It's been over six months since I got my latest computer, a 2019 27-inch iMac
with a Retina display. Now in this video I'm going to take you through some of my
favorite features of the iMac, how its held up over the past six months of use,
and why I chose an iMac over a comparable MacBook Pro as well as a
Windows PC. Let's dive in. The 2019 iMac's design, while nothing new, still holds a
now classic, clean, and minimalist look. The bezels seem huge by today's standard
but once you're looking at the screen you kind of tune them out anyways, just
like some tune out the notch on the latest iPhones. The iMac is an all-in-one
computer so you don't have to deal with the tower and a monitor, just the monitor
and the stand which can be removed in case you want to mount your iMac to
something else. The version I got has a 3.6 gigahertz i9, 8 core processor
with a Radeon Pro Vega 48 graphics card: basically something that could get the
job done when it comes to graphics intensive programs like photo editing,
and especially 4k video editing. Now why didn't I just get a souped-up MacBook
Pro you may ask, well my previous computer actually was a MacBook Pro and
it served me well for about 6 or 7 years but I found with my MacBook Pro that I
almost never took it off my desk it was really just there as an editing machine
and I never took advantage of that portability and unfortunately with
MacBook Pros that portability that you get with it that's so great for those
who do need to take them on the road, it doesn't come without some sacrifices
though. The first one being with the iMac Apple doesn't have to worry about
battery life because the computer is always plugged in, so it can put in
higher performance specs into the iMac then it could with a comparable MacBook
Pro. Second is expandable memory, with the 27-inch version of the iMac there's a
ram door in the back of the machine that makes it easy to install additional RAM
yourself that you can get from third parties, saving hundreds of dollars off
Apple's RAM prices. The cord management at the back of the
device is pretty simple, the wireless mouse, Magic Trackpad, and keyboard, work
extremely well, and while it is awkward to have to charge the mouse with a
lightning cord, I find the newer magic mouse works
better than the older ones with AA batteries.
My older Magic Mouse sometimes has issues connecting to the iMac and I've
also found that its AA batteries they just deplete really quickly
compared to the newer magic mice which of course have the rechargeable battery
built-in. Now one of the other things I really like about this iMac design is
unlike a lot of other Apple products where Apple has typically been taking
ports away or forcing users over to just use USBC, this iMac has a great set of
ports in the back, you have four standard USB-A ports, two USB-C ports, an SD card
slot, a 3.5 millimeter jack for audio output, and there is a gigabit Internet
port as well. The display on the 2019 iMac is great, it's not really different
from the one released in 2017, but for my video and photo editing needs it's
perfectly crisp, has great color accuracy, and having the monitor in Final Cut
actually be able to display a full 4k resolution correctly, is a nice touch.
Setting up the iMac was an easy process as well taking very few steps. Apple
makes it pretty easy to either set up your computer as a new computer or copy
over data from an older Mac you may have. Mac OS feels very snappy on this iMac
and with these 64 gigs of ram I've installed on my machine, I have no issues
at all with having different programs open at once. When Apple first announced
this computer last year, some were worried that the thermal management
would be pushed to the limit and you would either hear fan speeds running to
the max all the time, or worse Apple would throttle the computer's
performance. In the months since, I'm happy to report that a my day to day use,
especially with tasks that are graphics intensive like gaming and video editing,
I never noticed the fan getting up to its max speed and I don't notice any lag
or overall sluggishness with any graphics
intensive tasks. Many other publications and channels have tested this machine
further and seem to corroborate that this machine doesn't suffer from the
thermal throttling that the MacBook Pro released before it suffered from. Let's
talk about gaming a little bit more just for one second, this is one of the only
areas I found with this iMac that is actually a downside Mac's in general are
not thought of as great gaming machines compared to machines that run Windows
and for this iMac that is also true. However the thing that solves that issue
is called Boot Camp. Boot Camp allows you to partition your Mac's hard drive and
