imac 24 lcd panel free sample

New iMac 24 inch display free mockup to showcase your UI/UX design or iOS app presentation in a photorealistic style with this 2021 iMac in all colors. Simple edit with smart layers. Free for personal and commercial use. Enjoy!

Testing conducted by Apple in March 2021 using preproduction 24-inch iMac systems with Apple M1 chip and 8-core GPU, as well as production 3.0GHz 6-core Intel Core i5-based 21.5-inch iMac systems with Radeon Pro 560X with 4GB of GDDR5 memory, all configured with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD. Open source project built with prerelease Xcode 12.5 with Apple Clang 12.0.5, Ninja 1.10.0.git, and CMake 3.16.5. Affinity Photo 1.9.1 tested using the built-in benchmark version 1900. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of iMac.

Magic Keyboard with Touch ID is included with the 24‑inch iMac systems with Apple M1 chip and 8‑core GPU and is available as an option on systems with 7‑core GPU.

You can use more than one iMac as a display, if each iMac is using a Thunderbolt cable to connect directly to a Thunderbolt port on the other Mac (not the other iMac).

Apps that were open on your iMac when entering target display mode remain open in target display mode. For example, if you begin playing music on your iMac and then enter target display mode, the music doesn"t pause on your iMac.

The other Mac can"t use the iMac computer"s built-in camera or ports. To use external devices with your other Mac, connect them directly to the other Mac, not to your iMac.

If you"re currently logged in to the iMac that you want to use as a display, choose Apple menu  > Log Out to return to the login window. Then press Command-F2 again.

Choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, then click Keyboard. If ”Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys” is selected, target display mode uses Command-Fn-F2 instead of Command-F2. It might also help to use the keyboard that came with your iMac. Some third-party keyboards and older Apple keyboards don"t support target display mode.

Make sure that your iMac is using macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 or earlier. You can"t use target display mode with later versions of macOS, or with Boot Camp and Windows.

Accessibility features help people with disabilities get the most out of their new iMac. With built-in support for vision, hearing, mobility, and learning, you can create and do amazing things. Learn more about Accessibility

Configure your iMac with these options at apple.com:. Looking for an iMac you can mount on a wall or an adjustable arm? Choose an iMac with a Built-in VESA Mount Adapter

Magic Keyboard with Touch ID is included with the 24‑inch iMac systems with Apple M1 chip and 8‑core GPU and is available as an option on systems with 7‑core GPU

We’ve been using Apple’s new iMac as our main machine for close to a week now, and we don’t want to stop anytime soon. Apple’s revamped all-in-one desktop feels tailor-made for a work-from-home world, with a gorgeous 24-inch display, zippy performance, an excellent webcam and a beautiful design that you can comfortably set up just about anywhere.

The new iMac (starting at $1,258.99; amazon com or $1,299.99; bestbuy.com) completely refreshes Apple’s long-running desktop computer, with a slimmer-than-ever build, fun color options and the same blazing Apple M1 processor that truly wowed us on last year’s MacBooks. So what’s it like to actually work and play on this highly anticipated desktop? Let’s dive in.

Apple"s new iMac has a gorgeous new design, a vibrant display and a crazy powerful processor. Here"s why it"s the best Mac for working from home yet: https://cnn.it/3oqRtXKPosted by CNN Underscored on Tuesday, May 18, 2021

Who it’s for: The new iMac is ideal for anyone who wants a powerful big-screen desktop for doing both demanding creative work and everyday WFH tasks. It’s an especially good fit for those already in the Apple ecosystem, as it’ll work seamlessly with your iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch.

What you need to know: This is Apple’s most compact and powerful iMac yet, with a slim design that comes in seven fun colors and fits most work spaces. You’ll get some truly great performance out of its Apple M1 chip, though it’s light on ports and storage in the starting models.

How it compares: The new 24-inch iMac has a smaller screen and less connectivity options than last year’s 27-inch iMac, but you’re trading that for a more compact, modern design and a faster processor. You can also find more ports on Windows rivals such as the Dell Inspiron 7790 ($1,287.99, originally $1,399.99; amazon.com), but you won’t be getting the same performance or software experience.

The new 24-inch iMac just might be the most attractive Apple computer ever. After nearly a decade of sticking to the same silver slab-of-metal design, Apple has fully reimagined its flagship all-in-one desktop as a slim and colorful powerhouse that immediately catches the eye without taking up much space. Seriously, this thing is roughly the same size as our Dell S2417DG monitor, and it’s a full-on computer.

At just 11.5 millimeters thin and 18 inches tall, the new iMac is about 50% smaller than the previous-generation 21.5-inch iMac. As a result, it was a breeze to set up on our work desk, and left plenty of room for its included Magic Mouse and Magic Keyboard. At just under 10 pounds, Apple’s desktop was easy to lug to our living room once it was time for a change of scenery.

While the new iMac is an exciting evolution of Apple’s long-standing desktop design, it’s also a loving throwback to the days when Apple computers popped with color (looking at you, iMac G3). The 24-inch iMac comes in seven hues: pink, orange, yellow, blue, purple, green, and if you really must, silver. We’ve been testing out the purple version and it’s truly gorgeous — the two-tone look is understated enough to not look like a children’s toy but vibrant enough to add some refreshing personality to our work area.

The latest iMac uses a braided, color-matched MagSafe cable for power, which attaches magnetically to the back of the computer in a snap. While the cable is incredibly easy to pop on when you’re setting up the PC, its magnetic connection made the wire surprisingly hard to pull out once attached. It’s a much firmer connection than the old MagSafe chargers that used to power MacBooks, and seems ideal for preventing any unwanted disconnects should a member of your household (human or otherwise) accidentally trip on the wire.

As is the case with the latest MacBooks, the new iMac’s slim design comes at the expense of ports. The desktop starts with just two Thunderbolt USB 4 ports, and features an additional two USB 3.0 ports on the $1,499 model (the latter of which we tested). The Ethernet port, which is an optional upgrade on the $1,299 model and standard on the more expensive units, is neatly located on the power brick, likely to retain the iMac’s slim profile.

While having the latest Thunderbolt ports is a great perk — these allow for things such as zippy transfer speeds and support for up to a 6K external monitor — the iMac simply doesn’t give you many options when it comes to connectivity. The port options seem especially thin when you compare them to last year’s 27-inch iMac, which features two Thunderbolt ports, four USB-A ports, an SD card reader and an Ethernet jack.

We frequently found ourselves using a USB-C hub to connect things such as external microphones and audio interfaces, which added a bit of clutter to the otherwise minimalist workspace the new iMac allows for. If you’re someone who relies on lots of wired peripherals — especially those that use the old USB-A standard — you’ll likely need to do the same.

