Screen is warmer and brighter in front of the viewer's head and colder and dimmer on the sides

Following up - in the past weeks I did open a trouble ticket with Apple to see if this was all in my head and that maybe there was a fix. Unfortunately after a couple phone calls having me run through a myriad of the profiles and disable the light sensing features - the result still looks the same and the viewing angle is so shallow that (as pictured above) temperature and brightness fall of visibly even sitting directly centered in front of the display.

The answer that I received back from apple tech - was that this is "expected" performance and not a problem. wow.

So this was the known "expected" performance of a VERY expensive product that they not only moved into production and shipped anyway - they actually go out of their way to brag about the extreme viewing angle of these displays in all their promo material. This is the marketing, directly off XDR description page:

Superwide viewing angle.

When multiple people review work together on a single screen, it’s critical that everyone sees the same thing. While most pro desktop displays claim a wide viewing angle, in reality, color and image quality become distorted when seen off-axis. With industry-leading polarizer technology, Pro Display XDR achieves a superwide viewing angle that maintains exceptional color and contrast.

So - in what might be the most ironic gif of the year, I recorded a quick movement across the width of the Prodisplay XDR (about 2 feet away and never nearly as far off angle as their promo image), showing the color temp, brightness, and contrast visibly fall off - on Apple's web page boasting how the color temp and contrast remain consistent at "superwide" viewing angles.

The marketing here is about as trustworthy as the color temp consistency of this monitor.

Hi djosl - you are right that the brightness and color fall off is very difficult to see in a busy store environment, or with video or motion graphics playing. The issue is most noticeable across white and neutral tones, like both my images above. If in store and photoshop isn't an option, just opening the apple (white) website full screen should make the issue pretty obvious.

As for the 6k resolution, it is very sharp and contrast values are impressive. Inside lightroom when images are blown up to 100 and beyond the visibility is very good. But - when color balancing the whole image, I do find myself aware of the color fall off and have been moving around in my chair to assess the whole image warmth properly.

I would say that if you can get a hands on with your second choice monitor it would be worth pushing some of these issues to see how they stack up before pulling the trigger - or just buy from reputable vendors who accept retunes.