$1,999 iMac 5K Retina Review! (2015)#Helpful Post

o you might not have realized that but

Apple just dropped a brand new 27-inch

5k iMac for under two grand and this is

my review for starters dis lowers the

cost of entry into the 5k iMac world by

five hundred bucks

previously the base model started at

$24.99 that one's now 2299 and paves the

way for the newer cheaper baseline model

Apple still does though offer a non

retina 27-inch iMac for $17.99 but you'd

be crazy not to jump up to the 1999

model 200 bucks mortgage not only a 5k

display but a faster CPU and graphics

card so with that you're getting a quad

core three point three gigahertz Core i5

processor eight gigs around a one

terabyte 7200 rpm hard drive and for

graphics a two gigabyte AMD r9 M 290 I'm

not going to take you through the entire

unboxing because chances are if you've

seen one box and you've seen them all so

how exactly does this new iMac perform

and in Geekbench 3 on the single-core

side it pumped out a score of three

thousand three hundred seventy two and

ten thousand seven hundred sixty three

for multi-core now if you're curious

about the performance on the baseline

and the next step up in terms of

processors are gonna be really close

where I think most of you will see the

biggest difference though is actually in

storage the entry-level 5k iMac has a

7200 rpm hard drive which for me is a

little hard to adjust to since anything

I'm used to using is flash based it's

not terribly slow by any means but in

terms of performance edition out speeds

of around 200 megabytes per second on

both read and write now unfortunately I

don't have a fusion model on hand but

for reference my late 2014 5 K iMac

which features pure flash storage dished

out right speeds over 670 megabytes per

second and read speeds over 720

megabytes per second so how exactly does

that performance benefit you want to

give you a really simple visual here's a

file just under 2 gigabytes and by

duplicating it you can really get an

idea how much faster the process is on

flash storage a fusion drive is a

combination of a smaller flash drive or

apps and frequently use storage live on

that and then a larger mechanical drive

for mass storage you can expect

performance to be somewhere in between

these two so next let's talk about what

may be the most attractive thing about

this iMac and that is the display 50 120

by 2880 otherwise known as 5k and

definitely part of team Krispy that's 2

times the resolution vertically and 2

times the resolution

horizontally of a non-retina 27-inch

iMac and that results in four times the

total amount of pixels now one of the

things I see most often with the 5k iMac

is why in the heck would I want a

resolution that high isn't everything

going to be super tiny without scaling

yes but this is how it works and it's

actually the main reason why the iMac is

5k instead of 4k the non retina 27-inch

iMac has a resolution of 2560 by 1440 so

50 120 by 2880 is exactly double that

both ways so screen real estate visually

looks the same but for text and UI

elements menus and so forth for every

one pixel screen real estate there are

four pixels crammed in that area and

that's why it is so detailed on the

other hand though it knows where a photo

or video is in supported apps so instead

of that four to one ratio it will

actually give you the true one-to-one

ratio so that's where you're able to get

a full 4k window and still have screen

real estate left over as far as graphics

go with the AMD r9 M 290 running tomb

raider at 2560 by 1440 on normal there

is an average frames per second of 49

point 4 for reference the 4 gigabyte r9m

295 X on my late 2014 iMac was about 15

frames per second faster and those

results were right on the money with

Cinebench r15 as well now moving on from

just graphics and more into the real

world testing in Premiere Pro CC I

compiled a three minute 1080p project

that you guys can actually download and

test yourselves links below but the

baseline 2015 imac exported that project

in 3 minutes and 35 seconds for the

maxed-out 2014 imac did that in 2

minutes and 45 seconds jumping over to

After Effects CC and again you can

download this test and try it out

yourselves but it took the baseline 2015

imax 6 minutes and 31 seconds to

complete whereas the 2014 max out iMac

was 5 minutes and 38 seconds so a pretty

solid difference there now this next

test the results were completely asked

backwards and had me confused as hell to

where I was running the test again and

again I put together a really taxing

Final Cut render test where it really

utilizes the GPU and time and time after

again the baseline iMac was faster it

was faster by about 40 seconds every

single time and I could not for the life

of me figure out why so after a little

digging and I think it's not a secret

that the thermal design of the iMac is

not going to win any engineering awards

but because it was taxing out the GPU so

much the maxed out iMac was getting so

hot that it was throttling down now

don't take this as some freak result

where it's going to be like this for

every single test as we saw with the

others but if you're going to be doing

any extensive 3d work you should

probably look elsewhere and not the iMac

simply because of the thermal design on

top of that for most of you out there

especially if you're trying to figure

out where to best utilize your money in

this iMac it's almost a better bet to

invest that towards flash storage and

third-party memory as opposed to maxing

out the CPU and obviously the GPU if you

really need a powerhouse machine and

chances are you already looking at a Mac

Pro or a custom-built PC anyways overall

though I was really impressed with the

total performance from this iMac aside

from that 7200 rpm hard drive it didn't

feel too slow but I think over time that

is definitely going to be the bottleneck

aside from that I do have 2015 15 inch

macbook pro coach coming up as well so

definitely subscribe if you don't want

to miss that pricing availability

everything else is linked down below

this is Jonathan and I will catch you

guys later