitors.

Apple's 2011 Thunderbolt Display was unceremoniously discontinued back in 2016 without being replaced. The 4K and 5K LG UltraFine displays that Apple will still sell you aren’t bad—the 5K option is still one of the only 5K monitors that even exists, and they have modern Thunderbolt 3 ports, USB hubs, built-in webcams, and decent display panels. But their thick, ugly bezels and boxy black designs are hardly a good aesthetic match for Apple’s sleek, silvery hardware. And then there’s the ProDisplay XDR, an unapologetically expensive screen that can cost between two and six times as much as the Mac you're connecting it to. 

But Mac multi-monitor enthusiasts haven't given up hope, and rumors have persisted that Apple is getting back into the displays-a-normal-person-could-conceivably-afford market. The latest iteration of these rumors comes via correct-more-often-than-not Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who says (via MacRumors) that Apple is planning a new, "more affordable" 27-inch display and may be planning to release it alongside a more powerful version of the Mac mini at some point in 2022.

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