The 27-inch Apple iMac Review (2011)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 27, 2011 2:30 AM ESTFinal Words
The new 27-inch iMac repeats all of the things I liked about the new MacBook Pro. It's stylish and as always Apple was pretty smart about most of its component choices. Thanks to Intel's quad-core Sandy Bridge CPUs, the system is very fast. In fact, as many of our benchmarks have shown, if you purchased a Mac Pro in the past couple of years chances are the new 27-inch iMac is faster than it in most tasks.
It used to be that if you needed a fast desktop that ran OS X you pretty much had to shell out for a Mac Pro. With this generation I firmly believe that the 27-inch iMac is a real alternative. And unlike iMacs of the past, this new one is actually married to a display that the high end folks might actually want.
The display quality of the 27-inch iMac is excellent. Apple went with a different panel resulting in a better monitor than the standalone 27-inch Cinema Display we reviewed last year. Although this one comes with a computer attached to it, you still retain the relatively small footprint of the 27-inch display. I still believe that a 27-inch diagonal is the best overall balance of resolution and screen size available today if you need something beyond 1920 x 1200.
I'm not ridiculously pleased with the base configuration of the 27-inch iMac but I can't complain too much about 4GB of memory and a 1TB hard drive. I still would like to see an SSD standard, but even more I'd just like to see Apple make it easy to add an SSD of your own. As it stands you have to buy a pair of suction cups, pull off the magnetic glass cover, remove the LCD, remove the motherboard, add a new SATA cable and a Y-splitter for power and then find a place to stick your SSD in order to upgrade the iMac yourself. Or you could pay Apple $500 for a 256GB Toshiba based SSD.
It's really the upgradability that I'm most bothered by with the iMac, and it seems like such a solvable problem. Serial interfaces like PCI Express and SATA were designed to make routing simpler, so you could put peripherals in odd places and still get good performance. For years I'd seen manufacturers demonstrate concept designs for external GPU boxes but what I'd really like to see is a concept from Apple, I want to see the first modular all-in-one. Apple took a bold step pairing an expensive display with an all-in-one Mac, but I think it really does work. The CPU is clearly fast enough to last you a while, but it's the GPU that I'm most worried about. The upgraded Radeon HD 6970M is enough to drive the 2560 x 1440 display for games that are out on the Mac today, but what about in a year's time? Offering roughly the performance of a GeForce GTX 460 in games, the 6970M isn't enough to run even modern PC titles at panel resolution - and that's the upgraded GPU. There's clearly the room to dissipate heat on the inside of this machine, I'm not asking for more GPU power today, but just room to upgrade it down the line. Apple has done its best to provide you with a balanced system today, however I feel like the iMac may lose that balance over time as a result of its high resolution display coupled with a limiting GPU.
Putting my aluminum colored glasses on for a moment I do have to keep in mind that the iMac is still relatively cheap in the Apple world. Plus when you buy into a notebook and you need a faster GPU you just sell or give the old one away, display and all. Maybe I just feel different about it because the iMac comes with a much larger display and maybe I shouldn't. If we're ok recommending a $1799 MacBook Pro, then recommending a $1699 iMac with a similar shelf life shouldn't be any different.
I guess I still feel like there's room for innovation here and if anyone can do it, it's Apple. Apple did a great thing with the iMac - it proved that all-in-ones weren't dead and that they could be done well. History tells us that all-in-ones are dead ends because you can't upgrade them. Well, Apple built an iMac with a LGA-1155 socket and a GPU on a MXM module. Technically, if Apple wanted to support it, all the iMac would need is a firmware update to accept an Ivy Bridge next year since the CPU is both physically and electrically compatible with nearly all 6-series motherboards. Put that MXM module in a removable bay and now we're talking. I get that it's not really the Apple way to do any of this, but I feel like the potential is there. If Apple doesn't want to make a base Mac with the hardware of an iMac without the display that's fine, but perhaps give the enthusiasts a carrot to make the all-in-one experience a little more enticing?
Even taking into account my struggles with the upgrade cycle, I'd keep it and replace it with a Haswell iMac in 2013 just like I would do with a MacBook Pro. The net cost is roughly the same, I'm just not used to tossing out a display with each desktop upgrade. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of the value discussion here depends on what happens to displays over the coming years. If the roadmaps are more aggressive both for tablets and full blown computers, then upgrading to a new system with a new integrated display every couple of years isn't such a bad idea. But if the 27-inch iMac in 2013 - 2014 doesn't dramatically improve the quality of the display as it ramps up performance, it becomes a tougher upgrade to justify.