The iMac’s vibrant new color options extend to the accessories you get out of the box, including the Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse and optional Magic Trackpad (you also get a color-matched, braided USB-C to Lightning cable for juicing them up). These peripherals are largely the same as previous versions, with one notable upgrade — you can now opt for a Magic Keyboard with a Touch ID sensor. This allowed us to log in to the iMac using just a quick scan of our finger, which we found to be a really nice convenience that saved us a few seconds every time we booted up.

While it’s an optional add-on, we especially loved using the Magic Trackpad. This large touchpad gives you an expansive canvas for swiping and scrolling while also responding to different levels of pressure, allowing you to, say, long-press on a word to look it up in a dictionary. It costs an extra $50 to swap in the Magic Trackpad for the Magic Mouse, and an extra $129 if you want both. We wouldn’t say it’s an absolute necessity, but the Trackpad did make using the iMac more comfortable, especially when we were bouncing between tracks when doing some music production in Ableton Live.

It’s a small nitpick, but we do wish the colors on the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad were a bit more pronounced. While the new iMac colors completely permeate the Magic Keyboard, they’re relegated to the barely noticeable sides and bottom of the mouse and trackpad. As a result, they look like the standard all-white models at first glance, and not like a complement to Apple’s most colorful computer yet.

The iMac’s colorful design houses an equally eye-popping display, delivering great color and brightness that made all types of media look true to life. The desktop’s 24-inch, 4.5K Retina screen is incredibly dense in detail — in sample images provided by Apple, we could make out every individual flower in a colorful field, and a close-up shot of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich looked mouthwateringly realistic.

The iMac’s display proved to be an excellent canvas for kicking back with movies and YouTube videos. In the climactic final battle of “Avengers: Endgame,” Iron Man’s bright red laser blasts and Thor’s icy blue lightning attacks both popped with bright, flashy color. When we pulled up an 8K nature documentary, we could make out every individual strand of fur on a baby cheetah, and shots of lush grassy fields looked vivid and realistic. Even basic work tasks were a joy on the iMac’s screen, thanks to a high level of brightness and deep blacks that made Google Docs and Slack text look satisfyingly inky.

The light gray bezels surrounding the iMac’s display are thinner and less pronounced than the thick black borders on last year’s 27-inch model. Still, there’s a decent amount of bezel surrounding the screen, as well as a fairly pronounced “chin” that sits under the display. We didn’t take issue with this look, but it’s not quite as seamless as the screens on some Windows alternatives such as the Asus M241DA and Dell Inspiron 7790. Also, this is more of a personal nitpick, but we found ourselves wishing that this particular iMac had a touch display — a screen that’s this big and vibrant would be perfect for drawing, marking up and doodling.

The iMac’s crisp display is complemented by a booming set of speakers, which was just as reliable for filling our bedroom with our favorite sad indie music as it was for hearing our colleagues clearly during important calls.

Those speakers gave every instrument in Phoebe Bridgers’ “Kyoto” room to breathe, as the vocals, drums, horns and guitars all came through loudly and cleanly without overpowering one another. The bass was especially impressive here, as there was a satisfyingly thumping amount of low end to complement the sparkly guitar riffs. The heavier, electronics-infused rock of Manchester Orchestra’s “Bed Head” also shone on the iMac, as the crisp, crunchy drums immediately got our head bobbing without taking the spotlight away from the bright keyboards and layered vocal harmonies.

Apple calls the new iMac’s webcam the “best camera ever in a Mac,” and now that we’ve spent some time with it, we can confidently say that’s not just marketing hyperbole. With a 1080p shooter that’s sharper than what you’ll find on the latest MacBooks as well as some software magic made possible by the M1 chip (specifically the integrated image signal processor), the latest iMac always made us look bright and largely true to life — even under less than ideal lighting conditions.

We took the majority of our video calls under uneven lighting with some window light bleeding in behind us, and the iMac still managed to make our face look well lit and detailed. While there was a noticeable loss of clarity when we completely closed our blinds, our actual face still looked very bright (if a bit more red than in real life).

Once we moved somewhere with more even, direct lighting, we got some truly great shots that accurately captured our skin tone and the finer details of our scruffy black beard. In fact, the iMac camera even outperformed the Logitech C920 — our pick for the best webcam — in many of our tests, producing shots that were warmer and more detailed than Logitech’s camera, if a bit oversaturated at times.

The latest iMac packs a triple-microphone array designed to pick up your voice clearly during calls, and it held up fairly well in our testing. We got no complaints about our voice during video meetings — one colleague noted that our voice sounded crisp, and noted that the sounds of our keyboard clacking was only picked up lightly.

When listening back to recordings we made on the iMac’s mic, we noticed that it picked up more background noise and wasn’t quite as detailed as what we got from our top microphone pick in the Blue Yeti. But the fact that the iMac’s internal microphone isn’t terribly far off from a $129 USB mic means that it’s more than reliable enough for your daily Zoom meetings.

The iMac’s new look might be dominating the conversation, but the changes Apple made under the hood are just as significant. This is the first iMac to feature Apple’s M1 processor, which allows Apple’s new desktop to pump out better-than-ever performance within its incredibly slim design. It’s the same tech that we found to set a new standard on the latest MacBook Air and MacBook Pro in terms of speed and efficiency, and it holds up just as well on iMac.

We’ve been using Apple’s slick new computer as our primary work machine for close to a week, and it never once buckled under the heavy multitasking loads we threw at it. Even when we had a dozen apps open, browsed twice as many Chrome tabs and took a video call all at once, the new iMac never slowed down. It took a seriously extreme (and probably uncommon) workload to get some cracks to show — once we did some work in Final Cut Pro and shared our screen on a video call with about 16 apps running in the background, the iMac finally started to stutter.

We had no problem programming drums and recording live instruments on the iMac using Ableton Live, and were able to export a seven-track recording loaded up with effects in a fairly brisk 26 seconds. Exporting a 4K video in Final Cut Pro was similarly speedy, as we were able to convert the file in just 27 seconds. And our everyday go-to apps, such as Slack, Outlook, Chrome and Discord, all ran without a hitch.

While the new iMac is an absolute workhorse for creative tasks and everyday productivity, it’s more of a mixed bag when it comes to gaming. The iMac can access the 100-plus titles on Apple Arcade ($4.99 per month), and games like NBA 2K21 and The Last Campfire ran smoothly complete with full support for the latest PlayStation and Xbox controllers. But those are essentially mobile games blown up on a big screen — once we fired up some more demanding computer games, the limits of Apple’s generally beastly M1 processor started to show.

