- Hey Friends, welcome back to the channel.
This is a review of the brand new M1 iMac.
(soft music)
I've been using this version
in blue for the last few days
and is replaced my monstrosity
of a 49 inch ultra wide desktop setup.
And this is my very first time using a desktop iMac.
So there's loads to talk about.
Let's jump into it.
All right, let's start by talking about the design.
Now, this is basically the main reason I wanted an iMac.
I was really trying to figure out like,
how can I convince myself to get an iMac
mostly because of the design,
it just looks so pretty.
As soon as I saw that it was available in blue
I knew that, ah.
I really want to replace my desk setup
with a more simple minimalisticy iMac in blue.
And thankfully, it's here now.
Because it's an iMac,
it's literally just a screen.
It's an all in one desktop.
And so you don't have like a box
or anything on the side
and you don't have all those cables to deal with.
If we look on the side,
it's ridiculously thin, like this thin.
Hopefully you can see that.
And then on the back,
I hope the cable doesn't come out.
It's like this really nice,
like dark blue color.
I'm kind of annoyed 'cause like this blue
is really, really, really pretty.
So I sort of wish I had a desk
that was facing into the room
so that the blue would be visible.
Sadly, in this budget two bedroom flat,
all I have is the blue facing the wall.
But hey, that's what the design is like.
There is this like lip area at the front
of the iMac which looked a little bit weird
when I first saw it.
But now it's really grown on me
and I can't really imagine it looking any different.
And this is where all of the components
of the actual computer are.
And it comes with this nice little little base
that lets you do this screen rotationy type thing.
It doesn't really go up and down or side to side,
but it does go in this particular angle,
which is kind of cool.
At the back there's only three ports to worry about.
There is the power cable cord thing
where the really nice velvet-coated
magnetized cable goes into,
so that's kind of nice.
And also on the back
we've got two Thunderbolt slash USB C ports.
Because this is the base model,
it's only got two ports.
I have the fully SPECT out version arriving
in like six weeks,
it's taking ages to arrive,
but that has four USB C ports rather than two.
All right, let's talk about the screen now.
And this screen is the best screen
I have ever used in my life.
It is a 4.5k Retina display,
which means it has a resolution of 4480 times 2520
or something strange like that.
But it just looks absolutely gorgeous.
Previously, I was using a 49 inch ultra wide
where the resolution wasn't that high,
it was 5120 by 1440 or something
but I could like see the pixels.
But now that I switched to this,
it's like I realized what I was missing on
and I don't think I could ever go back
to a non-retina display as my main monitor.
The screen goes up to 500 nits of brightness,
which looks something like this.
That's a pretty bright screen
and you can dim it all the way down.
And you can go all the way bright.
It does have a reflective surface
which is kind of annoying
'cause like occasionally if there's like broad daylight,
you can see the light from the windows reflected
in the screen.
It's not quite as fancy as the Pro Display XDR
that has the nano coating
that apparently gives it that matte finish.
But otherwise, I mean,
obviously it's the best screen I've ever used in my life.
And I can't see myself changing
to anything else anytime soon.
The only thing that was a little bit concerning
about this for me was the size.
So this is a 24 inch display.
For the last like four years I've been using
various ultra wides like 34 inch, 39 inch, 49 inch,
so I thought 24 inches would feel quite small.
And certainly when I first set it up
and I replaced my 49 incher
with a 24 inch, like basically half
of the screen real estate,
I thought, "Oh hang, on this monitor is quite small."
But within about 20 minutes
of using it my eyes adjusted
to the smallness of the screen.
And I don't really feel that, oh damn,
I wish I had more screen real estate.
I think if I was doing something
like a gaming and streaming,
or if I was doing something
like doing a Zoom presentation
and screen recording on one screen,
and then having a Zoom chat on the other screen.
In those contexts, I might want another screen
and I'm considering getting the Pro Display XDR for it.
But right now for most of the things
that I use a computer for 24.5 inches is completely fine.
It just looks amazing.
The Retina display is fantastic.
And I'm not finding myself missing my 49 inch monitor.
Okay, let's talk about performance.
Now, because this is the new M1 chip
we're expecting absolutely fantastic performance
across the board because the M1 chip
is absolutely amazing.
I have reviews of the M1 Mac Pro
and the MacBook Air over here somewhere.
And because I a wanna-be tech reviewer,
I decided to run a Geekbench 5 benchmark.