install Windows on your Mac. The Windows image is actually free to download from
Microsoft's website. Running Boot Camp solves the performance issues I was
having with one of my favorite games, city skylines, which is a pretty graphics
intensive game as well as a CPU taxing one. On Windows the game runs much
smoother and I can run it on higher settings than I could compare to running
the game on Mac OS. Speaking of Windows, I should probably address why I got an
iMac over a comparable Windows PC. The reason for that is I personally like Mac
OS better, it has a great aesthetic design to it, it
runs Final Cut Pro 10, and is optimized to run Final Cut Pro 10 really well and
I've had less reliability issues with Mac OS over the years compared to when I
had a Windows PC back in the day. Alright before we wrap up this review I want to
talk about some of the things that I dislike about this iMac and first let's
talk about that front facing camera. The 2019 version of the iMac has the same HD
FaceTime camera with a 720p resolution that the 2017 iMac version also had. The
cameras resolution just doesn't look very good and I wish Apple had upgraded
it. Now the other downside isn't actually a downside with my machine the way I
have mine configured but, I'm going to ding Apple for it anyways and what I'm
talking about here are hard drives. I'm going to go on a little bit of a tangent
but in 2020 there should be no option to add a
hard drive into an iMac like period. Hard drives are one of the main culprits for
slow Mac's in general and they should just be completely eliminated from the
iMac line. iMacs should start with a fusion drive not a hard drive. Now if you
are thinking about getting an iMac and you are looking at that very lower tier
in the price points of iMacs and you're thinking about the entry-level iMac,
don't do it you will regret it. Either go for a cheaper used version of either a
previous version of the iMac or a used 2019 version of the iMac. It's been six
months now, you can probably find some out there, or spend a couple hundred
dollars more and get an iMac with a Retina display and at least a fusion
hard drive. If you're in the market for an iMac and are confused with all of the
options or feel slightly overwhelmed here's some advice for how to configure
your iMac. If you want your Mac to feel really snappy and all-around very speedy
my recommendation would be to configure it with a solid-state hard drive or
otherwise known as an SSD. I would definitely do that over a fusion drive
and definitely over just a normal hard drive. Now if you like to run multiple
applications at a time on your Mac and you want it to feel really snappy then I
would recommend at least getting 16 gigs of ram if not 32 gigs of ram. Now if you
are looking at the 21 inch version of the iMac I would also implore you to
price compare it to the 27-inch version and when you do that keep in mind that
the 27-inch version has that RAM door in the back, so you could theoretically like
I did, configure the 27-inch version with eight gigs of ram get it, rip that Ram
ou,t put in your own Ram, thanks to that door in the back of that machine, which
the 21 inch version just simply does not have. If you go with the 27 inch version
you can save your self some money by buying third-party
RAM. Now if you're going to use your iMac like me for programs like Adobe
Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Adobe Premiere Pro, as well as Final Cut Pro 10,
and especially if you're going to run some of these programs simultaneously,
you're one going to want to make sure that you have a good processor in that
machine, but more importantly, you're gonna want to make sure you have a good
graphics card. I maxed out and got the Radeon Pro Vega 48 eight gigabyte
graphics card on my machine and it served me well. That card plus the i9
eight core intel processor chip in my machine has resulted in my editing
workflow just being buttery smooth. Now I know we didn't get into everything in
this review of the 2019 iMac including things like Geekbench scores etc. So if
that more technical type of information is something that you were looking for,
I've left a couple of links below in the video description that should help you
out there, I've also linked to a video by Max Tech. They did a video of the eight
buying mistakes you can make when trying to buy an iMac, I thought they did a
great job with it so I've linked that below as well. Well that's it for our
review of the 2019 iMac, I hope that you found this video helpful, if you did and
you liked this video, make sure to hit that thumbs up button below and
subscribe to the channel to see more product review videos like this one. Well
that does it for me, I'm Josh Teder from 6 Months Later,
thanks for watching.