Apple 24-inch M1 iMac review: Much more than just a colourful Mac

Take me back to 1998

Is there a more iconic computer than the original iMac from 1998? With its colourful accents and translucent plastics, it looked nothing like any other of its contemporaries. It also has the distinction of being the first product released by Steve Jobs after his return to the company.

Unsurprisingly then, the iMac has always held a special place in the hearts of longtime Mac users. But as mobile became more important, the iMac, sadly but understandably, became increasingly neglected.

The last major update happened back in 2012 so you can imagine the excitement fans felt when Apple finally unveiled the new 24-inch iMac just weeks ago.

Design

This new 24-inch iMac replaces the 21.5-inch iMac. And in what is clearly a tribute to the OG iMac G3, this new iMac comes in seven colours : blue, green, pink, silver, yellow, orange, and purple.

Curiously missing from the lineup is space grey. Also, it must be noted that some colours are exclusive to certain models, which I will get into later.

I received a purple iMac for review and I like the way it looks. This doesn't just come in a uniform shade of purple. Instead, Apple is using three distinct shades to create visual interest. The front portion under the display is the lightest while the back and sides of the machine has the darkest and richest shade.

The stand is somewhere in the middle so that there’s contrast when viewed from the front or from the back. As you’d expect from an Apple product, the finish is top-notch and the entire machine feels very high-quality and well-made. The chassis is aluminium while the front is glass.

Because the new iMac is just 11mm thick, it looks like an iPad that’s attached to a stand when viewed from the side. The first time you see it, it’s scarcely believable just how thin it is. To give further context, 11mm is about as thick as an Apple Watch or two iPhones stacked together.

Though the bezels are considerably thinner, it's actually still sizeable and thicker than what you'd see on modern monitors. Also, Apple’s choice of going with white instead of black has been met with significant criticism online.

Since the debut of the aluminium iMac back in 2009, iMac always had a black bezel. I suppose it gives the iMac a fresher look. I don’t mind it too much but I wonder why didn’t they match the colours of the bezel to the "chin" to create a uniform look.

Ah, the "chin". That's the area under the display which houses all of the iMac's crucial bits like the logic board and M1 chip. It is also where the fans are, and where the speakers are housed.

According to Apple, the chin allows for a thinner design and it’s also a place on the front of the machine where they could give the iMac a splash of colour.

I also think that having a “chin” is the best way to accommodate a six-speaker system. Lest we forget, on each side of the 24-inch iMac are speaker drivers. Positioning on the same plane as the display as opposed to behind it would let sound from the drivers come through better.

Like previous iMacs, the USB-C ports are located behind, which makes them difficult to reach. The 3.5mm audio jack, however, has been shifted to the left because the length of a 3.5mm connector exceeds the thickness of the iMac – yeah, that gives you an idea of just how thin it is.

In true iMac tradition, the aluminium stand adjusts only for tilt but not height.

4.5K Retina Display, Improved webcam, and sound system

Recognising that more people are working at home these days and virtual meetings are the norm, the 24-inch iMac has an improved web camera. It's now a 1080p FaceTime HD camera – that’s double the resolution of the 720p unit found in the old 21.5-inch iMac.

The camera is further augmented by the image signal processor and Neural Engine in the M1 chip which uses computational video techniques to adjust white balance, exposure, reduce noise, and highlight details. The resultant footage looks better than iMacs of old.

Not only is video sharper, but Apple’s latest image signal processor is also more competent so colours look more correct, even if, depending on lighting conditions, it can be a little heavy-handed at bringing up highlights. 

[[nid:518673]]

To complement it, the iMac also has what Apple calls “studio-quality” mics. I gave it a quick go and I’ve been told that my voice sounded clear.

As expected from an Apple device, the 24-inch 4.5K Retina display , which has a resolution of 4480 x 2520 pixels, looks excellent.

Why 4.5K you ask? Well, that’s the resolution necessary to deliver the minimum pixel density required to meet Apple’s Retina standard of roughly 218 pixels per inch. It’s razor-sharp.

And with support for the P3 colour space and a maximum of 500 nits of brightness, images look vibrant and videos (especially those in 4K) look gorgeous. Overall, this is a fantastic display from Apple as usual.

Of late, Apple has paid great attention to the quality of their speakers and the 6-speaker system in this new iMac might be it’s most ambitious and impressive yet.

There are two woofers and a tweeter on each side. To reduce unwanted vibrations, the woofers are positioned opposite each other so their vibrations cancel out. Apple says it’s the best speakers they have ever put in a Mac.

And there's certainly evidence to suggest that they have accomplished it. If you had me blinded-folded, I would have thought that the sound was coming from computer speakers and not an all-in-one system that’s just 11mm thick.

One could pick holes – the bass doesn’t extend to the lowest notes, male vocals can sometimes sound muffled, and the treble is a little hot – but I have never heard speakers from an all-in-one system that sounded this full-bodied and powerful.

