A cheaper standalone display could be the Apple event’s ‘wild card’

We had all but given up hope that Apple’s standalone monitor would ever make an appearance, but a few new rumors have given us hope that not only is it coming, but it could arrive as early as Tuesday.

In his latest Power On Newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that along with the iPhone SE, iPad Air, and a new Mac, “a fourth ‘wild card’ unveiling is possible” at Apple’s “Peek Performance event. That could be a number of things, according to Gurman, but the most intriguing is “the announcement of a next-generation monitor.”

While he’s hardly confident, Gurman says he “wouldn’t rule out” getting a preview of Apple’s next-generation external display at Tuesday’s event. He says Apple finished development on the monitor late last year and was due to launch soon after last year’s MacBook Pro unveiling in October.

As if one report wasn’t intriguing enough, a Twitter account claiming to belong to Ming-Chi Kuo reported on Sunday that a “more affordable external display (27-inch without mini-LED)” is due to arrive in 2022. The account doesn’t offer any additional details, but it arrived mere hours before Gurman’s report.

Finally, 9to5Mac reported last week that Apple is working on a 7K Apple Studio Display.

Apple had been previously rumored to be working on a 27-inch monitor, but they’ve been mostly vague speculation. The rumors here are the most solid information about the display that we’ve gotten so far, and it could signal that it is indeed ready to launch at Tuesday’s event.

Apple last sold an affordable standalone monitor in 2016, when it retired its 27-inch Thunderbolt Display. Launched in 2011, the $999 monitor doubled as a docking station, with three powered USB 2.0 ports, FireWire 800, gigabit ethernet port, and a Thunderbolt port. It also included a built-in Thunderbolt cable and universal MagSafe cable for connecting to a MacBook.