YouTuber Luke Miani is well known for his Apple repair and DIY videos, often buying used MacBooks and repairing or reconditioning them into useful products once again. In his latest video however, he’s doing what Apple has only just managed to do themselves, turning the 5k iMac panel into an external display akin to the brand new Studio Display 5k.

One of the biggest issues people have with the new Studio Display is the pricing, which this video addresses directly, saving over half the price vs buying from Apple for the cost of a little work. Seems like a pretty good trade off to me.

In the past, many Macs included a feature called Target Display Mode where they could be used as a display for another Mac over FireWire or Thunderbolt, though around the time that the 5k iMac was released this feature was discontinued. Bearing in mind that the 5k iMac was released in 2014, there were very few options for Apple to get enough data into these displays to drive the vast amount of pixels, meaning Apple had to use custom display timing controllers and a whole bunch of other work arounds.

Luke Even went as far as to add a USB Webcam to his iMac Studio display, which while it’s a pretty basic, it certainly fills a gap and being mounted in the original spot above the display looks very sleek. And let’s be honest, very few people have been impressed with Apple’s own effort using their CenterStage camera in the 2022 Studio Display.

Luke makes use of a display adapter board (Luke’s link) to connect the iMac’s display panel to different Macs over USB-C which means in practice it appears as a regular display, giving this old iMac a new lease of life, while still keeping the iconic Apple industrial design look. Does it have fat bezels in 2022? Yes, but the slim edged iMac is an Apple Design that will continue to look great for many years to come, and I’m personally 100% here for it.