It delivers clean impactful bass, and the mids and treble are present, crisp, and clear. It is also surprisingly wide-sounding. For a device that’s so thin and with this many physical constraints, it is remarkable Apple got it to sound as if it has standalone desktop speakers.

And together with the first-rate display, it makes the iMac a superb entertainment device.

Powered by M1

One of the reasons why the new iMac is so thin is because it's powered by Apple's own M1 silicon. I wrote about the M1 processor in great detail in my earlier 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro review so I urge you to head over to read. But here are the high-level details:

• Built on a 5nm process 
• 16 billion transistors
• 8 CPU cores and 8 GPU cores
• 4 high-performance CPU cores, 4 high-efficiency CPU cores
• 16-core Neural Engine capable of 11 trillion operations per second
• Unified memory architecture

The secret sauce is said to be its unified memory architecture, which means its pool of fast memory is shared by all components of the chip which negates the need for copying and moving data around and improves performance and power consumption.

What will be interesting to see is how it'll perform compared to the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro. Sadly, I don't have a 21.5-inch iMac on hand to compare results.

Take note, two variants

I should point out at this point that Apple is offering two distinct variants of the iMac. Though both are powered by the same M1 chip, the base model comes with a 7-core GPU while there's a step-up model that has an 8-core GPU. Apple did the same with the M1 MacBook Air.

GPU core count aside, there are some differences in their cooling systems. The model with a 7-core GPU uses a heatsink and fan combo whereas the 8-core GPU model uses a more elaborate system with two fans connected by a heat pipe.

But if it's anything like the M1 MacBook Air, then the difference in performance should be quite small. That's good news because you can add memory and storage to the 7-core model to spec it up if you desire. The unit that I'm testing is the 8-core GPU model with its memory upgraded to 16GB.

There are also differences in ports. The 7-core GPU model comes with two USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports, whereas the 8-core GPU model has four USB-C ports (two that supports Thunderbolt 3 and another two that supports USB 3.1 Gen 2).

Though having just two ports isn't the end of the world, it goes without saying that more ports is always better.

The 8-core GPU model also comes with Gigabit Ethernet connection as standard, though not where you might expect. To help users create a desk that's as free of clutter as possible, the Gigabit Ethernet port is integrated into the power adapter.

You can opt to add this to your 7-core GPU model for an additional $40. You don't really need this unless you are a stickler for connectivity performance because this new iMac supports Wi-Fi 6.

Speaking of power, the new iMacs also has a new power connector which is probably necessitated by its incredible thinness. It now uses a more compact connector that attaches magnets. Oh, it's also colour-matched to complement the iMac.

So if your iMac is purple like mine, you'll get one that comes with a purple cord. 

Finally, though the iMac comes in seven colours, three of them are exclusive to the 8-core GPU model and they are yellow, orange, and purple. If your favourite colour is one of these, tough luck.

Here's a handy table summarising the differences:
 

Additionally, the 24-inch iMac comes in three off-the-shelf configurations and they are:

Everything in matching colours

When you receive your iMac, the first thing you'll notice is that even the carrying strap on the box is in the same colour as the iMac. And upon opening the box, you'll find matching colour Apple logo stickers and matching coloured accessories.

[[nid:505359]]

That's right, Apple has new colour-matching Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse, and Magic Trackpad accessories to go with the new iMac. Even the bundled Lightning cable that's used to charge these accessories come in matching colours. 

The Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad are largely unchanged - the only difference is the new colour. The Magic Keyboard, on the other hand, has been redesigned with dedicated keys for emojis, Spotlight, Do not Disturb, and Dictation.

And if you order the step-up iMac model with 8-core GPU, the Magic Keyboard that comes with it has a Touch ID sensor in the top right corner. The Magic Keyboard still comes in two sizes - a larger one with a numpad and a compact one without numpad. 

If you have ever used a Magic Keyboard from Apple, the feel is largely similar. Similar to most modern Apple keyboards, this new redesigned Magic Keyboard has a scissor-switch and rubber dome mechanism.

It feels tactile but there's not much key travel and the keycaps are flat which don't guide your fingers when you type. That said, the Touch ID button makes logging in and paying for stuff online using Apple Pay a breeze. The keyboard charges via Lightning and battery life is rated at over a month.

[[nid:513654]]

The Magic Mouse is largely unchanged too, which also means the Lightning charging port is still on the underside of the mouse.

Even though Apple says the Magic Mouse can last for about a month on a full charge, it does mean that when the time to charge inevitably comes, you can't use the mouse and charge it at the same time.

I'm going to lay my cards on the table and say that I have never been a fan of Apple's input devices. I prefer my keyboards to be more tactile and my mouse to be more customisable.

That said, I think many iMac owners will be perfectly happy with the Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse and doubly so if they are concerned about aesthetics - because their colours match, they look great next to each other.

Performance analysis

Let's see the benchmark results of the 24-inch iMac. It was tested using our usual suite of benchmarks which are as follows:

• Geekbench 5
• Cinebench R23
• WebXPRT 3
• Unigine Valley
• Video transcoding test

As I mentioned earlier, my unit is the "full-fat" M1 with 8 CPU cores and 8 CPU cores. It has also been bolstered with 16GB of memory.