When running the benchmark for Rise of the Tomb Raider, a cinematic action-adventure game, we had to drop the resolution down to 1600 x 900 on Medium settings just to get a playable frame rate of more than 30 frames per second (this figure indicates how smoothly a game renders). So while these titles will run on the latest iMac, you’ll have to make some significant sacrifices in visual quality in order to actually play them.

All Apple apps (including Final Cut Pro and Logic) are optimized for M1, as are popular programs such as Google Chrome, Pixelmator and Microsoft Outlook. We also used a fair amount of Intel apps on our iMac — including Ableton Live, Audacity and Discord, and they largely worked smoothly. Better yet, as you continue to use these apps in Rosetta, macOS will begin to make the apps run closer to Universal ones.

App concerns aside, it really feels great to use macOS Big Sur — the latest Mac operating system — on a big and powerful all-in-one computer. There’s still such a magic to being able to continue your iPhone’s iMessage conversations on desktop, or open a note or website on your iPad and beam it to your iMac with a single click.

We still have our nitpicks with macOS — some multitasking features simply work better on Windows, and we’d like to see wider game support — but its seamless compatibility with other Apple products makes it a delight to use if you already own an iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch. You can enjoy all of these features on a MacBook as well, but the new iMac’s large display makes it an especially great central hub for any Apple-heavy household.

The new iMac starts at $1,299, which is pretty reasonable considering the performance, display and build quality you’re getting for the money. However, this starting model is light on ports and storage, and you may find it worth it to splurge on some worthwhile extras. Here’s how the key configurations stack up at a glance — note that orders will start shipping on May 21.

Apple iMac ($1,258.99;amazon.comor $1,233, originally $1,299;expercom.com): 256GB storage, 8GB RAM, two ports, 7-core GPU, Magic Keyboard. Available in blue, green, red and silver.

Apple iMac ($1,499;amazon.comor $1,423, originally $1,499;expercom.com): 256GB storage, 8GB RAM, four ports, 8-core GPU, Ethernet, Magic Keyboard with Touch ID. Available in all seven colors.

Apple iMac ($1,699;amazon.comandbhphotovideo.com): 512GB storage, 8GB RAM, four ports, Ethernet, Magic Keyboard with Touch ID. Available in all seven colors.

If you want more breathing room for multitasking, you can also upgrade to 16GB of RAM for an extra $200. We didn’t feel very limited by our 8GB model, but this is yet another add-on worth thinking about if you want to make your iMac as future-proof as possible.

With a large and vibrant display, the best Mac webcam we’ve ever used and a svelte design that can fit atop office desks and kitchen counters alike, the new 24-inch iMac is the best Apple computer you can buy for working from home.

The desktop’s blazing M1 chip can handle demanding creative tasks with ease, its keyboard feels great to type on and its internal microphones make it easy to be heard during calls. And once the workday is over, the new iMac doubles as an excellent entertainment canvas, thanks to its vibrant 4.5K screen and loud, crisp speakers.

We wish that the 24-inch iMac was a little more generous on ports, and you’ll have to pay up to get a solid amount of storage. And yes, there’s still a decent amount of display bezel. If you want a larger overall screen and more connectivity options, the older 27-inch iMac is also worth a look.

Still, the new iMac’s lively, compact design and truly excellent performance make it the best Mac desktop in Apple’s arsenal, and a worthy addition to any home office.

Sure, there are some other differences between this 24-inch iMac and the 21.5-inch model from 2019 that it’s replacing. There are better microphones and better speakers. There are fewer ports, and some of them have moved around. The screen is bigger and better. The keyboard now has TouchID. But the M1 is the star of the show.

It’s not just the performance increase. It’s not just the fact that you can run iOS and iPadOS apps natively on the system. It’s not just the new advanced image signal processor, which helps create better low-light images than I’ve ever seen from an integrated webcam. It’s also the groundbreaking efficiency with which this processor runs, which has enabled Apple to create a slim, sleek, and quite unique iMac chassis.

Whether you actually get every upgrade here depends on the configuration you choose. The entry-level iMac is $1,299 for 256GB of SSD storage, two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports, 8GB of unified memory, and a seven-core GPU — but that’s only available in four colors and doesn’t come with TouchID. The model I tested bumps the storage up to 512GB and the memory up to 16GB. It has two USB-3 ports in addition to the two Thunderbolt, an eight-core GPU, Touch ID, and a gigabit Ethernet port (which is in the power brick). I also received both the Magic Mouse and the Magic Trackpad with my model. You’d need to pay a total of $2,028 to get everything Apple sent me (and which I’ll be sending back, for the record).

In short, this device costs money. And it’s true that you’d get similar performance and save a few hundred bucks, if you just plugged a Mac Mini into an external display. But this iMac has almost everything that most people need in one package: processing power, sure, but also a camera, speakers, microphones, a keyboard, a mouse, a trackpad, and a display. And they’re all good. This is a computer you can plonk on your desk and never think about again. And for some of the iMac’s target audience, that’s probably worth the extra money. You’re paying for simplicity.

That advantage bore out in our benchmark testing. This iMac model achieved a higher score on the Geekbench 5 single-core benchmark than any Mac we’ve ever seen before — even the iMac Pro. That means if you’re looking for a device for simpler everyday tasks that don’t scale to every available CPU core (and that largely seems to be the demographic that Apple is trying to sell this machine to), there has literally never been a better iMac for you to buy.

These results help illuminate where this iMac fits into Apple’s all-in-one lineup, and where its limitations are. The 24-incher is a significant improvement over the 21.5-inch iMac in both single-core and multi-core workloads. And it’s very comparable in graphics tasks — which is quite impressive, given that the 21.5-inch iMac has a discrete GPU and this one relies on what’s integrated with the M1.

On the other end, these results (with the exception of single-core performance) are not close to what we’d expect from the 27-inch Intel iMac with discrete graphics. In this comparison, multi-core results are more important. They indicate that the 27-inch iMac is going to do much better on the types of tasks that owners (or prospective buyers) are likely to be doing: intense multitasking, computations, design, video work, and other more complex loads that may leverage the GPU.

There are other limitations that may put some workloads out of reach. As is the case with the MacBook Pro and Mac Mini, you can’t configure the iMac with more than 16GB of memory and 2TB of storage; we wouldn’t recommend those specs to anyone who regularly edits 4K or 8K video, for example. The memory and storage are soldered, so you can’t upgrade them after purchase. Only one external display is supported (up to 6K resolution at 60Hz). Ports are also bizarrely limited; the base model has just two Thunderbolt / USB-4 ports and a headphone jack, while more expensive models have an additional two USB-3 ports and Gigabit Ethernet. These all may be reasons Apple is pushing this iMac as a “home and family” PC, even though its processor is clearly capable of all kinds of professional work.