And the single-core performance was 1728,
which is a little bit higher
than the other M1 models.
But basically within the realms of uncertainty.
And the multi-core performance is 7708, whatever that means.
And you can see that compared to some other models
of the Mac.
I'll be honest, I don't really give a toss about
these Geekbench numbers.
It doesn't make any difference to me
and my life and most people's lives.
But I know some people are into those numbers
when watching tech reviews.
In terms of real world performance,
which is the thing that I care about,
like it's as good as the M1 chip is.
I have never once noticed a decrease
in performance or anything resembling slowness
on any of my Android devices,
not the MacBook Air, and not the MacBook Pro,
not the Mac Mini.
And also now not the iMac,
so that's nothing new.
It's kind of what you expect.
The only context in which I didn't like
the performance of the iMac
was when trying to play World Of Warcraft.
I was sort of able to play World of Warcraft
on my M1 Mac Mini,
at like two out of 10 graphics settings
at 60 frames per second.
But that was an Mac Mini that
was fully spec'd out.
So it costs about 2500 pounds.
This being the base model of the iMac,
it's got seven GPU cores rather than eight
and only one fan rather than two.
And I found that while trying to play World of Warcraft,
it was 30, 25 frames per second rather than 60.
And so World of Warcraft was basically
unplayable on this device,
whereas it was very playable on my old M1 one Mac Mini.
To be honest, I think that's just a function
of the fact that this is the base model.
And I'm hoping that in six weeks time
when my fully beefed up model arrives,
I'll be able to play while on it without any issues.
So overall, performance wise,
unless you're trying to play games,
you're not gonna be disappointed at all
with the performance.
And there are 1000s of videos on YouTube
where people show the power of the M1 chip
in video editing, and rendering, and graphic design,
and 3D modeling, and all sorts of really cool things.
So we're not gonna talk about that here.
Let's talk about sound now.
And in this realm of working from home
and having Zoom calls all the time,
a decent webcam and a decent microphone
is quite important.
This year they have upgraded the webcam.
And so the webcam is now a 1080P
FaceTime HD webcam or something like that.
And apparently they've upgraded the microphones as well.
So instead of taking my word for it,
here is some test footage.
All right, so this is recording on Photobooth
using the built in camera on the iMac
and the built in microphones.
What do you reckon?
I think it sounds pretty reasonable.
I think it's entirely reasonable for Zoom calls
probably not completely legit for podcasts,
which is why when I'm doing a podcast,
I'm gonna use my fancy as Shure SM7B.
But this is a bit of a pain to plug in,
I have to set it up on my desk,
I have to plug it into the preamp and all that stuff.
So broadly, for the most part
I'm gonna rely on the built in mics
in the iMac and the webcam.
And I'll just use this for podcasts and videos.
And finally, let's talk about the speakers.
So they've upgraded the built in speakers.
And honestly, they do sound pretty good.
They don't obviously compare to
these $300 set of speakers that I've got,
but when I was first setting it up
and I wasn't sure which ones were plugged in
and where the default sound was coming from.
I played a song and I kind of thought that,
oh, I'm not really sure whether these
are coming from the actual speakers or from the iMac.
And then what I did a side by side comparison,
obviously the actual speakers one out
but it was close enough in a way
for me to not really notice initially.
It wasn't obviously a bad set of speakers
that the sound was coming from.
So overall pretty happy with the way
the speakers have turned out.
Let's briefly talk about the ports now.
So as I said, this is the base model.
So it's only got two thunderbolt three
slash USBC ports at the back.
Two ports is not enough,
you do need more than two ports.
Basically, whatever your use cases are two ports,
I recommend probably not enough
which is why I use the CalDigit TS3 three
Thunderbolt hub dock type thing.
So that just plugs in via a single USBC cable
into the iMac.
And then I've got all of the other things
I need plugged into the dock.
So I've got the ethernet cable,
I've got my speakers via USB,
I've got my audio interface via USB C.
I've got my Elgato gambling
to plug in my proper camera via HDMI.
And community, it's got an SD card reader
as well for what I need to offload videos
and photos and stuff.
So if you're thinking of getting an iMac,
you will almost certainly need some kind of dock
if you want devices plugged into it.
And to be honest,
even when my fully beefed out iMac arrives
that's got four Thunderbolt ports,
two of them are USB three, two pf them are USB four,
whatever that means.
