Don't you just hate overachievers? Like that good-looking, star athlete in high school, the Apple iMac, year after year, outshines all the other all-in-one (AIO) desktops—Windows or Mac—in its class. It gracefully sprints ahead in performance, and it looks good in just about any situation. (Grumble, grumble.)Still, we can't help but feel respect for, rather than jealousy of, this AIO computer. This time around, the iMac proves itself the prom king of AIOs, with stronger CPU and graphics power, along with the new Thunderbolt port that promises high-speed data transfer. We'd like to see some additional entertainment features to pair with the iMac's gorgeous screen, but we recommend this AIO to anyone focused on productivity and performance, and willing to work within Mac OS X.
With this first 2011 update of the iMac, each member of the new iMac line gets a strong boost in processor and graphics above 2010's machines. Apple is offering two 21.5-inch models. The $1,199 base model (our test unit) packs in a 2011-model 2.5GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor (from the new generation of Intel chips known as "Sandy Bridge"), a 500GB hard drive, and an AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics card with 512MB of discrete memory. For $300 more, you can upgrade to a 2.7GHz Intel Core i5 processor (also a quad-core chip), a 1TB hard drive, and AMD Radeon HD 6770M graphics with the same dollop of memory.
Apple is also offering two 27-inch models: a $1,699 version with the same specs as the higher-end 21.5-inch iMac, and, for another $300, a beefed-up model that features a 3.1GHz Intel Core i5 quad-core CPU, a 1TB hard drive, and AMD Radeon HD 6970M graphics with 1GB of dedicated memory. You can upgrade various components of all of the models at the time of purchase...for a price, of course.
Design & Features
While the guts of the iMac have gotten a compete overhaul, the exterior is almost exactly the same as the previous version. But that's certainly not a bad thing. Like all of Apple’s products, the iMac’s design is sleek and minimalist. It's encased in a single-piece aluminum enclosure much like the ones that the Apple MacBook Pro and Apple Mac Mini lines also sport, giving the whole Mac family a unified look.On the right side of the screen is an SD-card reader (which also supports the SDXC format) and a slot-loading optical drive. Unfortunately, the latter is not a Blu-ray reader, something that Apple has yet to feature on any of its systems. That's a shame, with this beautiful screen. Other than the power button, which sits almost invisibly on the lower-back-left side of the body, and a little patch of ports, you won't find any other features to interrupt the iMac's mostly bare rear panel.
On the rear of the iMac, you'll find a strip of ports, the power connection, a power cord, an Apple logo...and that's about it.
The super-spare design helps draw your eyes to the gorgeous 21.5-inch LCD, which is glossy and LED-backlit. Its wide-screen aspect ratio (16-to-9) and 1,920x1,080 native resolution make for an impressive HD viewing experience. Like all glossy screens, this one is prone to some glare off of ambient lighting, but the colors represent nicely, and, unsurprisingly, we noted no motion blur when viewing video. However, considering this beautiful screen, notably absent from the iMac—apart from the Blu-ray player—is an HDMI port. That would be useful for connecting a gaming console and making dual use of the display.
One new feature that comes to the iMac with this generation is a built-in ambient-light sensor. (It lives, almost invisibly, on the top strip of the screen bezel, next to the Webcam lens.) This sensor governs the brightness of the screen depending on the brightness of the room you are in. We applaud Apple for bringing this feature, which has been on its MacBooks for a few generations, to its desktops. (You'll know the value of this feature if you've ever tried looking at a bright screen in a dark room. Talk about an instant headache.)
The iMac’s body sits nicely on an aluminum base that provides a stable anchor for the rest of the body; it's the very same base as on the previous model. The screen is tiltable, and the adjustment motion is refined and smooth. There's no left/right swivel adjustment (apart from moving the whole machine, base and all), but Apple claims that its iMacs have a 178-degree off-center viewing angle, and that minimizes the need for fine swivel adjustments. (Based on our testing, we believe it; we noted no appreciable deterioration of color or viewability when we looked at both video and still images far off center.) Plus, the iMac is light enough to drag around your desk, if need be.
The iMac ships with either Apple's Magic Mouse or the company's Magic Trackpad.