The M1 processor’s efficiency allows the iMac to get away with a thin design and minimal fan noise, and still maintain performance Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Another way to interpret these numbers is that I was getting effectively the same performance out of this machine as we got from the M1 MacBook Pro and the Mac Mini. That’s completely unsurprising, since these devices all use the same processor. But it’s a good proxy for gauging whether the iMac can handle your work: if you expect you could get a task done with the M1 MacBook Pro, you should be able to do it on this.

More anecdotally, I was able to use my test unit for all kinds of daily tasks, from emailing to YouTube to amateur photo and video work. I was able to hop between over 25 Chrome tabs with Cinebench looping in the background, with no stutter or slowdown whatsoever. If you’re buying the iMac for this kind of thing, I can’t imagine you’ll see too many spinning wheels.

During this testing process, I also got a sense of just how well cooled this chassis is. On thinner laptops that I test often (including the fanless MacBook Air), you’ll see performance decrease if you run heavy tasks over and over again. None of that on this iMac: I looped Cinebench R23 as well as a Premiere Pro 4K video export several times over and never saw scores go down. It took a lot to get the fans going — they were checked out during my daily office multitasking. When they did spin up, mostly while I was working in Premiere, I could barely hear them. They were quieter than the background hum of my refrigerator. That’s quite a quality-of-life improvement over prior Intel iMacs.

The M1’s advantage, after all, has never been raw power; it’s the combination of power and efficiency. We saw much better battery life in the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro than we did in their Intel predecessors. Battery life obviously isn’t a concern with the iMac, but efficiency certainly is. Chips are limited by two things: the power available and how well their systems can keep them cool. They vent almost all the energy they use as heat, and because the M1 has such incredibly high performance per watt, Apple doesn’t need a heavy-duty cooling system to keep it from frying itself. Because it doesn’t need that heavy-duty cooling system, Apple has finally been able to redesign the iMac from the ground up.

This iMac is sleek. Even though it has a 24-inch screen, it’s close in size to its 21.5-inch predecessor. Apple reduced the screen’s borders by close to 50 percent in order to squeeze the bigger screen into the compact chassis. This device is also 11.5 millimeters thick, or just under half an inch — which is quite thin as all-in-ones go. Next to the 27-inch iMac, it looks like a tablet on a stand.

Size isn’t everything; this iMac also comes in seven colors. There’s blue, green, pink, orange, purple, yellow, and the boring silver we know and love. I’m not quite convinced that the jazzier models will fit in outside of especially stylish homes and offices. But I will say: I’ve never seen so many of my friends, or so many people on TikTok, as excited about a tech product as they seem to be about the colored iMacs. The hues are a nice change, aren’t obnoxious, and are clearly a hit with certain crowds.

Some traditional iMac touches remain, of course. The bezels are still substantial compared to those of some modern monitors. You can’t raise or lower the display height — the built-in stand only allows tilt adjustments. (You can also buy it with a built-in VESA mount adapter.) And there’s still that pesky chin, though it’s no longer emblazoned with the Apple logo.

Pretty much every other notable part of the iMac has been upgraded in some way. There’s a 4.5K (4480 x 2520) Retina display, a step up from the predecessor’s 4096 x 2304 Retina display (though both have effectively the same pixel density). It has Apple’s True Tone technology, which automatically adjusts colors and intensity based on your surroundings.

But the screen is also another reminder that this iMac doesn’t have “Pro” in its name. Twenty-four inches is on the small side as screens go; most of the best external monitors are 27 inches or larger these days. Professionals on The Verge’s video team also noticed some vignetting on the sides of the screen, which caused issues with off-angle viewing — we had a similar issue with Apple’s Pro Display XDR. Of course, neither of these limitations were a problem for my untrained eye; I thought the display looked great, with sharp details and plenty of room for my Chrome tabs and apps.

I don’t have too much to say about the three-mic array except that nobody on my Zoom calls had any trouble hearing me. But the webcam was a very pleasant surprise. The iMac has a 1080p FaceTime HD camera, which has a higher resolution than the 720p shooter that lives in the 21.5-inch iMac (as well as the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and many other AIOs). The M1 also lends a hand here: its built-in image signal processor and neural engines help optimize your picture in low-light settings.

But all kinds of people use iMacs, from college students to accountants to podcast producers to retired grandparents. And this model has arguably the most widespread consumer appeal of any iMac that Apple has made in recent years. So it’s much easier to figure out for whom this iMac isn’tmade.

It’s not for people who can’t handle dongles and docks; I kept a USB-C to USB-A dongle next to me on my desk while I was testing the iMac, and I used it veryfrequently. It’s not for people who already own a 27-inch iMac, because it would be a downgrade in display size and quality, port selection, upgradability, and raw power. And it’s not for people with serious performance needs.

It’s not for people who are looking for the very best value for their money. Most folks won’t need the specs and accessories that I tested here, but even $1,299, the base price, is certainly more than plenty of people want to spend on a computer. The base Mac Mini is $600 cheaper than the base iMac; plug that into a monitor and some speakers (you can find plenty of good ones for well under $600), and you’ll get the same M1 performance at a massive discount.

And that, right there, is the biggest reason that this iMac, despite its power, is primarily targeting the family market. Because it’s asking you to pay more in order to do less. You’re paying $600 not to have to research and budget out monitors, speakers, webcams, docks, keyboards, and mice. You’re paying not to have to arrange thousands of things on your desk. You’re paying for a device where everything, out of the box, works well. You’re paying to eliminate fuss.

Could Apple have done more with this iMac? Of course. I was hoping to see a 30-inch, 6K iMac with a powerhouse 12-core workstation chip this month as much as the next person. But I have faith that we’ll get one in the future — and in the meantime, I’m glad Apple released this. It’s not earth-shattering in its design; it doesn’t redefine its category. But it’s fun. It improves upon the 21.5-inch iMac to offer a simple, attractive, and very functional device for users across all kinds of categories. It’s not the iMac to beat — but it is the iMac for most people to buy.

First, the elephant in the room: the redesigned 24-inch iMac was not created for photographers and video editors. It"s a family-friendly Mac that"s much more concerned with aesthetic sensibility than Adobe Premiere Pro performance. Despite this, it"s arguably the best starter Mac for anybody who is interested in exploring their creative side.

In terms of photo and video editing performance, the new iMac is on par with every other M1 Mac, meaning: excellent. And Apple has combined that performance with a color-accurate 4.5K Retina display and crammed it all inside an impossibly thin and playfully designed package.