So strictly speaking, this is a custom configuration. The memory helps if you are a heavy multitasker but it won't necessarily improve performance if you are only running a handful of apps. The benchmarks indicate the M1 to have a clockspeed of 3.2GHz, which is similar to the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro.

Here are the results:

Looking at the results, it is clear that there's very little to separate the performance of the 24-inch iMac and 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro.

Their results are almost identical. But what I want to draw your attention to is how the 24-inch iMac performs against a current-generation 27-inch iMac with a fairly high-end desktop-class Core i7-10700K Comet Lake processor.

On CPU intensive workloads, the 24-inch iMac wasn't that far behind and it even recorded higher single-core scores in Geekbench 5 and Cinebench R23.

[[nid:526723]]

The only benchmarks where the 27-inch iMac managed convincing wins were multi-core scores in Cinebench R23 and Unigine Valley - the latter only because it has discrete graphics in the form of AMD's Radeon Pro 5500 XT.

When you consider that the price of a 27-inch iMac with a Core i7 processor starts at $3,339 (over a grand more than the 24-inch iMac), it's hard not to be impressed by the results. Apple's most basic chip - one that is used in mobile devices - is keeping up with one of Intel's fairly high-end powerful processors.

In the real world, the 24-inch iMac feels identical to the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro. Apart from feeling extremely fluid and fast, it runs extremely cool and the fans hardly spin up during normal use. I only noticed the fans spinning under very heavy workloads like video transcoding and running Cinebench.

And even when they do, it's barely detectable. Unbelievably, even when it has its hands full transcoding videos or crunching Cinebench, I could still use it to reply emails, surf the web, and watch 4K videos with nary a stutter.

You could never do this on an Intel-based Mac. In short, the 24-inch iMac has all the performance that most people will ever need.

iMac or Mac Mini?

Though the iMac and Mac Mini are desktop systems, they couldn't be more different. The iMac is the obvious choice for users who value simplicity over everything else. You can unbox it and start using it in mere minutes. Its compact size also makes it ideal for users who are starved of space.

It's tempting to think of the Mac Mini as the more affordable option. After all, prices start at S$979, which sounds tantalising.

However, when you purchase a Mac Mini, it comes with the Mac Mini alone, which means you'll have to get a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers to match the out-of-box capability of the iMac.

Consider also that 24-inch 4K monitors are uncommon and that a high-quality 27-inch 4K monitor is going to set you back $700 or more. So if you want a comparable experience, it might not be cheaper at all.

[[nid:522489]]

Therefore, it's more appropriate to think of the Mac Mini as the option for more advanced users to pick parts to complete their Mac setup. 

The Mac Mini is also more flexible in how you can deploy it. You can deploy it as a media centre with your TV in your living room or bedroom, and there are stories of how multiple Mac Minis are harnessed in server farms for complex processing.

I like this new iMac but what pushes me most towards a Mac Mini is the iMac's inability to display video from other sources.

Given how excellent the display is, this seems like a massive waste. I'm not sure how many readers would require such as a feature, but imagine being able to use the iMac's gorgeous 4.5K Retina display for games with a PC or gaming console.

For readers like me who run multiple systems at a desk, it will indubitably make the iMac a much more attractive system.

Which iMac model?

The 7-core GPU model is a great pick if you are on a tight budget or just looking to maximise value. It's the most affordable model starting at $1,849 and you can spec it up with additional memory and storage if you desire.

[[nid:526397]]

You can order the Touch ID Magic Keyboard and fancy power adapter with integrated Gigabit Ethernet separately too. It also makes more sense to use the money saved to get a Thunderbolt dock which adds more utility.

In the end, the key things that you are missing out on are the extra GPU core, the additional two USB-C ports, and the ability to spec the system with up to 2TB of storage. You'd have to consider how much these matter to you.

In other words, get the 8-core model (starting at S$2,149) only if you demand the best performance or if you require the additional USB-C ports and 2TB of storage. Or maybe you must have your iMac in orange, yellow, or purple because these colours are exclusive to the 8-core GPU model.

A terrific iMac

The iMac is a great desktop Mac, especially if you are looking for a fuss-free all-in-one solution. The display is terrific, the sound system is amazing (considering the limitations), and it comes with just about everything you need. You can set it up and start using it in mere minutes.

[[nid:526587]]

And when you do, you'll realise that it's so capable, so powerful, and yet it runs so cool and quietly. We are so used to associating this type of simplicity with entry-level low-power systems but this new iMac, with its M1 chip, is fast enough to give much more expensive Core i7 iMacs a run for their money.

If you have been holding out for a new iMac, there aren't many reasons why you shouldn't get this. I reckon this new model could be as important for Apple as the legendary iMac G3.

The 24-inch iMac will be available in retail on May 21,2021. You can order it from the Apple Store or from the Apple Flagship Store on Lazada.

This article was first published in Hardware Zone.