Apple Thunderbolt Display Teardown
Teardown
Teardowns provide a look inside a device and should not be used as disassembly instructions.
Featured Guide
This guide has been found to be exceptionally cool by the iFixit staff.
Crafted from the fire pits of Hephaestus himself, and thrust down to Earth by the mighty Zeus, the Apple Thunderbolt Display arrived at the doorstep of iFixit's headquarters.
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Cool bonus: Here's a wallpaper of one of Thunderbolt Display's chips, made in the Thunderbolt Display's native 2560 x 1440 resolution.
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Edit Step 1
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Apple Thunderbolt Display Teardown
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By the hammer of Thor! With the new Thunderbolt Display in our hands, the future is looking bright.
27" TFT Active-Matrix LCD
2560 by 1440 Pixel Resolution
Built-in Thunderbolt and MagSafe Cables
FaceTime HD Camera with Microphone
49 Watt 2.1 Speaker System
16:9 Widescreen Aspect Ratio

Edit Step 2 ¶
The Thunderbolt Display contains a sweet lineup of USB, HDMI, VGA, and DisplayPort ports! Oh wait—wrong thousand-dollar display.
The luscious backside of the Thunderbolt Display contains only a small line of specified ports:
Three powered USB 2.0 ports
FireWire 800 port
Thunderbolt port
Gigabit Ethernet port.
The Thunderbolt Display also comes with a built-in Thunderbolt cable attached to a Universal MagSafe cable.
It seems to be a convenient setup for connecting to your laptop's Thunderbolt port while charging, unless of course you are sporting a Mid 2011 MacBook Air and your MagSafe port is opposite your Thunderbolt.

Edit Step 3 ¶
Much like the iMac we tore apart earlier this year (and the iMacs before it), the Thunderbolt Display's front glass panel comes off with the help of some heavy duty suction cups.
While we're handling this gigantic sheet of silica, we thought we'd share a fun glass fact with you: the Plymouth Barracuda featured—at its time—the largest piece of automotive glass produced to date.

Edit Step 4 ¶
It's time to take a look under the hood. With the help of our 54-piece bit driver kit, we liberate a few screws (12 to be exact, but who's counting?) from their asylum.
A few connectors and a ground screw are all that prevent the freedom of the LCD.

Edit Step 5 ¶
The 27-inch (diagonal) TFT active-matrix LCD has a resolution of 2560 by 1440 pixels, the standard for displays of this size and price. Its 12 ms response time and 16.7 million colors, however, fall short of the 6 ms response time and 1.07 billion colors of Dell's comparable display.
We might be splitting hairs here, but those hairs would be viewed with 1,053,300,000 fewer colors on Apple's display. Just saying.
Be it 16.7 million or 1.07 billion colors, we say, "Let's see what you've got, Crayola!"

Edit Step 6 ¶
The back of the LCD display has only a few cables, none too exciting:
DisplayPort
LED backlight
LED backlight sync
Ground loop.
The LG display reads model number LM270WQ1. Is it possible that we may have seen this model number before?
Yes, it appears to be the same display found in the iMac Intel 27" from October of 2009, as well as the same basic LG display found in Dell's competing 27" monitor, though the Apple version uses LED backlights as opposed to Dell's traditional CCFL.
Dell's version is also matte, something that lots of Mac users have been harping for once the old 30" Cinema Display was phased out.
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