Like very other M1 Mac, it has its frustrating limitations – some of Apple"s design choices have left professionals scratching their heads. But if you view the new 24-inch iMac through the lens of Apple"s intentions for this product, the creative potential of this machine comes into focus and you begin to understand who should (and who shouldn"t) buy this new machine.

The M1 iMac we received for review sits near the top of the configuration spectrum. It features the 8-core CPU/8-core GPU variant of the M1, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage and all of the extra ports and cooling that come along with the higher-end configs.

You canget the 24-inch iMac for as little as $1,300, but this involves a lot of sacrifices. The entry-level price point includes the 8-core CPU/7-core GPU variant of the M1, only 8GB of RAM, a measly 256GB of built-in storage, no ethernet port on the power brick, one cooling fan instead of two and only two ports on the whole machine.

For creative work, we"d recommend stepping up to at least 512GB of storage and 16GB of RAM, like our review unit, or possibly going a step further by upgrading the storage to 1TB. That configuration will cost you $2,100, or approximately $800 more than an identical M1 Mac mini. Given the quality and resolution of the iMac"s display, $800 seems like a reasonable price to pay if you"re happy with a 24-inch display.

The first thing I noticed when I unboxed and set the redesigned 24-inch iMac on my desk was just how small it is. Not just thin and lightweight – it genuinely looks like a huge iPad Pro on an aluminum stand – but the screen size itself. I can"t remember the last time I used a display that was smaller than 27 inches, opting for 32 whenever I can, and the downgrade to 24 inches was jarring.

The second and third things I noticed were the white bezels and the classic iMac chin, two characteristics that prompted much mockery on announcement day.

While the 24-inch screen size continued to bother me long after day one, the bezels and chin faded from consciousness almost immediately. Maybe it"s just me, but the idea that white bezels somehow disqualify this computer from being used for photo and video editing seems ridiculous on the face of it. The bezels, especially when placed against a white wall, simply fade into the background as you focus on the content at hand.

As for the chin, it has been an integral part of the iMac"s design language from the very start. I may not love it, but I"m not surprised that Apple has chosen to keep it.

Thanks to the huge chin, the entire space behind the screen was reserved for large air chambers that fill out the sound coming from the iMac"s five speakers. This helps the iMac produce more and better-quality sound than you would expect given its size. At full volume, it can compete with some high-quality Bluetooth speakers.

Speaking of the power brick, in order to keep the iMac as thin as possible Apple has removed the power supply from inside the iMac"s chassis and stuck it inside of an external brick, just like a laptop. The brick connects to the iMac using a color-matched braided cable that ends in a proprietary magnetic connector, which twists into the right orientation all on its own and snaps into place with a satisfying chonk.

Note that it"s not a MagSafe connector. Given the strength of these magnets and the lightweight design of the iMac, you can easily pull the computer off a table using the power cable. Its purpose is to maintain the clean, furniture-like aesthetic of the iMac and to provide one more port (if you go with the high-end configuration).

In order to achieve such a thin design, Apple had to put the iMac"s power supply inside of an external power brick. On the plus side, some configurations use the brick to add a Gigabit ethernet port.

How you react to the design of the 24-inch iMac is largely down to your expectations. If you"re looking for a high-powered creator Mac, this isn"t it. Apple"s focus on aesthetics comes at a cost: too few ports, the relatively thick white bezels, the huge chin and the external power brick, to name the most obvious.

When it comes to performance, the 24-inch iMac is pretty much identical to every other M1 Mac that features active cooling (i.e. an internal fan). You can expect it to perform similarly to the M1 MacBook Pro and the M1 Mac mini.

For this review, we compared the M1 iMac against an Intel MacBook Pro, an Intel-based Razer Blade 15 Advanced and an AMD-based ASUS G14. You can see the specifications of our test machines below:

We also tested an M1 Mac mini with identical specs to the iMac and, as expected, their performance was essentially identical. As such, we"re not including the Mac mini results in the tables and charts below.

This same pattern does not play out in Capture One 21. Unlike Adobe Lightroom, Capture One takes much better advantage of GPU acceleration, giving the ASUS G14 and Blade 15 a significant boost in export performance thanks to the NVIDIA RTX 30-series GPUs packed inside. The iMac held its own when importing and generating previews, but it lost to both PCs in every export test, with the gap widening as resolution/file size increased.

CPU speed and RAM still play a role, which is how the iMac is able to keep up at all, but the benefits of a full-featured PC are much more obvious in a program that"s well-optimized to take advantage of a discrete GPU.

In Photoshop, the speed of the M1 CPU and the Unified Memory once again give the iMac a big boost in performance. Since most Photoshop filters and tools are not optimized to take full advantage of a discrete GPU, the Mac steals the show by winning the Overall, General and PhotoMerge categories.

The iMac"s PhotoMerge score in particular is just staggering. Where the Blade 15 takes about 97 seconds to merge six 45MP Nikon raw files into a panorama, the M1 iMac does this same task in just 69 seconds, which is why its category score is so much higher. No surprise: that task is heavily RAM and CPU dependent.

The iMac is exceptionally fast in Apple"s own Final Cut Pro – no surprise there – but it"s also impressively fast in Premiere. Using the ARM-optimized Beta of Premiere Pro, we clocked render and export times that are within spitting distance of both the Razer Blade 15 and the ASUS G14, both of which feature beefy NVIDIA GPUs that can take full advantage of CUDA hardware acceleration.

For Final Cut, we could only compare the iMac against the Intel-based 13-inch MacBook Pro, since the program is not available on Windows. It won"t surprise you to learn that the iMac is nearly twice as fast overall as its Intel-based sibling:

Interestingly, despite the fact that Warp Stabilize is a GPU accelerated effect, it"s the only category where the iMac was the fastest of the bunch. In rendering and export tasks it fell short of our Intel- and AMD-based PC: approximately 12% slower at rendering and 18% slower when encoding H.264 and HEVC files.

The M1 iMac doesn"t sit at the pinnacle of performance. Of the four computers tested here, the AMD-based ASUS G14 earns that distinction by topping most of our tests, and the Intel-based Razer Blade 15 Advanced has a great showing as well. What"s frankly shocking though is that this consumer-focused iMac can keep up at all.

Remember, this computer features half the RAM, an "entry-level" CPU and an integrated GPU. We should really be comparing it against the 21.5-inch iMac that it replaced, which featured a measly 8th generation 6-core Intel Core i7 processor. Instead, we see it keeping up with high-end gaming laptops that boast flagship laptop CPUs and the latest NVIDIA graphics cards.

In our opinion, the M1 iMac is the best "starter" Mac for aspiring creatives who are looking for a do-everything device that"s just as fashionable as it is functional.

