- It's so thin.
It's so pretty.
It's so light.
Apple doesn't really get into the performance
of the 24-inch M1 iMac
until over halfway down the product page.
And I get it, this is a lifestyle product.
I'm just supposed to be happy
it's available in my favorite color, but I'm not happy.
As it turns out, Apple quietly crippled the performance
of the entry-level tier
without disclosing it on the product page.
So I'm pretty peeved right now
to the point where not even an adorable pink computer
could cheer me up.
Although it is really cute.
Okay.
Maybe it's cheering me up a little bit.
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(upbeat music)
Apple designed the new M1 iMac
to be the first thing that catches your eye
when you wander into a big-box store
and spot it amongst a sea of silver and black monoliths,
its own previous generation iMacs included.
It's bright, cheerful, and fundamentally different
from what you'd expect from a computer
or even a computer monitor these days.
The thickness or rather the thinness is all inspiring.
And the all glass front gives the machine
an unusual flatness with no seems to disrupt the aesthetic.
Unfortunately, to achieve this apple needed
to provide an external power brick
for the first time ever on the iMac.
And surprisingly, it's not as cute as the computer itself.
I mean, if the appeal
of the machine is supposed to be
it's awe inspiring thinness and lightness,
I wish it was a bit smaller,
though the color matching cord does make the cable run
to the adapter itself, less intrusive
and what's more the optional Ethernet adapter
also lives here for perfect cable management.
This really is some cool stuff here, power and networking
both go through the braided cable
to a Meg safe as round plug that's keyed
so it can only go in the right way.
It's super easy to connect
and frankly also really satisfying
but it kind of raises the question.
What makes the ethernet go?
If you look closely, you can see a number
of contacts on the outer ring of the connector.
And this is where the signals are carried
at least from a physical standpoint.
But then logically, as far as the iMac is concerned,
it's just an extension of the M1 soC I0.
So it's not attached
to any of the USB or Thunderbolt controllers
which is both unexpected and fascinating.
There's not too much else for us to say about it.
Other than that, whatever Apple's done here
not having to worry
about Hopland capabilities probably made it simpler
since unplugging the ethernet adapter
would also cut power to the machine.
Then there's the elephant in the room, the bezels
it seems these white bezels surrounding the display
have divided both apple fans and haters alike
with many pointing out
not entirely incorrectly that having white
around your display can upset the eyes perception
of contrast on the screen, but because liking
or hating it is considered a hot take at this time.
I want to take a step back and try
to objectively examine the effect that apple intended
and the effect that it actually has.
Apple's stated intention
for the 24 inch iMac was to make it blend
in with its surroundings, not so much like a chameleon
so you don't notice it.
You notice it, but you're supposed to notice it
in a more organic way and less like it's a piece
of tech sitting on the table and Apple's history
of doing things like this goes way back
with the iMac G3 being a notable example.
At that time black bezels hadn't even caught on yet.
And we were still living with beige bezel CRTs.
Then through the early to mid 2000's
apple continue to differentiate itself
by using a purer white than anyone else.
And then in mid 2007
Apple followed the rest of the industry and moved to black.
This arguably was the first time we saw the now iconic black
and silver design language that apple has used up until now.
And how long they stuck with it is I think a big part
of what makes the shift back to later colors so jarring.
But if we're being honest
it's not as bad as it first appeared to be like,
yes I saw it and immediately went, boy, that's ugly.
But as Anthony was working on benchmarking machine
he noticed that, well, he just stopped noticing it
partly because the slightly off white was blending
in with the white wall behind to the point where
once he was focused on the display itself
it almost appeared to be floating
and the effect can be a little disorienting at first.
It's certainly easier to focus on a display when
it's surrounded by a distinct black border,
but after a while, neither of us found it distracting.
And you can just use dark mode if you want to
make it easier to distinguish.
So our new take is that coupled with the very pastel color
of the chin bar, the white bezel really does
make the screen pop.
And it does pop, peak brightness is 500 nits,
which is higher than most displays
that aren't HDR certified,
meaning that it is plenty bright enough
to be readable in a bright sunlit room
which especially in this yellow color seems to
be exactly where apple expected it to end up.