Having gone the mobile route and now using a MacBook Pro as my desktop, I'm very tempted by the iMac. It addresses all of the issues I have with the MacBook Pro, maintains most of the benefits but reintroduces the problem of portability. I started this article at my desk, but I just disconnected the MacBook Pro and moved my environment to the couch. No moving of files, no accessing network shares, I just physically moved my workspace. The appeal of mobility is tremendous, but it's not perfect. There is no replacement for tons of TDP, which is something only a desktop can provide. There's still no perfect solution, no one-size-fits all I'm afraid. As I mentioned earlier, when I'm traveling a lot and need to get work done - the MacBook Pro is a great solution. When I'm at home for an extended period of time? I'll probably miss the iMac to be honest. If you don't absolutely need the portability, then the iMac is a far better investment than a MacBook Pro in my mind. You get faster hardware and a nicer display for less money (at least comparing upgraded high-end models).
Maybe this is where tablets will eventually fit in. For the user who doesn't travel a ridiculous amount but still needs access, there's the tablet - but when he/she is at home, there's the iMac. Start traveling (or simply changing locations) more and the balance shifts towards more portable computing.
A lot of this discussion is a mind dump about trends in computing and ideas for the future, but if you're looking for a conclusion it's this: I like LG's 27-inch panel that Apple uses, I like Sandy Bridge and thus I like the 2011 iMac. If I lived a different life it'd probably be my desktop of choice, and that's something I never thought I'd say.
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smithj - Sunday, May 29, 2011 - link
People not within the European Union do not pay the VAT tax. If you live outside of the European Union, you pay £369.00 which is around $570 USD/AUD so he's completely correct.Even if you live in the European Union, you're going to be saving a similar amount since I imagine Apple products get the VAT tax slapped onto them as well. Doesn't change anything.
On the Hazro website:
"If you are ordering from outside the UK and EU, you will not be charged VAT."
There are extremely good reasons for getting a iMac but from a parts point of view its terrible value. You can't measure the benefits of the iMac however with just plain figures and specs.
Kristian Vättö - Sunday, May 29, 2011 - link
Ahh, that explains it then. I didn't look any further so didn't know about the international price. Customs may be added to the price though (not sure about the US policy as you don't VAT. If I buy something from the US, I will have to pay the Finnish 23% VAT before I can receive it).The Hazro looks very good though, thanks for linking it. Something to keep in mind when this oldish iMac needs to go. 500€ for a 27" 1440p display doesn't sound that bad, could get two of them for the price of one 27" ACD
repoman27 - Sunday, May 29, 2011 - link
I took issue with OWC's blog posts about the HDD upgrade issues in the 2011 iMac, and was hoping to find a better clarification here than the one in this review. OWC insisted on using the terms "standard", "leads" and "pins" in odd ways, and some of that seems to be echoed here.The HDD power cable in the iMac (Mid 2011) has 7 conductors, a standard 15-pin SATA power connector on one end, and a small 7-socket connector on the other which attaches to a header on the logic board. This assembly, while proprietary, is not necessarily any more so than the ones that ship with modular PSUs. It is more common to see SATA power cables with only 4 conductors (GND, 5 V, GND, 12 V) or 5 conductors if 3.3 V is also supplied. Several pins are then ganged together in the 15-pin connector to support the specified current requirements. As noted in the article, Apple is using relatively small conductors, and thus 2 are used in tandem for 12 V, they also elected to use the reserved pin 11 of the 15-pin SATA power connector for temperature monitoring. Pins 10 and 12 must both be connected to ground, although most of the time one conductor is used and pins 10-12 are all ganged together. Apple couldn't do this, so instead their 7 conductors are for GND, 5 V, GND, Temp, GND, 12 V, 12 V.
It is not common behavior for HDDs to output a temperature signal on pin 11 of the SATA power connector. While the model numbers and controller boards of the drives that ship in the 2011 iMacs look to be no different from retail ones, there would appear to be differences in the firmware that allow for this functionality. I would imagine that patching the firmware of a retail drive is possible.
If you ground pin 11 of the 15-pin SATA power connector, SMC will act as if there is no 3.5" drive installed. This means that the speed of the HDD fan will not increase above a certain baseline, and if you really do have a 3.5" drive in that bay, it will not properly dissipate the heat generated by it. If you use this trick to swap out the stock drive for an after-market one, you should also use S.M.A.R.T. based fan control software.
There are separate, clearly labeled power headers for HDD, ODD and SSD on the iMac's logic board. It is probably a better idea to use the dedicated SSD power header than a Y-splitter if you add a 2.5" drive to an iMac that didn't ship with one installed. The HDD cable was more than likely not designed to support two devices, and most Y-splitters for SATA power cables gang pins 10-12, thus grounding pin 11 and preventing the SMC from receiving HDD temperature data. The SSD power header on the 27-inch models is a standard 6-pin slimline SATA power connector, but on the 21-inch it is just a small 4-pin header.