Given its RAM, storage, screen size and port limitations, the M1 iMac will be a no-go for the most demanding professionals, but it"s a very compelling options for beginners and enthusiasts. That"s why we"re calling it the best "starter" Mac for creatives. Thanks to the power of its M1 chip, the quality of its 4.5K display and a price-to-performance sweet spot around $2,000, the M1 iMac is a great all-in-one desktop for fans of the Apple ecosystem.

Savvy buyers will want to consider their priorities first. If you need portability, you may choose the M1 MacBook Pro. If you want a larger screen and more ports, the smarter purchase is an M1 Mac mini and a color accurate 27- or 32-inch display. And of course, if you"re not enamored of the Apple ecosystem, a high-end Windows machine with a dedicated GPU is hard to beat. But if you"re looking for a do-everything device that"s just as fashionable as it is functional, the M1 iMac does not disappoint.

iMac is a family of all-in-one Mac desktop computers designed and built by Apple Inc. It has been the primary part of Apple"s consumer desktop offerings since its debut in August 1998, and has evolved through seven distinct forms.

In its original form, the iMac G3 had a gumdrop or egg-shaped look, with a CRT monitor, mainly enclosed by a colored, translucent plastic case, which was refreshed early on with a sleeker design notable for its slot-loaded optical drive. The second major revision, the iMac G4, moved the design to a hemispherical base containing all the main components and an LCD monitor on a freely moving arm attached to it. The third and fourth major revisions, the iMac G5 and the Intel iMac respectively, placed all the components immediately behind the display, creating a slim unified design that tilts only up and down on a simple metal base.

The fifth major revision (mid-2007) shared the same form as the previous model, but was thinner and used anodized aluminum and a glass panel over the entire front. The seventh major revision (late 2012) uses a different display unit, omits the SuperDrive, and uses different production techniques from the older unibody versions. This allows it to be thinner at the edge than older models, with an edge thickness of 5.9  mm (but the same maximum depth). It also includes a dual microphone setup and includes solid-state drive (SSD) or hard disk storage, or an Apple Fusion Drive, a hybrid of solid-state and hard disk drives. This version of the iMac was announced in October 2012, with the 21.5-inch (55 cm) version released in November and the 27-inch (69 cm) version in December; these were refreshed in September 2013, with new Haswell processors, faster graphics, faster and larger SSD options and 802.11ac Wi-Fi cards.

In October 2014, a major revision of the 27-inch (69 cm) iMac was announced, whose main feature is a "Retina 5K" display at a resolution of 5120 × 2880 pixels. The new model also includes a new processor, graphics chip, and IO, along with several new storage options.Retina 4K" display at a resolution of 4096 × 2304 pixels. It has the same new processor, graphics chip, and I/O as the 27-inch iMac, along with several new storage options.

On June 5, 2017, Apple announced a workstation-class version called the iMac Pro, which features Intel Xeon processors and standard SSD storage. It shares the design and screen of the 5K iMac but is colored in Space Gray rather than silver. Apple began shipping the iMac Pro in December 2017.

On April 20, 2021, Apple announced a 24" iMac (actual diagonal screen size is 23.5 in.Apple M1 processor, its first as part of its transition to Apple silicon.Thunderbolt 3/USB 4 ports, and two USB Type-C 3.1 Gen 2 ports on the higher configurations.

The announcement of the iMac in 1998 was a source of controversy and anticipation among commentators, Mac fans, and detractors. Opinions were divided over Apple"s drastic changes to the Macintosh hardware. At the time, Apple had suffered a series of setbacks as consumers increasingly opted for Wintel (Windows PCs with Intel CPUs) machines instead of Apple"s Performa models. Many in the industry thought that "beleaguered" Apple would soon be forced to start selling computers with a custom interface built on top of one or more potential operating system bases, such as Taligent, Solaris, or Windows 98.

Ken Segall was an employee at an L.A. ad agency handling Apple"s account who came up with the name "iMac" and pitched it to Steve Jobs. After Jobs" death, Segall claimed Jobs preferred "MacMan" for the name of the computer, but after Segall pitched "iMac" to him twice, the name was accepted.Internet",adopted the "i" prefix across its consumer hardware and software lines, such as iPod, iBook (later MacBook), iPhone, iPad and various pieces of software such as the iLife, iCloud suite and iWork and the company"s media player/store, iTunes.

Attention was given to the out-of-box experience: the user needed to go through only two steps to set up and connect to the Internet. "There"s no step 3!" was the catch-phrase in a popular iMac commercial narrated by actor Jeff Goldblum.border collie Brodie, with an iMac, against Adam Taggart, a Stanford University MBA student, with an HP Pavilion 8250, in a race to set up their computers. Johann and Brodie finished in 8 minutes and 15 seconds,

By 2005, it had become more and more apparent that IBM"s development for the desktop implementation of PowerPC was grinding to a halt. Apple announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference that it would be switching the Macintosh to the x86 architecture and Intel"s line of Core processors. The first Intel-equipped Macs were unveiled on January 10, 2006: the Intel iMac and the introductory MacBook Pro. Within nine months, Apple had smoothly transitioned the entire Macintosh line to Intel. One of the highly touted side benefits of this switch was the ability to run Windows on Mac hardware.

The timeline of iMac from 1998 to 2021, comparing it with the original Macintosh 128K (1984). This chart shows the change in the physical characteristics and appearance of the product.

On July 27, 2010, Apple updated its line of iMacs to feature the new Intel Core "i-series" processors across the line. The 21.5" models now feature the Core i3 processor, but these are upgradable to the Core i5. The high-end 27" features a Quad-Core i5 processor, which is upgradable to a Quad-Core i7. On this date, Apple also announced its new "Apple Magic Trackpad" peripheral, a trackpad similar to that of the MacBook Pro for use with iMac or any other Apple computer. Apple also introduced a AA NiMH battery charger intended to simplify the use of batteries in these peripherals. Apple offers an option to use a solid-state drive instead of a large mechanical drive.

On May 3, 2011, Apple updated its iMac line with the introduction of Intel Thunderbolt technology and Intel Core i5 and i7 Sandy Bridge processors as well as a 1 mega pixel high definition FaceTime camera, features which were first introduced in the MacBook Pro line in February 2011.

On October 23, 2012, a new iMac was announced (for a November/December release) with a substantially thinner edge, new Apple Fusion Drive, faster processors (Intel Core i5 and i7 Ivy Bridge) and graphics along with updates to the ports, but with the same overall depth (stand depth: 8 inches (20.3  cm)). To reduce the edge, the SuperDrive was removed on these iMacs.

On October 16, 2014, a new version of the 27-inch (69  cm) iMac was announced, whose main feature is a "Retina 5K" display at a resolution of 5120 × 2880 pixels.processor, graphics chip, and I/O, along with several new storage options. This computer was designed with professional photographers and video editors in mind, with the 5K resolution allowing 4K video to be played at its native resolution in Final Cut Pro, with room for toolbars on the side.

