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M1 iMac Second Look - Slightly Disappointing?

9:57 video

Apple released the redesigned 24-inch iMac running Apple silicon. Right after the “Spring Forward” event, I posted first impressions that were mostly positive. After a few more hours looking at the design, ports and price, it’s kind of disappointing. I don’t think this iMac is actually that good. The M1 has been universally praised as an engineering feat and I have no doubt it will perform inside the iMac, but the other parts are “meh” or worse.

The look

At first look, they’re striking: a fresh design, and new colors that pop in your face, coming from silver or silver (or the discontinued Space Gray iMac Pro). They match the rumors: an XDR-like display with thin side bezels and a flat, modern stand. The front colors are pale (like the iPad Air 4), but the backs are vibrant, which I think is much more fun: if you’re doing colors on a desktop, make the part people see fun. Tim Cook said the back of the iMac is the first thing most people see, but I don’t believe it: most computers sit against a wall. If the front had the same dark color as the back, it would be a much better design.

Thick bezels were what dated the previous iMac, and these aren’t all that thin: still thick compared with modern displays and other all-in-ones. The Pro Display XDR has much thinner bezels that look modern and premium. And they’re white. Why? Apple promoted this as a great multimedia device for watching video, then surrounded the screen with bright white thick bezels. White is the worst possible color; even the anodized aluminum color would have been better.

Then the chin, another thing that made the previous iMac look dated. They justified it with the six-speaker array built into it, which is great, but with the thick bezel and no Apple logo on the chin, it looks like a third-party knockoff: you can’t tell it’s an Apple product from the front, and it doesn’t look like the Pro Display XDR or the previous iMac. It looks like a cheap HP or imitation that does a bad job.

Ports

The iMac page shows two Thunderbolt and two USB-C ports, but the base model only has two Thunderbolt ports. Pay for the $1,499 model and you get Ethernet in the power adapter (not on the iMac itself). The base ($1,299) has no extra USB ports, no Ethernet, no SD card and no USB-A, just the headphone jack on the side. That’s very limited for the price of a desktop. They could have made the iMac a little thicker, to put an Ethernet port on the back without a special apparatus through the power cable. I’d much rather have a thicker computer behind the display with no thick bezels and no chin: there’s no reason it can’t be three inches thick if you don’t see it.

Speakers

I’m excited to try them and hope they’re as good as on stage and as good as the previous 27-inch’s. Apple says the new iMac has spatial audio, which somehow comes from just the speakers (probably bouncing sound). I wish Apple had put in more speakers: if the iPad Pro can have four, why not the iMac?

Display

A 24-inch 4.5K Retina display, P3, True Tone, 500 nits and an anti-reflective coating: exactly like the previous 4K and 5K displays. It’s most likely the same resolution as the 21-inch 4K iMac scaled to 24 inches, with nothing new in the display technology: not brighter, not listed as HDR. So there’s no display upgrade.

Pricing

  • Base ($1,299): 8-core CPU, 7-core GPU (like the base MacBook Air), 256 GB of storage and 8 GB of RAM, with the standard keyboard and mouse.
  • $1,499: one extra GPU core, the same 256 GB and 8 GB, two extra USB 4 ports, Gigabit Ethernet and the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID.
  • $1,699: 512 GB of storage. Memory from 8 to 16 GB is probably about $200 like on the other M1 Macs.

That seems expensive for a 24-inch iMac with 512 GB and 16 GB, compared with the Intel 27-inch iMac, which starts at about $1,800, and you can find better configurations refurbished from Apple for about the same price. For $1,500 or more for an all-in-one with an integrated GPU and low specs, it isn’t a great deal.

Verdict

At a second look, I’m not that impressed: they could have made the back deeper, removed the side bezels and eliminated the chin for a much more modern design. It’s nice to see color return, but I’m not a fan of the pale fronts: go bold or don’t do colors. These are first-generation products with limitations (like the limited Thunderbolt ports), but with the same screen technology for years and low specs, they seem a bit overpriced. Do you like the design? I’ll definitely pick one up and share my thoughts, and see my video on which one I’d buy.

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