21.5-inch iMac (Late 2013) Review: Iris Pro Driving an Accurate Display
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 7, 2013 3:28 AM ESTFinal Words
Apple continues to have the strongest Mac lineup of its history. While I’m expecting something pretty cool with Broadwell next year, Apple’s Haswell Mac lineup continues to be an evolutionary improvement over the systems that were introduced last year.
The iMac’s industrial design is beautiful. I’m not sure I’m happy with the bezel thickness around the display, but otherwise I’m happy with the way Apple’s 2012 redesign turned out. Particularly with the 21.5-inch model, the compactness of the new iMac is pretty awesome. It’s a lot like the benefits of having a lightweight LCD TV - you only appreciate it when you have to move the thing, but it’s nice to have regardless of how rarely you move it.
Although I didn’t talk about this in the review, the in box wireless peripherals both work well. Combined with the fact that you can get 500Mbps file transfers over 802.11ac (over short distances, with Mavericks), you can really use the iMac with only a single cable and be pretty happy. Toss in Apple’s new 802.11ac Airport Extreme and you’ll have great wireless range as well.
The iMac’s out of box display experience is nothing short of incredible. Imaging professionals in dire need of color accuracy can walk into an Apple store, walk out with the entry-level iMac and have a remarkable experience. I’d love to see a higher resolution panel, but 4K panel pricing isn’t quite low enough yet (not to mention the possibility of Apple wanting to go 5K on its 27-inch display).
I wouldn’t touch either of the iMacs in their default configuration. Thankfully the upgrade to Fusion Drive or an SSD starts at $200, and is a must have. Fusion Drive remains the only solid state hybrid solution I’d touch. If you need a single volume, it’s absolutely the way to go.
CPU performance of the entry-level iMac really is very good. Power users can stand to go for one of the higher-end configurations, particularly if you’re running heavily threaded workloads. Lighter users should enjoy really good single threaded performance out of the base configuration however.
The entry-level iMac offers better integrated graphics performance than we’ve ever seen before, but true gamers will want to spring for a discrete GPU. Iris Pro under OS X (non-gaming) works well and I couldn’t really tell that I wasn’t using discrete graphics.
Thermals aren’t a concern with the base 21.5-inch iMac. The Core i5-4570R had no issues turbo-ing up to 3.0/3.1GHz on a regular basis, and the system fan never ramped up beyond 1400RPM during my testing. Overall the new 21.5-inch iMac is a very compact, cool and quiet machine. The 21.5-inch model in particular is an easy recommendation for anyone looking to get into a Mac desktop. Just make sure to order it with a Fusion Drive or SSD.
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BiggieShady - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
Nice iris vs. geforce gaming comparison. I would love to see temperature and fan speed comparison.name99 - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
It is crazy how cool these things run. I have a late 2012 27" i7 iMac and there is no part of it that is close to hot. The fan dumps hot air through a single hole which is very cleverly hidden below the hinge of the base so you don't even feel that unless you really look for it.Even when I've run the thing at max performance, having eight Mathematica kernels running in parallel for fifteen min or so, there's no obvious heating and no obvious fan noise.
The difference with even as recent as the 2007 iMac (my last model) is night and day. Part is the much more efficient CPUs, part is also the much more efficient display.
odaiwai - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
How do you see the actual CPU current speed on an intel Mac? I've been looking for a utility to do that for ages.abazigal - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
All this points to the possibility of a 15" retina macbook pro using only integrated graphics, which means comparable performance, with even longer battery life.Fun times ahead!
dylan522p - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
Probably only low end MBPr will do that this year, but next year if 6200 or whatever the Broadwell graphics are improved enough then very likely that could happen.tipoo - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
I hope they go the other way with it. GT3e for the 13" duo (especially for the retina, that would be a boon),and keep higher end discreet graphics in the larger models.lefty2 - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
You forgot to mention that the fusion drive is not supported by Windows (if you are using bootcamp)"If you partition the drive, the new partition will not be part of the logical-volume group that Fusion Drive uses, so it will not benefit from the speed of the SSD"
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57549766-263/...
ananduser - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
Man that Iris looks a lot worse in reality than I expected it to be. You really have to crank down the resolution and details to get some decent gaming performance. Then again this is the base imac, it's got compromise written all over it.CharonPDX - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
Correction: You state "By default all of the iMacs come with a 3.5” mechanical hard drive."iFixIt has shown that the 21.5" iMacs now come with 2.5" mechanical hard drives by default, not 3.5".
AlValentyn - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
Looks like my 2010 Mac Pro with 3.33 Hex core is still going strong. Finally going to add an SSD to it, and now I'm just waiting to see what AMD's R9 series GPU's are like.It is impressive to see how well these iMacs are doing these days though. :)