21.5-inch 4K iMac (2015) w/ Retina Display Review! #Helpful Post

what's good guys Jonathan here and this

is my review of the 2015 21 point 5 inch

4k iMac now design wise not much has

changed it's got that classic brushed

aluminum finish and these just a single

power cable to get you up and running

which results in a super clean minimal

and space-efficient setup on the back we

have the power button and then your ins

and outs include gig Ethernet

Thunderbolt 2 USB 3 SDXC and a headphone

jack which also doubles as an optical

audio output now as most of you should

know by now I am not afraid to rip Apple

especially when they deserve to be

ripped but when it comes to what is the

single most appealing thing about this

iMac which is the 4k display if you love

pixels if you love technology there is

no denying that this looks insanely good

for reference the videos that you're

watching right now is output it to a

resolution of 3840 by 2160 which is

technically UHD then we have cinema 4k

which is 4096 by 2160 and then this iMac

is slightly larger than that with a

resolution of 4096 by 23:04 now as far

as why you'd want a screen resolution

that high on a screen size that small

what Apple does is scale everything down

so for text and UI elements this is done

at a four to one ratio meaning for every

pixel of screen real estate there are

four pixels jammed inside and that's

actually what allows the text and things

like the application icons to look super

sharp and super crisp now what's awesome

is things like photos and videos those

are scaled to a one-to-one ratio so for

example here in Final Cut Pro 10 I have

a full 1080p video plane and I'm able to

see a hundred percent of those pixels

with a ton of screen real estate left

over now on the technical side this iMac

is scaled to look like 2048 by 1152

but you can also give yourself a little

extra room with options that look like

2304 by 12 96 or 2560 by 1440 which

crazy enough was the resolution of the

27-inch iMac before it got the 5k

upgrade now speaking of the 27-inch iMac

one of the big upgrades there was the

fact that it now supports AP three color

gamut which is 25 percent wider and that

also applies to these 21 inch IMAX and

that really just kind of

the cake on the overall quality and

fantastic display now if there were any

downsides with this display I would say

it's the fact that there is no target

display mode which means you cannot use

it as a monitor with other Macs and

that's definitely a bummer so that was

the good but now it's time for some

ripping because for some reason Apple

decided to take this beautiful machine

and stick a 5400 rpm hard drive in there

which is a travesty if you walk into the

Apple store and they try to sell you a

machine with a 5400 rpm hard drive you

tell them no hell no now if we open up

black magic to speed test we're getting

around 98 megabytes per second on both

read and write which isn't terrible but

by no means good especially in 2015 as

far as what that translates to you're

going to get painfully slow boot ups

which gives you flashbacks to those

older computers where you turn it on

walk away go make coffee and do you like

15 of the things before your computer

started up on top of that that means

you're going to get that dreaded doc

bounce now because of that you should

never ever ever buy or let someone buy

this iMac with a 5400 rpm hard drive and

in my opinion there are only two

configurations you should consider the

first being the hundred dollar upgrade

which gets you a one terabyte fusion

drive or the second being the two

hundred dollar upgrade which gets you

256 gigs of pure flash storage now the

reasoning behind that and to put things

in perspective if you did the fusion

drive upgrade you're looking around

$15.99 us if you upgraded either the RAM

or the processor you're at $17.99 which

is also the same price as the

entry-level 5k iMac which not only get

you a bigger higher resolution screen

but also a dedicated AMD r9 M 380

graphics card conversely if you were

thinking about maxing out the processor

and the RAM on this 4k iMac that puts

you at $19.99 us which is the same price

as the second tier 5k iMac which not

only gets you a fusion drive as a

standard option but also a bump in

graphics with the r9 m390 also with the

27-inch iMac you're able to upgrade the

RAM after the fact and with the 21 inch

iMac you are capped off with what you

order as far as performance goes you're

getting a 3.1 gigahertz eye 5 quad core

processor which will also turbo boost up

to 3.6 gigahertz in Geekbench 3 on a

single core side dished out a score of

3779 as far as multi-core

formitz that was twelve thousand six

hundred and seventy now I went ahead and

tested out a little bit of 4k editing in

Final Cut Pro 10 and much to my surprise

it actually handled my fs7 footage

pretty well I was able to export a 60

second 4k h.264 file in about 90 seconds

which considering isn't bad at all so

the performance is there but I think

again the biggest bottleneck here

especially if you're trying to edit 4k

video is that hard drive so again at the

very least make sure you get the fusion

drive or ideally you want to be editing

off an external scratch drive as far as

graphics go this features intel's iris

pro graphics 6200 and as far as

integrated graphics go it actually

performed really well running tomb

raider at 1080p on low settings i was

seen around 43 average frames per second

hopping over to battlefield 4 windows 10

by a bootcamp at 1080p on low settings

we're getting nearly 50 average frames

per second now yes I know this is not a

gaming machine nor is it intended to be

so if you want to go game build your PC

but it's still nice know that as far as

integrated graphics go you're getting

some pretty solid performance with this

machine so all know aside from the

horrendous based option as far as your

hard drive goes this is a pretty solid

machine it shipped with El Capitan you

now have the new magic keyboard and the

Magic Mouse - with the dummest charging

port on the face of this planet or you

have the option to upgrade to the Magic

Trackpad - for 50 bucks more which I

prefer over the Magic Mouse now for

those curious those fancy-pants graphics

that you saw during Geekbench and the

speed test those were courtesy of

videoblocks comm specialize in stock

footage motion graphics and After

Effects templates on top of that they

also have a marketplace you guys that

shoot crispy video can also submit your

footage to be sold as stock footage and

make a hundred percent of the cash now

if you guys want to check this out you

can do so for free for seven days all

the details are linked down below slide

from that hopefully enjoyed the video if

you did and you are feeling like being

awesome make sure to smash that like

button as hard as you would smash a 5400

rpm hard drive its Jonathan with TLD and

I will catch you guys later