You previously had to pay an extra $69 to get the Magic Trackpad separately; now, you can get it bundled with your iMac instead of the Magic Mouse, for no additional charge. The Magic Mouse works almost like the touch pad of a laptop. Looking like a tiny spaceship, the Magic Mouse has no buttons—or rather, like its MacBook touch-pad counterpart, it’s one big button. (Click here for our full review of the Apple Magic Mouse.) The Magic Trackpad, on the other hand, actually is the touch pad of a laptop, lifted off and made a free-standing peripheral. If you've used the touch pad on a MacBook Pro, you'll be very familiar with how this unique pointer works. (Click here for our full review of the Magic Trackpad.)
Along with the Magic Mouse, the iMac also ships with a wireless Bluetooth keyboard that adheres nicely to the Apple minimalist aesthetic. About three-quarters the size of a traditional keyboard (partly thanks to the elimination of the numeric keypad), it’s almost completely flat except for a rounded area in the back that holds the batteries and props up the keyboard slightly in the rear. Despite its diminutive body, we didn’t find the keyboard hard to type on. Like the mouse, it bears a striking resemblance to Apple’s laptops, with the Chiclet-style keys rising only slightly from the body of the keyboard. It's tiny and may take some getting used to, but if you're an Apple fan, it will definitely fit your style.
The super-thin keyboard comes with built-in Bluetooth and requires two AA batteries.
Apple's new 720p FaceTime HD camera lives in the middle of the top of the screen bezel, along with a camera-indicator light, which lights up to warn you when the camera is on. The FaceTime camera features three times the resolution of the iSight camera that came on previous iMacs. We first used the FaceTime camera when it made its debut on the latest line of MacBook Pro laptops, and we were immediately impressed with it. This could have been one of those improvements that might not matter to the average consumer, but we think the dramatic difference won't go unnoticed. As far as using the camera, we noticed no lag, and it performed well even in a dimly lit office. You can make FaceTime calls to other Mac devices that have a camera and the FaceTime app installed. (You can download the app from the Mac App Store for 99 cents; it also comes loaded for free on new iMacs and MacBooks.)
The built-in speakers are located on the right and left side of the underbelly of the bezel. They deliver a loud, bass-filled sound that could easily fill a small room. (As a matter of fact, our neighbor in our office asked if we were having a dance party in our office during our testing.) You'll want to consider hooking up some external speakers, though, if you plan on pumping music from the iMac to entertain at a party, as it doesn't quite have the sound to fill a large room
Connectivity
On the back-left side of the body is a single-file line of ports. From left, they are audio-in and -out jacks, four USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire port, a Thunderbolt connector (don't worry, we'll get to that probably unfamiliar one in a minute), and an Ethernet jack. In the middle, behind the base, is the power connection. The power cord snakes out through an opening in the base.
The iMac's ports include, from left: headphone and microphone jacks, four USB 2.0
ports, a FireWire 800 port, the new Thunderbolt port, and an Ethernet jack.
These iMacs are the first desktops to feature the Thunderbolt port, which replaces the mini-DisplayPort connector from previous iMacs. Thunderbolt is based on Intel's Light Peak technology, which supports both high-performance peripherals and high-resolution displays. You get one Thunderbolt port on the 21.5-inch iMac, and two on the 27-inch model, to support additional peripherals. (This means, for example, you can hook up two additional displays to the 27-inch iMac.) Apple claims the technology can provide data transfer at 20 times the speed of a USB 2.0 port, and, from what we saw during an Apple-administered demonstration the morning of this computer's release, we believe it. (We'd have tested it ourselves, but no cable or device was available for us to lug back to our labs. Estimates are, though, that Thunderbolt cables and compatible devices will be available in the late spring or early summer.)
The Thunderbolt port doesn't just work with Thunderbolt-equipped peripherals; it's also compatible with USB 2.0 and 3.0, FireWire, Gigabit Ethernet, VGA, DVI, and HDMI connectors via an adapter. (Adapters are expected to be available for each connection type soon. Keep in mind, though, that with the adapters, you’ll still be running at the speed of your original connection.) A final aspect of it is a serious flashback: The Thunderbolt port also allows you to daisy-chain up to six devices off of it, much like old-school SCSI.