There is some panel uniformity trouble along the edges.
That's plainly obvious, especially off axis
but the panel is otherwise pretty solid with a four
and a half K resolution that is very retina at this size.
You will not be making out the individual pixels.
The speakers, meanwhile are
(upbeat music)
well, what can I say.
(upbeat music continues)
They are fantastic.
They're clear at any volume
with reasonably Boomi base for something without a sub
thanks to the large resonance chambers that apple squeezed
in behind the display.
And I mean, I don't know what else to say about it.
I shouldn't be that surprised given how good the speakers
on recent Mac books are
but I was still taken aback when I fired
up some 5.1 content on apple TV plus.
It's not quite the same feel
as surround speakers obviously
but the spatial audio effect was instantly noticeable
to the point where apple has managed
to give the iMac a much wider soundstage
than you would have ever expected
out of desktop stereo speakers.
I mean, let alone
that speakers that are thinner than a USB type A plug
and that fire downward into the surface of your desk.
It is truly impressive stuff,
even if it's not fully immersive or room filling
in the way that apple likes to claim that it is.
Meanwhile we claim to have the comfiest underwear around
also in a variety of colors, lttstore.com.
And of course we can't forget
about the new 1080 P webcam.
Jonathan over at our Mac address channel, go subscribe
if you haven't already by the way.
Did a test for his review.
And as you can see in both his and ours
the signal processing that Apple's doing
with their M1 soC does an excellent job
with this many pixels.
And that's particularly true compared
to the old 720P webcams that apple used
for so freaking long, goodbye and good riddance.
As for the new peripherals, they're a bit of a mixed bag
on the one hand, the colors match perfectly with the iMac.
And they're plenty pleasing to look at
but on the other fundamentally
they're the same as they've always been right
down to the lightening charging ports
and sometimes interesting places.
- [Anthony] Are you still going on about that?
- What? The fact that it's been stupid for so long
that the meme is dead.
That doesn't make it less stupid,
that makes it stupider.
Get subscribed by the way
because we're going to be investigating how not
all lightning keyboards are what they seem to be.
The new keyboard is the one thing
that's been genuinely updated.
It's slightly more rounded, the view of the designs
and it features a massive escape key
and emoji key that doubles
as the function key and a dedicated lock key
that on the upper end models doubles
as a touch ID sensor, that is huge.
Touch ID hasn't been a thing on the desktop up until now
and it is about damn time.
It works great
and it can even be used for fast user switching
which is a great addition for multi-user environments
like I don't know families or when Anthony
and Jonathan need to hot seat
at the computer to get their reviews out on time.
Hey, that sounds great Linus, I hear you saying.
But you spent five minutes talking about the design.
When are you going to talk
about the benchmarks, what about that?
The 24 inch iMac as it is right now is identical
to the Mac book pro and Mac mini in all about form factor.
And while we will be testing its thermal output
there's not much point in testing its performance
because we know what M1 is capable of already.
It's capable of whatever apple allows it to be capable of.
That's where things get a little thorny.
Not only does the base model have one fewer graphics core
as apple advertises on the product page.
It also has 50% as many fans
which means at least in theory
it could be more prone to overheating and thermal throttling
like the M1 MacBook Air and thermal throttle, it does
for CPU performance, our Mozilla Firefox compile test
has the lower end iMac taking a minute and a half longer
or about 7%.
Blender now has a native M1 version in 2.9 free
and while rendering with the M1 isn't a great experience
in the first place thanks to having
just four performance course, our properly coolant unit,
again manages a 7% performance advantage
in the short BMW blender.
And that extends to 8% over the longer Classroom blender.
Now seven to 8%.
That's not an earth shattering difference.
And over very short tests like cinebench and geekbench
it didn't even overwhelm the cooler enough to show up
and your grandmother certainly isn't going to notice it
while she's browsing Facebook
but it's not the size of the discrepancy that bothers me.
It's the poor disclosure.
I mean, it's not like apple doesn't know
that they saved $2 on a fan.
So why don't they want you to know, what is wrong
with letting your customers make an informed decision?