But I'm still gonna need the dock
because I still need USB a devices like the microphone
and the audio interface and the stuff
that isn't USBC all the way.
Moving on, let's talk about the accessories.
Now, the really cool thing this time around
is that they have color matched
the accessories to the iMac.
So I have the new blue magic keyboard
and the new blue Magic Mouse.
I don't have the trackpad yet, that is in order.
The keyboard comes in two varieties.
If you have the base model,
it comes with the one
that does not have touch ID built in.
But if you've ordered the specked out model,
which I've got coming in six weeks,
that will come with the touch ID keyboard
which is kind of nice.
This feels the same as the magic keyboard
has always felt.
It's great.
It's the single best keyboard I've ever used
in my life.
And it gives me the highest typing speed I've ever got,
which is 157 words per minute as my record.
157 words per minute.
There we go, world record.
And then we have the Magic Mouse.
Now, I have never been a fan of the Magic Mouse.
Anytime I use a Magic Mouse in an apple store,
I always think this is the worst thing ever
because it just feels so bad
and so non ergonomic compared
to like the Logitech MX Master three
or like the Razor Proclick.
But I've been using this for the last few days.
And it's kind of grown on me.
The gestures and stuff are pretty nice.
And once you get used to using it,
it doesn't actually feel all that uncomfortable.
So for me the jury is still out
on whether I'm gonna use the Magic Mouse
or if I'm gonna switch back
to the Razor Proclick which is more comfortable in the hand
and feels more pleasant.
But there's something really nice by the Magic Mouse,
the gestures are good,
the scrolling is really smooth.
That sort of back and forth,
you know, gestures are quite nice.
I don't know.
Maybe I might become a convert
to the Magic Mouse, who knows?
And they've got the Magic Trackpad as well.
Usually I have the trackpad on one hand on the left,
the mouse on the right.
And I use the trackpad for things like scrolling
and gestures and three finger swipe pop and all that stuff.
Sadly, it hasn't arrived yet.
So when it does, then that will be a staple part
of my desk setup.
All right, two more things to talk about.
And that is how spec'd up should you get it
and then my own personal thoughts
on what it's like to use an iMac
as a first time desktop iMac user.
Let's talk about the specs first.
So both models come with the M1 chip,
it's just that if you get the upgraded model
you have eight GPU graphics cores rather than seven.
To be honest, I'm not sure how much
of a difference they should make.
But given that my M1 Mac Mini
has the upgraded options and runs
World of Warcraft nicely,
and the base model with the seven graphical cores
doesn't run World of Warcraft nicely,
I suspect the upgraded model will actually
make a noticeable difference difference for graphics.
In terms of RAM, it comes with eight gigabytes by default,
there was a bit of controversy around,
do you upgrade ram from a gigabytes to 16 gigabytes.
Loads of people on the internet have been saying that
because of the M1 chip architecture
you actually don't really need to upgrade
to 16 gigabytes unless you're gonna be doing
sustained things over a long period of time,
or something like that.
I don't really understand the ins and outs.
It's only really a $200 upgrade.
And when you're spending 2000 plus dollars
on a device,
I think the ram upgrade is probably worth it.
So the one that I've ordered for myself,
I've gone for the 16 gigabytes of RAM.
And then in terms of the hard drive,
so this comes with a 256 gigabyte
solid state drive by default.
256 is not that much storage.
It's probably enough
if you're a light computer user.
It's probably enough if you're a student
and you don't do much video gaming,
you don't do much video editing or graphics
or anything like that.
But for me as a video person, as a video editor,
I basically need a two terabyte hard drive
otherwise my quality of life is severely impacted.
And so for the version that I've ordered for myself,
I've gone for the two terabyte hard drive upgrade.
But if you're not dealing with video files
that are absolutely huge,
then I'd say you're probably be okay
with the 512 or the one terabyte.
And you can always expand the storage
using those like Samsung T5 SSDs
that will plug into the thunderbolt cable
and be perfect for storage if you need any more.
And finally, let's talk about my overall thoughts
and my conclusion about the M one iMac.
Now, this is my very first time using an actual iMac.
In the past ever since since I switched to Apple
in like 2012, so nine years ago,
I've always had a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro.
And I've always connected it to an external display.
And I've always thought,
"Okay, that's probably fine."