The design of the iMac in general deters the casual from servicing their own hardware, and while some are discouraged by this, it's a ridiculous stance to take. Most people who purchase a new Mercedes S-Class don't worry about the fact that they probably won't be able to service it themselves (even if they are a fairly competent mechanic), or that it contains proprietary cable assemblies. If you don't feel comfortable servicing or modding your gear yourself, just take it to someone who does.
MadMinstrel - Sunday, May 29, 2011 - link
A 512MB <i>framebuffer</i>? Really? So that's all you think GPU memory is useful for? That might have been the case in the good old S3 ViRGE days, but right now it <i>really</i> doesn't work that way and I would expect someone writing for AnandTech to know that. In fact, GPU memory holds at least two framebuffers and sometimes as many as 6. More if you count all the intermediate rendering steps such as depth buffers, accumulation buffers, G-buffers, albedo buffers, etc, as used in modern deferred rendering engines. Textures, geometry, physics data, and sometimes even some of the game logic also go into GPU memory. Maybe I'm just being pedantic about this but I guess it really annoyed me because I actually <i>care</i> about Anand being accurate.Sunburn74 - Monday, May 30, 2011 - link
Not for me thanks. Too pricey and lousy specs. I also don't care about TN vs IPS panels. Most people don't care. Some enthusiasts do, but you can't really argue that iMacs are targeted for the average joe who don't know a ton about pcs and just wants it to work whilst arguing that the average joe can appreciate a 500 dollar difference between an IPS panel and TN panel. The truth is most people don't even know there are 2 types of panels floating about.I consider myself an enthusiast. I've spent a couple months working on a last gen 27inc iMac in the past as a reference point, with a lot of adobe studio stuff. Long story short, I wasn't impressed. I found the machine to be slow to average in terms of performance (compared to the HP tower workstations we had down the hall for "real work" haha). Throw out the nicer display (who's value is questionable depending on who you talk to. Again I've read in the comments how imacs are great for your dad and mom and your granny.Your granny is not noticing a difference between a 27inch HP tn panel and a 27inch mac IPS panel) and I don't really see what the iMac brings to the table that all the other all in ones don't have. I just don't really see a good target audience outside of mac enthusiasts who just gotta have it.
Its not great for people who need a pc that just works without hassle but are limited by budget (your mom, your dad, your granny, your girlfriend in college)
Its not great for the power users like myself who render and process in different ways thousands of high def images a day for scientific purposes. The HP workstation crushed the mac with its superior specs and apparently less aesthetic screen (a high end HP 30 inch TN panel).
Its not great for the true computer enthusiasts who likes to know whats in his pc and enjoys servicing his own box.
the iMac is truly like the mercedes benz and not in a good way. Mercedes make nice cars, but no one can disagree that those cars (just like the iMac) are
1)For the rich for whom cost is not truly an issue
2)for those who don't have an interest in servicing and maintaining their own cars and will have the dealer do it all,
3) For those who don't use their cars for actual work where the performance of the car actually matters (otherwise they'd go with the mac workstation or any othre workstation or build their own).
The imac just puzzles me and yet it sells so well apparently.
JFA - Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - link
It would be great to see comparison with previous generation of iMacs. Nowadays one can find quite a discounts on previous gen.javaporter - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
I didn't read all 14 pages of comments, someone probably mentioned this, but you might want to look at dropbox. I have the 50GB option. It's enough for core project folders, my 1Password keychain, and various things I want to always have access to.I had the same issue as the author when deciding to leave a Mac Pro for a Macbook Pro. I did and worked that way for a while, however, recently I went back from a MBPro to an iMac and a Macbook Air.
With dropbox, I don't really have to worry about moving files anymore. It's still not perfect; I still have to worry about 2 machines to update software on and my photos won't fit on my MBAir of course (nor will iTunes), but for me, it's still worth it to have a desktop. I liked my MBPro, but it just never seemed to be as fast or easy as the desktop or as portable as the Air (I had the 17" — pretty unusable when flying coach).
timmillea - Monday, December 19, 2016 - link
So, five years later and this is still a very attractive machine. It is the last in the line of iMacs that do not need a 'pizza cutter' and replacing double-sided tape to obtain access to upgrade. Also the last with an optical drive which is still handy for ripping movies, music and sharing the same with people who are not riding the Apple wave. A 3.4 GHz quad-core i7 with a (ideally) 2GB GPU is still a very serious amount of computing power. Upgrade to 2 x SSDs with guides freely available on the net and configure them as Raid 0 and you have Mac-Pro challanging performance with a superb display in the size of the display alone available on the Bay for a third of the original price.Rendell001 - Sunday, July 29, 2018 - link
Thats very reassuring to know timmillea, I have the same model too which I picked up on eBay back in 2014 for £900. I love it for the same reasons you do though I've not tinkered with the insides yet. Needed to know if it would still hold up even now in 2018.