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2020 iMac 2 Months Later | Should You Buy the 2020 iMac or Wait for Apple Silicon?

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The 2020 iMac is the last of its kind, which is kind of sad. Since the 2012 redesign, Apple has steadily improved the iMac’s internals while keeping the outside almost the same. After two months, how has it held up?

My iMac saga

I unboxed this after a long personal saga: waiting for a redesigned iMac, buying a refurbished one, returning it because it died, buying another refurbished one, and then, after a week (after my return period expired), the new 2020 iMac was announced. Before all that, I had a refurbished 16-inch MacBook Pro (which I also recommend) and returned it all for this mid-range 2020 iMac, for the big display, all-in-one design, 10th-gen Intel performance, upgradability and a few other minor things. When I switched back to the Mac after seven years on Windows, I liked almost everything about the MacBook Pro, but I wanted to use it as a desktop and started pricing monitors and speakers, and decided I wanted a nice, simple, clean setup. I love the simplicity.

The display

The 27-inch 5K display: not full HD, quad HD or 4K, but “a whole nother K,” and “twice as many Ks as I have subscribers.” It’s gorgeous, close to color accurate, and at 500 nits great to use. Most people won’t care if it’s more color accurate than a $99 Amazon monitor, and I’m no professional with a trained eye, but being pretty accurate for color correction and photo touch-ups without calibrating, and not worrying how others see them, is nice. New for 2020 is True Tone, which shifts the white balance based on ambient light (cooler in sunlight, warmer under soft white bulbs at night) for a more comfortable viewing experience.

Speakers and camera

Being an all-in-one, the display is surrounded by the CPU, memory, cooling, speakers and camera. Apple said the T2 chip added better sound and bass response, a new 1080p FaceTime camera, faster HEVC encoding and a faster storage controller, and I agree: in Apple’s sound test comparing 2020 to 2019, the 2020 has decent improvement in clarity (hard to hear through a microphone and your speakers). I’ve watched many hours of live TV and YouTube on it and never thought the speakers weren’t loud, clear or good enough. The camera has much-needed improved clarity and low-light performance, a welcome improvement over the standard “potato cams.” Before, I’d only do video calls on my iPad or iPhone, but now I’ll fire up the iMac without hesitation.

Performance

The 10th-gen Intel Core options are i5, i7 and i9. My refurbished 2019 had the i9 with 16 threads, so I was hesitant about the mid-range i5 with 12 threads for video editing, but I found the performance just fine. For comparison: Cinebench about 3,300, Geekbench single-core about 1,100 and multi-core about 5,600. Games: I’m not a big gamer, but in Fortnite I got about 90 fps at mostly high settings, and the Radeon 5300 handled Apple Arcade and App Store games without issues.

One of the biggest benefits of the i5 over the i7 or i9 is fan noise: virtually silent all the time, only ramping at the end of a Cinebench test or a ten-minute Final Cut or Premiere export. The i9 iMac’s fans came on regularly without heavy work: even Safari and Notes would spin them up.

Memory

You can still upgrade the memory: pop the back door, add memory, close the door and boot. I added 32 GB of OWC memory to the included 8 GB for 40 GB total.

Wait for Apple silicon?

The “elephant in the room”: rumors of a new-design iMac this year didn’t pan out, and Apple said Apple silicon Macs were coming this year. I don’t think we’ll see an Apple silicon iMac this year. If you need something now, buy now. Buy an Intel iMac if:

  • You have specialized software that needs to work well (you don’t know how it’ll run on Apple’s new hardware or how long third parties will take to update).
  • You want to save money and upgrade memory with third parties like OWC (we don’t know whether Apple silicon Macs will allow it).
  • You want a tried-and-true architecture supported for probably more years than you’ll own the computer.
  • You need to boot into Windows for a specific app or game.

Verdict

The 2020 improvements are pretty good. If you want a great display, speakers, a camera and great performance supported for many years, and the cleanest desktop experience without a mess of cords, there’s no better all-in-one than the iMac, which comes with everything you need. It can always be better (storage, USB ports, memory): see my iMac accessories video.

Some links in this post are affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I may receive a small commission. See my ethics statement.

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