The Studio Display’s camera quality was a mess upon release.
Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

When we reviewed Apple's $1,599 studio display, one thing immediately jumped out: its built-in webcam is bad. At the time, Apple told us that an update to improve the camera would be forthcoming, and now it appears to be here. An update to the studio display firmware is now available with today's release of the macOS Monterey 12.4. Improvements to the studio display camera tuning are included in the update.

Everyone else will be able to install the Monterey 12.4 beta later today, but only developers are able to do so now.

Will the improvements to the camera make your average call look better? We will be testing it soon, so check back for more.

Apple Studio Display webcam screenshot
A sample of the Studio Display’s image quality pre-update.

The image quality of the display and camera setup was inexplicable, given the price of the display and the fact that the camera setup was the same as an iPhone 11. It isn't something most people would want to do on their work machines, so it's a shame that you have to be running a version of macOS that's been tested. It's understandable that Apple would want to test these changes in a variety of conditions before releasing them to the general public.

You can update your display by going to System Preferences after you have installed the developer. You should see the results of Apple's tweaks once the studio display is installed.