Apple just announced two new versions of their standalone display, Studio Display and the Studio Display XDR.

The new Studio Display is a slight upgrade over its predecessor, but the Studio Display XDR adds a Mini-LED backlit display and a 120Hz refresh rate (for a lot of money).

Most iPads are compatible with both displays, but are limited to 60Hz, as driving a 5K display at 120Hz requires more bandwidth than their ports provide.

The M5 iPad Pro is different. It’s the only iPad that can drive an external display at 120Hz. According to its tech specs page, it’s only able to drive up to a 4K display at 120Hz. So, it’s curious to me that the M5 iPad Pro is listed as being able to drive the 5K Studio Display XDR at that same refresh rate.

In my mind there are three potential explanations:

• The Studio Display XDR lowers its resolution to 4K when the iPad Pro is connected
• Apple applies heavy DSC (Display Stream Compression) to make the relatively limited 40Gb/s bandwidth of Thunderbolt 3 work with this display
• Apple’s product page is wrong and the M5 iPad Pro has a Thunderbolt 5 port instead of a Thunderbolt 3 (this is the least likely option).

I don’t know that we’ll ever actually know what the answer is since I doubt anyone in tech media is going to test this, and I certainly don’t have $3299 to spend on a monitor I don’t need, but it does make me wonder how this is going to work.