It's $500 USD more to make Apple's $1,600 monitor height adjustable

(Image credit: Apple)

It is time to once again scratch our heads at Apple for at least one weirdly expensive thing after a product announcement. One minute we can be wowed by powerful new chips that may promise a heightened future for gaming to come, and the next Apple could charge $400 USD for a monitor stand. And it has.

The new Studio Display looks like a pretty impressive bit of kit, especially for creatives looking for an Apple screen. It has a 5k retina panel, up to 600 nits, and your choice between a stand with tilt adjustments, or a VESA wall mount adapter.

One of these will set you back $1,599 USD, and while it certainly isn't cheap, that could be considered pretty reasonable by Apple standards. Add $300 more and you can even get the fancier non reflective glass coating, which still doesn't seem that bad for this kind of enhancement.

But if you want the incredibly premium feature of adjusting the height of your monitor, you'll need to fork out the extra $499 for the tilt and height adjustable stand configuration. It's baffling that this stand could be $500 USD better than the one it comes with. Especially given the only extra functionality seems to be adjusting the height of your monitor.

You could get a monitor that has height adjustment for less, and we have some great recommendations when it comes to gaming monitors. Or use an old phone book? People still have those right? Regardless, It certainly feels like Apple pricing on what should be a fairly standard feature.

Screen queens

Best gaming monitor: Pixel-perfect panels for your PC
Best high refresh rate monitor: Screaming quick screens
Best 4K monitor for gaming: When only high-res will do
Best 4K TV for gaming: Big-screen 4K PC gaming

And it's pretty familiar. Apple dropped a stand for $999 in 2019 that everyone made fun of then too. It could be the company is banking on this one feeling cheap in comparison, but it's still a hard amount to swallow.

More recently there were the weirdly expensive wheels for Apple's last tower, and even a microfiber cloth costing a whopping $19, for a few inches of fabric. Thankfully, these prices shouldn't bother anyone here as according to Intel, no one really games on a Mac.

Hope’s been writing about games for about a decade, starting out way back when on the Australian Nintendo fan site Vooks.net. Since then, she’s talked far too much about games and tech for publications such as Techlife, Byteside, IGN, and GameSpot. Of course there’s also here at PC Gamer, where she gets to indulge her inner hardware nerd with news and reviews. You can usually find Hope fawning over some art, tech, or likely a wonderful combination of them both and where relevant she’ll share them with you here. When she’s not writing about the amazing creations of others, she’s working on what she hopes will one day be her own. You can find her fictional chill out ambient far future sci-fi radio show/album/listening experience podcast right here. No, she’s not kidding.