The iMac's power cord runs through this gap in the stand.
Performance
While the outside of the latest iMacs may look identical to the previous generation, the inside has seen a wholesale component revamp, with more powerful graphics and CPUs. As we mentioned previously, our test unit was the base model of the line, built around a current-generation 2.5GHz Intel Core i5 CPU and an AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics card with 512MB of memory. The Sandy Bridge processors have already wowed us on the Windows side, setting all kinds of speed records at low system price points. And with this kind of power now backing the iMac, this machine blew its predecessor—and most of the competition—straight off the test bench in our testing.The first set of trials we ran tested the iMac's raw CPU performance. We started with our Cinebench 10 test, which stresses all the cores of a given processor in rendering a test image. The iMac scored 13,631, a 56 percent increase over the previous version of the 21.5-inch iMac. This number is also impressive next to comparable Windows-based AIOs. It bests the Gateway One ZX6951-53's score of 10,031, while it didn't quite measure up to the HP Omni 200 Quad's 14,658. (The HP Omni 200 was running a 2.8GHz Intel Core i5 processor, though, which we would expect to be a little faster than this iMac's CPU.)
Our next CPU-centric test was our iTunes Converstion Test, in which we encode 11 standard audio tracks from MP3 to AAC format. Here, the iMac's time of 2 minutes and 16 seconds to perform the test task beat the previous version's time by almost a full minute. It also handily beat the HP Omni 200 Quad and Gateway One ZX6951-53 by more than 20 seconds.
The new, more-powerful graphics in this line of iMacs also impressed us in our testing. With the previous version of the iMac line, Apple for the first time brought a dedicated graphics processor to its low-end iMac. This time, the trend toward better graphics continues with the AMD Radeon HD 6750M in our test machine. This bump up in graphics power prompted us to run one of our more intensive game tests on this machine in Boot Camp. We used the test game Far Cry 2, which has a built-in benchmark test; we achieved a frame rate of 29.4 frames per second (fps) on our 1,920x1,080 DirectX 10 run of the test. When we dropped the resolution to 1,680x1,050 (while keeping the rest of the graphics settings pushed to High), we got a more playable 32.6fps. (30fps is our typical threshhold for playability.)
What this tells us: You’ll likely have to dial back the resolution and graphics settings a fair bit in cutting-edge gaming titles, but this machine should make most current games playable. If gaming is a priority for you, though, we’d upgrade the system to one of the higher-end graphics-card options.
The FaceTime camera, ambient light sensor, and camera-live indicator are located at the center-top of the bezel.
Overall video-playback performance was solid. We watched a DVD copy of The Bourne Identity; the film displayed crisp and clear, with no motion blur to be seen. (We would have loved to have watched a Blu-ray disc, but as we noted, alas, there's no support for that.) MOV video files that we shot on our inexpensive Canon point-and-shoot camera also played back without glitches.
While this kind of performance isn’t up to the same level you’ll find in an Apple Mac Pro tower or another high-end desktop, this system delivers plenty of CPU muscle for multitasking, as well as demanding tasks such as high-end image and HD video editing. Professional users will, of course, want to step up to one of the faster CPUs for the time that they’ll save in rendering, but for everyone else, even this low-end model’s CPU should be more than sufficient for just about all mainstream tasks.
Conclusion
The iMac comes bundled with the 10.6 version of the Mac OS X Snow Leopard operating system, as well as iLife ’11 (comprising the superb iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, and GarageBand applications). The latter is as good a starter set of media-centric programs as you'll find with any modern desktop computer. The iMac also comes with a one-year limited warranty and 90 days of toll-free phone support. (An extended AppleCare warranty will cover your system for two more years; it costs $169 extra, and that upcharge was not factored into the cost of our test unit.)With a little new on the outside and a lot new on the inside, the 21.5-inch iMac continues to be our overall top pick for an all-in-one desktop computer. Dramatic improvements in CPU and graphics power send it hurtling to the front of the AIO pack, and its stylish design would fit perfectly in a living room as well as an office. Even though its improved graphics performance makes it a viable gaming machine, we'd like to see more entertainment features, such as an HDMI port or a Blu-ray drive. But as a productivity PC, the iMac is as powerful as it is beautiful.