Because when I was a medical student,
it made sense to have the same device
that I'd sort of grabbed put
in my bag, take two lectures
and then when I'd get home,
I'd just be able to plug it
into a screen and hunky dory, Bob's your uncle.
But then a few months ago in November of 2020,
when the M1 Mac Mini came out,
I switched my entire desk setup to the M1 Mac Mini.
So I had a MacBook Pro that I would keep
in my bag at all times
as my kind of traveling device.
And then I had a desktop device
that would be on my desk at home
that I would use for when I'm at home.
And obviously this costs twice as much.
It costs more to have like a desktop and a laptop.
But it was a big quality of life improvement
for me personally,
firstly on the video front.
Because often I'm uploading
large amounts of video files to my editor.
Back in the day when I only had one device,
a MacBook Pro, I wouldn't be able to really go out
of the house while I was uploading files
because I would need the MacBook Pro
to be plugged in via Ethernet
and uploading files to the editor.
So that's kind of like a nice use case,
but it but it's also very nice just being able
to keep my laptop in my bag at all times.
So now with my bag,
I literally just keep the MacBook in it,
I keep the iPad on it.
And it's got everything ready
to go for if I wanna go to a co-working space
or a coffee shop to do some work,
I know I can just grab the bag.
I know and never need to worry about,
have I packed my laptop?
have I packed my charger?
'Cause it's always in the bag
because I've had a desktop setup with a Mac Mini.
So that's why having a desktop setup itself
was really good.
But now in terms of my thoughts on the iMac.
I'm very pleasantly surprised
by how much I like it.
Before I go the iMac.
I sort of thought that okay,
I'm the sort of person who needs a 49 inch monitor
and I definitely need more than one screen.
And I couldn't really imagine
how I'd get anything done by just using a single screen.
But I found that it actually is surprisingly good.
It does encourage me to be more focused
and more like productive on the single thing
that I'm doing.
Whereas on my old 49 inch monitor,
I was often prone to trying to multitask,
like I'd have Slack open on
one side of the screen,
I'd have Safari and the other side of the screen.
I have like a Notes app in the other side,
Notion in the other side.
I bring up Spotify every now and then to play some music.
I was being like a productivity grease monkey
in the multitasking front.
But I found that with the iMac
over the last few days of using it,
I haven't really felt the need to try and multitask.
And I found that I am more able to focus
on one thing at a time with a small amount
of real estate.
Your mileage may well vary for this.
I know there are some people that can't work
without multiple screens.
And I'm sure I will get an extra screen at some point.
Just for those edge cases where I'm streaming
or doing a Zoom presentation
for my course, the Part-Time Youtuber Academy
and I need lots of screen real estate.
But for the most part,
I'm really really happy with the iMac,
and I feel like moving forward
I want my personal desk setups
to always have an iMac (chuckles) kind of,
yeah, for work, and for play,
and for all that cool stuff.
There's also something really nice
about the aesthetic of the iMac.
So because of the way the cable thing works,
it's as if just one cable plugged into the back
of the computer and then one cable connecting it
to the dock, and the way I've set up
my cable Management on my desk,
I basically don't see any cables at all.
Whereas in my old setup with a Mac Mini,
I could always see cables.
I always had to have the webcam plugged in.
There would just be a mess of cables.
And I've gotten so used to kind of messy cable galore
for the last few years.
It's such a breath of fresh air genuinely
to have just a single screen with a wireless keyboard
and a wireless mouse and not having to worry
about all of the cables that are in the way.
And I haven't used this for long enough
to know whether this is actually gonna make
a measurable difference in my productivity.
But it does genuinely make me feel more zen
and peaceful and focused when I'm
on my desk trying to do work.
And I guess it's one of those things
that when you're living in like this mess,
you just don't appreciate just how nice it is
to not have to worry about cables.
And so overall what I recommend the new iMac?
Yes, absolutely without hesitation
unless you are for example a student
and you're on a budget
and you already have a MacBook.
There is no need for you to then get
an extra iMac 'cause you're on a budget.
But if you can, then I think
it really will improve your quality
of life a little bit.
It is genuinely really nice having a desktop thing
separate to your laptop so you can just have the laptop
as the on the go thing and the desktop thing
as the thing that you do at home
when you're trying to be focused.
So thank you so much for watching.
If you like this video,
you might want to check out this video over here
which is my iMac desk setup,
completely revamped for 2021.
Thank you so much for watching.
I'll see you in the next video, bye, bye.