As rumored for the longest time, Apple has taken the wraps off a redesigned iMac with Apple silicon, a thinner build, and vibrant colors that are reminiscent of older iMac G3 today. The new iMac looks stunning and joins the Apple M1-based MacBooks and Mac Mini that was launched earlier last year.
New Apple iMac: Specifications
Starting off, Apple says that it has completely redesigned the iMac from the ground up for the M1 chip. The switch to the company’s in-house chip has enabled the company to reduce the iMac’s volume by 50 percent (in comparison to older Intel iMacs). The rear is no longer curved and flat, with the thickness being 11.5 millimeters, which is only a few millimeters thicker than some budget smartphones in India.
On the front, you have a 24-inch 4.5K Retina display with narrow bezels at the top and the sides. There’s a thicker bottom bezel because all the internals, as well as the bottom-firing speakers, are housed in there. The panel supports 11.3 million colors, DCI-P3 wide color gamut, up to 500 nits of brightness, and True Tone technology.
Under the hood, the Apple iMac is powered by the M1 chip along with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD storage in the base variant. The company boasts the M1 iMac offers 85 percent faster performance than the 21.5-inch iMac. The GPU performance is also said to be 2x faster than the older iMac.
The new Apple iMac also includes four USB Type-C ports at the rear, two of which are standard USB Tyep-C ports and two Thunderbolt ports. There’s also a MagSafe-like power connector on the rear. The power adapter includes an Ethernet port, which will offer up to 1Gbps data speeds.
You will also find a six-speaker sound system onboard and Apple is calling it “the best sound system ever in a Mac,” as per the official blog post. It brings spatial audio support with Dolby Atmos, powerful bass response, and a beamforming three-microphone array. There’s a 1080p FaceTime HD camera baked into the top bezel as well.
Price and Availability
The new M1-based Apple iMac is priced starting at $1,299 for the 7-core GPU, two USB-C port model. You will have to shell out at least $1,499 for the 8-core GPU, four USB-C ports model in the US.
It will be available in the following colorways – green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, blue, and silver. The iMac will be available to pre-order from 30th April and will start shipping in the second half of May.
Alongside the new iMac, Apple has launched three new models of Magic Keyboard as well. While one is the usual full-size keyboard, the other two variants seem to be 65% models and one of them features Touch ID for biometric security. They are color-matched to the new iMac.
