The launch of the new Apple MacBook Pro range a few months ago may have spoiled the surprise for the rest of Apple’s updates, but there’s no doubt most of us at PC Pro were far more excited to see Sandy Bridge make its way into Apple’s beautiful 27in iMac than in its laptops.
Sure enough, it’s now a suitably powerful beast to complement its glorious screen. The shift to Sandy Bridge brings a choice of new processors: the 27in iMac comes with either a 2.7GHz Core i5-2500S or a 3.1GHz Core i5-2400, with the latter upgradeable to a 3.4GHz Core i7-2600 if you’re feeling really flush.
Apple sent us the cheapest model for this review and, aided by 4GB of 1,333MHz DDR3 RAM and a fast 7,200rpm hard disk, the low-power Core i5 coped admirably with our real-world benchmarks. An overall score of 0.83 can’t compete with the latest blisteringly quick desktop PCs, but it trounces the previous fastest all-in-one we’ve tested by a good 10%. It’s a quad-core CPU, so it also coasted through the Multitasking segment with a solid score of 0.76.
The AMD graphics chip has seen an upgrade to the latest generation, inching the iMac closer to being a genuine entertainment machine as well as a do-it-all professional solution. The Radeon HD 6770 powered through our Low and Medium Crysis tests with ease, and managed a creditable 26fps at 1,920 x 1,080 and High settings.
It’s not quite powerful enough for real high-resolution gaming, though: if you want to play at the screen’s native 2,560 x 1,440, you’ll have to lower those settings to Medium, at which point it averaged a playable 32fps. Crysis aside, less demanding games should run at 1080p with few problems, and you may even be able to bump more mainstream games up to native resolution at their highest settings.
There’s still no Blu-ray option – we can understand it not coming as standard but it seems petty to exclude it from the upgrade path completely – but the iMac handled all our HD video smoothly. The FaceTime HD webcam also supports chat with other capable devices, although you’ll be limited by the resolution of the camera at the other end – don’t expect an iPhone user to look as good on your screen as you do on theirs.
As for that non-surprise, the iMac now comes equipped with Thunderbolt ports – one on the 21in models, two on the larger versions – in time for the first compatible RAID arrays to hit the shelves in the coming month or two. You’ll also be able to use the iMac as a second display for your MacBook Pro. It’s a nod to the future for now, but Apple looks to be putting its weight behind Thunderbolt over USB 3, at least for now.
The 27in IPS panel is as glorious as ever, with its 2,560 x 1,440 resolution rendering high-resolution images pin-sharp and displaying 1080p video with a panache that makes us yearn for that Blu-ray drive. It’s very reflective and it has a tendency to crush dark greys into black in images and videos, but that’s how it produces its fabulous contrast and vibrancy.
The rest is pretty much unchanged, with the excellent 17W speakers producing easily enough oomph for movie watching. The familiar Wireless Keyboard now comes with a choice at purchase of either the Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad, and you get OS X Snow Leopard pre-installed. Boot Camp works pretty much flawlessly now too, for dual-booting into Windows.
We still have a few issues with the iMac, though. With such a large, obstructive screen in front of you, the positioning of the USB ports on the rear makes no sense other than to satisfy Apple’s insistence on clean lines. And the top of the chassis gets exceedingly hot: using an IR thermometer, we measured the metal at 59°C during intensive tasks, which is the price you pay for the near-silent running.
Then there’s the price, but you know how that works by now. It costs precisely the same as the bottom-end 27in model last year, which is to say a 2.7GHz Core i5 CPU, 4GB of RAM and a Radeon HD 6770 is £1,399 inc VAT. The faster model is £1,649, and for once we reckon £250 for the step up to 3.1GHz and an HD 6970 looks fairly close to the correct retail pricing.
It goes without saying that the latest round of upgrades only make the 27in Apple iMac even more attractive. We’d prefer at least the option of a Blu-ray drive to go with the marvellous screen and speakers, and some USB ports within reach would prevent the occasional frustrating bout of desk-rearranging. But if you can afford it, it’s still the finest piece of all-in-one engineering on the market.
Author: David Bayon
PCPro
No comments:
Post a Comment