On June 6, 2017, Apple’s 21.5-inch iMac, which has a "Retina 4K" display at a resolution of 4096 × 2304 pixels, and the latest Intel 7th generation i5 processor, was announced. The iMac has Turbo Boost up to 3.6 GHz supported, and a 1 TB hard drive. Apple’s iMac with 4K display has Intel Core i5 quad-core processor with 3 GHz or 3.4 GHz clock speed. The RAM on board is 8 GB, and it will support a Turbo boost of up to 3.8 GHz. This iMac has options of 1 TB hard drive or 1 TB Fusion Drive. This 21.5-inch iMac also has the option of Radeon Pro 555 with 2 GB of video RAM for graphics or a Radeon Pro 560 with 4 GB of video RAM. Apple’s 27-inch iMac with the 5K display comes with the quad-core Intel Core i5 processor, which is clocked at 3.4 GHz, 3.5 GHz, or 3.8 GHz. This iMac supports a Turbo boost of up to 4.2Ghz and comes with 8 GB RAM option.

In March 2019, Apple updated the iMac to feature 9th-generation Intel Core i9 processors and Radeon Vega graphics. Unlike most other Apple releases, Apple opted not to announce the iMac at an event; instead, they updated the specs and released a press statement. For the first time, the iMac can support 6-core or 8-core Intel processors. Apple claims the 21.5-inch model is up to 60% faster than the previous model, and the 27-inch is up to 2.4 times faster. The exterior of the machine remained the same as the previous model.

On August 4, 2020, Apple refreshed the iMac models. The smaller 21.5-inch model was updated with SSDs standard. The 27-inch model received 10th generation Intel chips, a T2 Security chip, a 1080p camera, studio-quality microphone, an option for nano-textured glass, as well as SSDs standard. The 27-inch model now has SSDs soldered to the motherboard, which means the storage is no longer replaceable, and in order to replace a hard drive the entire motherboard must be replaced and any data on the drive will be wiped.

The original iMac was the first legacy-free PC.USB port but no floppy disk drive. Subsequently, all Macs have included USB. Via the USB port, hardware makers could make products compatible with both x86 PCs and Macs. Previously, Macintosh users had to seek out certain hardware, such as keyboards and mice specifically tailored for the "old world" Mac"s unique ADB interface and printers and modems with MiniDIN-8 serial ports. Only a limited number of models from certain manufacturers were made with these interfaces and often came at a premium price. USB, being cross-platform, has allowed Macintosh users to select from a large selection of devices marketed for the Wintel PC platform, such as hubs, scanners, storage devices, USB flash drives, and mice. After the iMac, Apple continued to remove older peripheral interfaces and floppy drives from the rest of its product line.

Borrowing from the 1997 Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, the various LCD-based iMac designs continued the all-in-one concept first envisioned in Apple"s original Macintosh computer. The successful iMac allowed Apple to continue targeting the Power Macintosh line at the high-end of the market. This foreshadowed a similar strategy in the notebook market when the iMac-like iBook was released in 1999. Since then, the company has continued this strategy of differentiating the consumer versus professional product lines. Apple"s focus on design has allowed each of its subsequent products to create a distinctive identity. Apple avoided using the beige colors that were then common in the PC industry. The company would later drift from the multicolored designs of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The latter part of the decade saw Apple using anodized aluminum; glass; and white, black, and clear polycarbonate plastics among their build materials. Today many PCs are more design-conscious than before the iMac"s introduction, with multi-shaded design schemes being common, and some desktops and laptops available in colorful, decorative patterns.

iMac has received considerable critical acclaim, including praise from technology columnist Walt Mossberg as the "Gold Standard of desktop computing";Core 2 Duo iMac received CNET"s "Must-have desktop" in their 2006 Top 10 Holiday Gift Picks.

Apple faced a class-action lawsuit filed in 2008 for allegedly deceiving the public by promising millions of colors from the LCD screens of all Mac models while its 20-inch model only held 262,144 colors.Twisted nematic LCD screens. The case was dismissed on January 21, 2009.

While not a criticism of iMac per se, the integrated design has some inherent tradeoffs that have garnered criticism. In The Mythical Midrange Mac Minitower, Dan Frakes of Macworld suggests that with the iMac occupying the midrange of Apple"s product line, Apple has little to offer consumers who want some ability to expand or upgrade their computers, but do not need (or cannot afford) the Mac Pro.Mac mini"s introduction, there were rumors of a "headless iMac"Other World Computing provide upgrade kits that include specialized tools for working on iMacs.

Similarly, though the graphics chipset in some Intel models is on a removable MXM, neither Apple nor third parties have offered retail iMac GPU upgrades, with the exception of those for the original iMac G3"s "mezzanine" PCI slot. Models after iMac G5 (excluding the August 7, 2007 iMac updatemini-tower cannibalizing sales from the Mac Pro, Frakes argues there is enough frustration with iMac"s limitations to make such a proposition worthwhile. This disparity has become more pronounced after the G4 era since the bottom-end Power Mac G5 (with one brief exception) and Mac Pro models have all been priced in the US$1999–2499$ range, while base model Power Macs G4s and earlier were US$1299–1799. The current generation iMac has Intel 5th generation i5 and i7 processors, ranging from quad-core 2.7 GHz i5 to a quad-core 3.4 GHz i7 processor,

Olivarez-Giles, Nathan (May 3, 2011). "Apple updates iMac line with quicker processors, graphics and Thunderbolt I/O". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved April 29, 2012.

"Apple Confidential: The Day They Almost Decided To Put Windows On The Mac Instead Of OS X!". Archived from the original on June 24, 2013. Retrieved March 11, 2015. Hancock ordered her staff to consider Microsoft"s Windows, Sun Microsystems" Solaris, and even the ill-fated Taligent, which Apple had handed off to partner IBM in December 1995. Hancock was partial to Unix-based Solaris, while COO Marco Landi preferred cutting a deal for Windows NT.

Raletz, Alyson (June 7, 2012). "Man who came up with iMac name tells what the "i" stands for". Kansas City Business Journal. Retrieved March 30, 2013.

Rich DeMuro (November 22, 2006). Must-have desktop: Apple iMac Core 2 Duo (24-inch, 2.16 GHz). CNET (Internet). Archived from the original on August 19, 2007. Retrieved January 16, 2007.

Want to find a way to use iMac as a monitor? While Apple’s target display mode is limited to 2009 to 2014 iMacs, fortunately, there are several other options to make use of that nice big screen on your iMac as a monitor.