Yeah, this one's cheaper, but it's also slower, not just GPU
but also CPU because we didn't put in another fan.
Like they disclosed the lower GPU core count
which unsurprisingly contributes to lower performance
on the seven GPU Core model.
But interestingly, that lower performance wasn't as much
as we'd expect either, based on the specs alone
the difference should be 12 and a half percent
but we ended up with more like seven or eight
which indicates that either Apple is actually clocking
the course higher to compensate
for the missing core
or there could be some additional optimization
that's yet to be done on the eight GPU core model.
Hopefully gaming will help us shed some light on this.
And that's a bit of a mixed bag on the M1 too
the way that Intel puts it.
It's 100% less good than any PC, but frankly
that just smacks of sour grapes at this point
because it really does depend on the game.
I mean, it's true.
AAA titles, aren't a thing right now on M1
but we showed world of Warcraft and previously
and now that a dolphin port exists for M1
it's actually possible to play GameCube games as well.
And at high resolution
the eight core GPI Mac managed up to 4k Rez
with ethics AA enabled in games like super Mario sunshine
and Starfox assault with headroom to spare.
Although some games like Rogue Squadron three
won't run full speed matter what you do, thanks
to all the tricks that factor five used to make that game
what it is.
As for the 7 GPU core iMac, we couldn't quite do 4k
in super Mario sunshine running
just a hell below 100% speed.
So if you want to run that game
you're going to need to drop the resolution a little bit
or by the better eye neck.
Moving on to thermals,
when running a 10 minutes cinebench burden
both IMAX pushed the performance course
to a blistering 98 degrees peak, both machines
but that's not concerning.
As we've said previously
these sensors act more like a hotspot temperatures
because enough heat is going to be dissipated into the soC
by the time it's temperature is taken
but it's going to be down around
or even below 80 degrees with the low iMac hovering
around 85 on the hottest SOC sensor.
That is well within reason,
the fans do end up running full tilt
to maintain that temperature throughout our run.
But while they're audible on both machines,
they're not whining.
There's a whining and wishing kind of quality to the sound.
If you get your ear up close, but it's difficult to detect
from a sitting distance.
Surface temperatures also don't get uncomfortably high
which is a nice touch.
Get it, nice touch.
Anyway so what do I think about the M1 max?
Well, it's clear they're not for everybody.
I mean, you can tell from the design
the screen size and limited IO.
Yes my friends, the entry-level one is a desktop computer
with only two thunderbolt ports and a three
and a half millimeter Jack and the premium
non-managers just two more USB, three type C's
but for who they are for, it's tough.
to see many downsides other
than maybe needing Rosetta to run some of your applications.
And that's only true for now.
So for home use, it's probably going to turn a lot
of heads and the feature set is going to allow
enough everyday folks to make these things desirable
as for whether you agree with the aesthetic or not.
It's tough to deny that the performance is there.
Thanks to apples on M1 SOC it's just kind of too bad
that it's priced the way it is at $1499 for the model
with 8 GPU cores, it's more expensive
than an equivalent M1 MacBook pro and yeah,
the IMAX got a bigger screen
and a bit more IO, but the Mac books got a battery.
So you can take it anywhere as for my personal favorite Mac
the Mac mini, it offers identical performance
while costing less than half as much.
And okay, you need to supply your own keyboard,
mouse and display, but you can get all of that so much less.
So please y'all, don't buy this, get the Mac mini.
It has USB type A.
You can even get it with 10 gig networking, although, well
if there's anything I've learned after all these years
making tech videos it's that many
of you had already decided you were going to
buy this product before clicking the video anyway
and only a small handful
of you were even going to make it this far
into the point where I make a product recommendation.
You know what, Anthony
we need to find a way, we need like a time machine.
So we can go back and plant a subliminal message
at the beginning of the video
telling everyone who clicks it, that not to buy this
that the Mac mini is the better choice.
Do you think, is there any way we could do
- [Anthony] We can make it happen.
- Maybe we could.
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Thanks for watching guys.
Go check out the Mac address review of the 24 inch iMac M1
to get a more apple user take on things.
It does touch on a lot of great points that often get missed
and more like technical overviews like this one.