Is the iMac 4K Worth It? #Helpful Post

Hey guys this is Austin. Is the new 4K iMac worth it? From the outside things look basically

identical. That’s not necessarily a bad thing though, the iMac is one sexy looking

computer. It’s all aluminum and from most angles it looks crazy thin, only when you

look at it from the back can you see where everything is hidden. This is where you’ll

find the exhaust and the ports which include Ethernet, a couple Thunderbolt ports, four

USB 3.0, an SD card reader and headphone jack. Having the ports tucked around back looks

nice but it’s not the most convenient way to access things, you basically have to spin

the iMac around every time you want to plug something in. The speakers are hidden on the

bottom and sound surprisingly solid, paired with the decent Magic Keyboard and still annoying

Magic Mouse 2 that comes with it you can really get away with just plugging a power cable

into the iMac and calling it a day. It has a fairly large bezel but there’s no denying

that this is a nice looking computer. The real star of the show here is that new 4K

display. There’s no other way of putting this: this is a terrific screen. With an expanded

P3 color gamut it might not come through on YouTube but the new display looks awesome.

It has great contrast and solid viewing angles but the real draw is that crispy resolution.

Coming in at 4096 by 2304 it’s actually higher resolution than standard 4K video.

On a 21 inch screen this comes out to an impressive 218 pixels per inch which is just as sharp

as retina MacBook screens. OS X does a great job of scaling to give you what looks like

a 1080p screen but with four actual pixels making up each pixel of screen real estate.

You can also use this to scale your resolution up to 1440p if you like. This display would

cost a fortune on it’s own which makes this iMac actually reasonably priced for a change.

Inside we’re looking at a quad core Broadwell Core i5 that’s clocked at 3.1 gigahertz,

Iris Pro Graphics 6200 and eight gigabytes of memory. While dedicated graphics might

not be ideal in a 4K desktop Intel’s Iris Pro 6200 graphics are surprisingly up to the

task. For normal use in El Capitan things are nice and smooth even while multitasking

and you can even do a bit of gaming. If you install a copy of Windows via Boot Camp you’ll

find that Grand Theft Auto 5 is playable on normal settings at 1080p and lighter titles

like Rocket League will also work at 1080p on medium. It’s absolutely not a gaming

PC but if you want to play a few games the 4K iMac handles itself pretty well. Unfortunately

there’s a weak link and that’s the storage. The base model comes with a seriously slow

one terabyte 5400 RPM hard drive. This is just not acceptable on a high end computer

in 2015, normal tasks that are nearly instant on an SSD equipped computer are a test of

your patience on the iMac and while you can upgrade to a Fusion Drive or a pure SSD that’s

going to jump up the price significantly. There’s no easy way of upgrading the storage

yourself and the RAM is soldered down so if you want to upgrade you better do it before

buying. The 4K iMac fits an awesome display in an impressively designed all in one. For

some the screen alone will be worth the price but once you upgrade the base hard drive spending

a little more to upgrade to the 27 inch iMac is probably worth it. So what do you guys

think about the 4K iMac? Let me know in the comments below and I will catch you in the next one.

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