Target display mode is an Apple solution to use iMac as a monitor with another Mac in a wired setup. It was a very popular feature for years, but when Apple launched its Retina iMacs starting in late 2014, support was dropped.

The good news is even if you don’t have an 8-year-old+ iMac that supports target display mode, you can still use iMac as a monitor with a variety of different options. Let’s dig into your 5 options…

This of course doesn’t offer Mac to Mac support, but if you want to use iMac as a monitor with an iPad, Sidecar is a great free solution. And it works wired or wirelessly.

This feature doesn’t work if you want to extend your iMac or iPad desktop space, but you can mirror from iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch directly to an iMac or any other compatible Mac.

This might seem obvious but another choice is to pair your iMac with an external monitor and choose which one you want to be the primary display and secondary display.

If you happen to have an old iMac, you may be able to use target display mode but it will also need to be running macOS Catalina or earlier – same for the secondary Mac. Here’s what you’ll need to use iMac as monitor with the original solution.

You can use more than one iMac as a display, if each iMac is using a Thunderbolt cable to connect directly to a Thunderbolt port on the other Mac (not the other iMac).

It’s an iconic word in Apple history, and it’s the first word you see when you boot up the new iMac. It’s a callback to the original 1984 Mac, but it’s also a sentiment that the redesigned iMac is meant to evoke. It’s a friendly welcome that comes at the end of the most thoroughly enjoyable unboxing experiences I’ve ever had.

But what happens after the unboxing is what really matters. The cute colors and thoughtful packaging welcome you in, but a tech product like the iMac has to deliver on its approachable vibe in use too. I’m happy to report that the new iMac is far more than a gimmick. As long as you can stomach white bezels and a hefty chin, it might be one of the most refined Mac products Apple has ever made and best all-in-ones you can buy.

Let’s start with a bit of honesty: I was really unsure about the design of this iMac when I first saw it at Apple’s presentation. Not only was I not a fan of the bottom chin, but I was also hesitant about the colors. For a quick review, there are seven options to choose from: Orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, red, and silver. Each of these has a front and back color — and they don’t match.

And how about the radical new side profile of the iMac? Well, it’s pretty shocking just how thin it is — 11.5mm is thinner than most monitors and unheard of for an all-in-one. While it’s true that you don’t notice the size from the front, it certainly caught my eye every time I’d walk past it. You might think setting this up in a kitchen or bedroom seems silly, but given my work-from-home situation right now, I found myself using it in new spaces thanks to its size.

Now, all that may not change your opinion on the white bezels, but that was never a hang-up for me. I don’t mind them, and black bezels wouldn’t have matched with these lighter colors all that well. If black bezels are what you want, you’ll probably need to hold out for the pro-level iMac when it eventually launches.

With this iMac, though, the colors and white bezels bring a playful sense of whimsy. That might sound like I’m buying into the marketing, but clearly, Apple had a vision for what you were supposed to feel when you use this computer. I have to admit, I felt it.

A lot of that comes from the small details. The gorgeous power cable and included Lightning cord are color-matched to the front side of the iMac, as is the ultraslim aluminum stand. Apple took it one step further, even matching it with a colored wallpaper and new accent colors. That means the salmon-ish orange on my iMac is bleeding through the various transparent elements of the operating system, as well as in highlighted text and buttons.

We’ve come to accept the reality of port-limited phones and laptops, but extra ports are usually one of the advantages to buying a desktop instead. Unlike every other Mac desktop, including the M1 Mac mini, the 24-inch iMac comes with just two Thunderbolt 4 ports located on the rear.

And of course, there’s the MagSafe power connection. It’s a very different implementation of MagSafe than we’ve ever seen — and for good reason. You wouldn’t want your iMac to accidentally unplug. Unlike on a MacBook, it doesn’t have a battery. It’s far more rigid and takes some additional force to connect and disconnect.

You won’t be surprised to hear that the new iMac’s display looks incredible. It’s a stunningly sharp display that looks clear from every angle and will blow you away with how bright it can get.

It’s “4.5K,” or 4480 x 2520 resolution. In a 23.5-inch screen, that makes for an unbelievably sharp image. You can put your face right up to the screen and not see a single pixel. It’s the same pixel-per-inch measurement as the 27-inch 5K iMac, but this screen is even brighter. I measured it at 527 nits at max brightness, which is slightly ahead of its bigger sibling, and brighter than most monitors you can buy.

It should be noted that the 24-inch iMac does not include the option for the “nano-texture glass” upgrade, which is Apple’s specialized matte finish to minimize glare. The 24-inch iMac is a glossy screen, but I found it to be shockingly effective at reducing reflections.

The 24-inch iMac is also a winner when it comes to colors. It hits 100% in sRGB and 90% in AdobeRGB, which matches the 27-inch 5K iMac and Microsoft Surface Studio 2, and is among the best color coverage you’ll find on a larger screen.

The display of the HP Envy All-in-One 32 is the only competitive PC to beat the iMac in this category. Its screen is brighter at 600 nits and has a wider contrast ratio, which is the only aspect of the iMac display that’s slightly lacking.

That’s not something you’ll feel while using the 24-inch iMac, though, whether you’re working or watching videos. Of course, you might miss the extra screen real estate if you’re coming from the 27-inch iMac, but it’s a massive improvement over the 21.5-inch iMac. Those two extra inches make this iMac just big enough to get by in 2021.

The 24-inch iMac uses the M1 processor. And yes, that means it uses the exact same chip as the Mac mini, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air — and now even the iPad Pro. If you’re familiar with how good the M1 already is in those devices, there’s nothing that will surprise you too much here. If you’re worried about the idea of a mobile chip in a desktop, let me put those doubts to rest now. The M1 iMac is very powerful.

The 24-inch iMac is the most powerful implementation of the M1 so far — at least, the configuration I tested was. It’s not by a lot, though. We’re talking about a 3% increase in multi-core performance in benchmarks like Cinebench R23 over the MacBook Pro and Mac mini.

To see what the 24-inch iMac could do in more real-life tests, I used two benchmarks — the Blender benchmark, which is a popular 3D-modeling application, and the Pugetbench Adobe Premiere Pro benchmark. Now remember, Premiere Pro is still running in Rosetta 2 emulation, meaning it’s not a native universal app yet. And yet, the 24-inch iMac flew through the benchmark. Its GPU score was 23% higher than the Mac mini we reviewed earlier this year, despite having the same 8-core GPU. That’s what the improved cooling and airflow will do for ya.

The playback score is particularly impressive, as is the ability to manage multiple 4K streams simultaneously without skipping a frame. It is not at all a bad little video-editing machine, but you’ll still find yourself waiting for export