“The iMac with Retina 5K Display has, without a doubt, the best desktop display currently on the market,” Christina Bonnington writes for Wired. “With its ultra-high resolution 27-inch screen, everything looks exactly the way it should — text is sharp, colors are rich, and images appear true to life. But the machine doesn’t earn our highest rating on the display alone. It also has respectable processing capabilities that place it near the top of Apple’s desktop computer lineup.”
“There’s little more I could ask from a desktop machine. It sits at the top of Apple’s Mac offerings, bested only in processing power by the Mac Pro,” Bonnington writes. “Its display is the most beautiful, most pixel-packed screen on the market. If my desk at home were bigger, I’d buy one for myself.”
Read more in the full review here.
Related articles:
Engadget reviews Apple iMac with Retina 5K display: ‘In a league of its own’ – October 22, 2014
Wall Street Journal reviews Apple iMac Retina 5K: ‘Oh boy, will you want one’ – October 21, 2014
Preliminary performance analysis: Apple’s new iMac with Retina 5K display – October 21, 2014
Tim Bajarin: Apple’s iMac with Retina 5K display is a game changer – October 18, 2014
Apple’s matchless iMac with Retina 5K display is its most expensive ever – October 18, 2014
Apple introduces stunning 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K Display – October 16, 2014
Well, my desk IS bigger, or rather, my GF’s desk is bigger, so this is on my shopping list to replace her 2009 27″ iMac. Me, I’ll keep my late 2013 Mac Pro and Dell 4K monitors for now… wish Apple was making a nice 4K monitor!
Mr. Bonnington, why not just buy a new house to get the extra room for that new bigger desk and buy the top of the line iMac 5k so you can view all the photos of the new house, huge desk, and shiny new Mac!
If “Christina” is married, it would be VERY nice for her husband to buy her a new house!
If it were in a box that could be repaired and upgraded, the kit would be nice. In a sealed glued up piece of shit that screams throwaway, I’ll take a pass.
Good call. Go buy a Dell. That’s a not-glued-up piece of shit that you can upgrade and run Internet Explorer on for three or four years before you throw it away. The iMac will still be running long after that.
Plus, you can sell that iMac after three or four years, and get at least half of the original cost back. Mac’s don’t get “thrown away,” they get resold to the next appreciative owner.
the talk of a real pc guy.
I am typing this on a Mac Pro connected to an LED Cinema display, Sparky.
An iMac has been a laptop that sits on your desk since the days of the G5. Do you also consider a Retina MBP a “piece of shit”, because that’s just as upgradable as the new iMac (i.e. not)?
“piece of shit”, “screams throwaway”. Wow! I almost got taken in by Wired’s review – and numerous others. Thanks for setting me straight with that illuminating piece of precision logic.
For some a throwaway is fine- not at Mac Pro prices. Apple has taken what was once a user upgradeable computer and turned it into a fashion toy, trading skinny sides for repairability and upgradeability.
My 24″ mid-2007 intel iMac is still going strong. My mother-in-law liked my iMac and bought one of her own in 2008. Unknown to me, she experienced severe display problems after several years and ended up purchasing a new, 21.5″ iMac. Again, unknown to me, the 21.5″ iMac also ended up having severe display problems after a few years, and she paid $750 to get it fixed. So Macs, in general, and iMacs, specifically, are not perfect. I wish that I had known earlier – I would have steered her towards a Mac mini with an external display.
Why are my Macs working fine and she has two iMacs in a row that develop display problems? I believe that the answer is heat. When she is not using her computer, it operates as a digital photo display from dawn to dusk flipping through her iPhoto library. I am convinced that this eventually results in thermal failure of a component or solder joint.
Her old 24″ iMac still works if you use an external display and position the DisplayPort plug just right. Otherwise the display goes crazy with noise and lines. Every once in a while the display backlight turns on and, even more seldom, the built-in iMac display works for a few hours or a few days before going dormant again.
Don’t know, man. My late 2006 20″ iMac is still going strong running Lion with no problems whatsoever (and don’t get me started on my 2009 MBP that got run over by a Lincoln Navigator and is still our media Mac after 3 years). Guess mom-in-law must be hard on her machines. 😉
Unfortunately Apple has castrated the new Mac mini and turned it into another one of Jony;s fashion victims. The bottom access is now hiding behind a ton of tiny screws and under that you will find no slot for hard drives, despite having the space and soldered in memory.
What would Jony have to do with that? It’s not like the Mac Mini design is smaller or thinner.
No. No, you haven’t really evolved.
piece of shit
screams
throwaway
fashion toy
castrated
fashion victims
Well, you did use a couple of words that describe facts. But I’d suggest you’re way over the top on emotional loaded but empty terminology.
Calling it names really doesn’t give any of us useful information on which to agree or disagree. You might consider evolving your skills in making a point.
Still with my Mac Pro 2006, 9 GB RAM, 4 TB and upgraded AMD video card. Eight years and going well. My friends with PCs have changed their computers 3 or 4 times in the last eight years.
Looking forward for the next Mac Pro.
There is a Computerworld article by Gregg Keiser that seems rather negative to me.
5K Retina iMac supply tightens
While I agree that it would be nice for Apple to be able to satisfy initial product demand, high demand is not necessarily a problem. It means that customers want your product.
It is normal for product supply to be constrained when a new product is released. The timing represents a balance between an earlier release with constrained supply and a delayed release that provides more time to build up inventory. Seasonal factors – holidays, back-to-school, etc. – also play a factor.
Another consideration is that it is not always easy for a company to project initial demand. Apple appears to consistently err on the side of caution, resulting in product shortages at launch that diminish over subsequent weeks as the initial rush fades. Apple has the distinct advantage of mowing that the vast majority of its customers will wait, however impatiently, for that new Apple product and will not switch to Android or Windows in an attempt to achieve immediate gratification.
It would be great if Apple improved its ability to project and satisfy new product demand. But I would much rather have Apple’s “problem” than Microsoft’s problem where millions of Surface devices costing the better part of $1B.
“mowing” = “knowing”
I fell asleep before getting to the mowing part.
All the more impressive considering wired are are a bunch of idiot iHaters. Their enthusiasm for windows 8 and google glass should be etched in stone as a lesson to all of humanity. Shill money absolutely corrupts.
I fired up my beige G3 tower ca 1997 the other day. Worked perfectly. Don’t know why I have kept it, but it is fun to see old OS9 once in awhile. Some Macs are just indestructible.
I have a bunch of old ones too. A G3 Power Mac, a Power Mac G4, a PowerBook 520c, a G4 Flat Panel iMac. All of them still work. The only one with a problem is the battery in the 520c but it works plugged in. I don’t have the heart to throw them away.