Pixels!….Pixels everywhere!!

Whichever way you look at it, the new display on the iMac Retina 5k has a lot of pixels! Simply calculated, 5120 x 2880 pixels means there are 14.7 million of them squeezed into the 27” frame and it’s by far the best looking ‘all-in-one’ computer that has ever been produced…. and here is why.

The actual look of the 27” iMac hasn’t really changed since its introduction back in 2013, and historically, Apple doesn’t go in for regular design changes for its products. Instead, it leans more towards ‘evolutionary’ change rather than ‘revolutionary’ change, with updates offering CPU upgrades, improved video cards, new hard drive and SSD options rather than the constant form factor updates that some manufacturers seem to prefer.

Anyhow….back to the display.

There are actually very few 5K displays actually out there right now. The majority of these are of the 4K variety, and they’re really nothing new, so even finding a competing 5K display is hard going for less then £1000 at the moment, so that alone is rather a feather in the iMac’s cap. If you’re a student, or possibly a teacher of apps such as Final Cut Pro or Photoshop, then the display benefits your workflow with additional space for your palettes and toolbars even after the main section of your display is filled with your big-screen blockbuster project.

It is worth saying at this point that the 5K display and its suitably up-spec video card are not going to be aimed at your hardcore gaming crew.  4K and 5K just isn’t on the radar yet and those really demanding, graphically rich games are struggling to cope with the lower 2560x1440 resolution at the moment so it may be several years away yet before we see the true gaming elite move to such amazingly high display resolutions.  This machine is really aimed at those who really need to work with much higher resolution work, and those in media studies, production or design departments will find that at last, there is a Mac that is aimed fairly and squarely at them.

Storage is an area that is constantly changing month on month, and the gradual infiltration of SSD drives into standard spec systems is beginning to make headway. There are still options on the 5K iMac to include a ‘regular’ hard drive, but the Fusion Drives and SSD products are becoming better value and its only a matter of time now before we see parity in pricing.

A big change in the current incarnation of the 5K iMac are the ‘Magic’ accessories. The wireless keyboard has lost its AA batteries and now sports a lithium battery and so has the mouse. Apple are looking towards one month battery life between charges which is a welcome increase. The new Magic Trackpad 2 is a very interesting change too. It is around a third bigger than the previous model but now it contains ‘Force Touch’ features.

Connectivity, as per all the previous variants of the iMac, is fantastic. There is the access concern which means getting up and leaning around to view the rear panel of the iMac, which in a classroom environment may not be helpful if you’ve got the iMacs locked down to the tabletop or mounted to the wall, but there are USB hub solutions out there and extension cable choices you could look into which would then enable users to plug in USB memory keys, peripherals and suchlike without too much physical difficulty.  This iMac is blessed with four USB-3, a pair of Thunderbolt-2, a Gigabit Ethernet and an SD card interface, along with a headphone socket which doubles up as an optical digital audio out, so for your students and establishments where good quality audio is essential, then Apple have this one well covered. In addition, there is 802.11ac WiFi networking installed and Bluetooth 4 so this is easily connected to the outside world.

So in conclusion.

This iMac is an amazing technological tour-de-force, and the 5K display really does set it above the rest. For those in educational areas where the extra resolution makes the difference, then there is no better machine than this on the market, and at the price point Apple have chosen it is sure to be a winner. In addition, with the configure-to-order choices that allow you to choose faster processors, faster and larger video cards, bigger Fusion drives and SSD drives too, then there is bound to be a configuration and setup for everyone.