Apple has announced a new, redesigned 24-inch iMac, featuring an M1 chip, a 4.5K display, and a range of color options, as well as an improved cooling system, front-facing camera, speaker system, microphones, power connector, and peripherals.
The new iMac features a completely new compact design, and comes in a range of seven striking colors, including green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, blue, and silver. Brighter colors feature a more muted front with an intensely saturated rear. The iMac's overall volume has been reduced by over 50 percent and is now just 11.5mm thin.
The iMac features a new 24-inch 4.5K display with slimmer bezels and 11.3 million pixels, in a design that is only slightly larger than the previous 21.5-inch model, and offers 500 nits of brightness, True Tone, P3 wide color, and an antireflective coating.
The 24-inch iMac is the first iMac to feature Apple's own custom silicon processor for the Mac, the M1 chip, after years of using Intel chips, allowing for a completely redesigned cooling system containing just two small fans.
Compared to the previous Intel-based 21.5-inch iMac, the new iMac with the M1 chip features 85 percent faster CPU performance, up to 2x faster GPU performance for certain apps like Affinity Photo and Photoshop, and up to 50 percent faster performance than the most powerful discrete graphics in the fastest 21.5-inch iMac.
The new iMac is able to take advantage of the image signal processor in the M1 chip and the Neural Engine to enhance the image quality of the 1080p camera with better noise reduction, greater dynamic range, and improved auto exposure and white balance.
The iMac contains a "studio quality" beamforming three-microphone array, as well as a more powerful six-speaker system that supports spatial audio with Dolby Atmos.
The iMac offers two Thunderbolt ports, and the 8-core configuration also adds two additional USB-C ports and a 1Gbps Ethernet port in the power adapter. The iMac also features a magnetic, two-meter long rear power connector, supports Wi-Fi 6, and external displays with up to 6K resolutions, such as the Pro Display XDR.
The new iMac comes alongside new peripherals, including a color-matched Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad, as well as an all-new Magic Keyboard with Touch ID for the first time.
The 24-inch iMac with 7-core GPU starts at $1,299, featuring an 8-core CPU, 8GB of unified memory, a 256GB SSD, two Thunderbolt ports, Magic Keyboard, and Magic Mouse, while the 24-inch iMac with 8-core GPU starts at $1,499 features an 8-core CPU, 8GB of unified memory, a 256GB SSD, two Thunderbolt ports, two additional USB 3 ports, Magic Keyboard with Touch ID, Magic Mouse, and Ethernet.
The new iMac comes in green, pink, purple, blue, and silver, with the yellow and orange color options being exclusive to the 8-core model.
Orders begin on April 30, with devices arriving in the second half of May.
