“Like many Apple products, the 21.5-in. iMac was refreshed just ahead of the holiday season, gaining a welcome Retina 4K display at the top of the model line-up,” Michael deAgonia writes for Computerworld. “‘ve spent nearly a month with one of these iMacs and can tell you this is an amazing bargain if you’re looking for a desktop Mac while still keeping a close eye on your budget.”
“The most interesting model is the $1,499 iMac with an a 3.1GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of memory, and the Intel Iris Pro Graphics 6200 GPU now powering a sharp and vivid 4K Retina display,” deAgonia writes. “The 21.5-in. iMac, like its larger 27-in. sibling (the one that offers a 5K-resolution screen), is still constructed from aluminum, with the enclosure tapering to just 5mm thin across the edges.”
“Though you will probably spend more money up front compared to Windows-based all-in-one options, you’ll save that money over the long haul, both in maintenance and longevity,” deAgonia writes. “The only thing I would recommend is to forgo the standard 1TB hard drive and opt for at least a Fusion drive, or, preferably, an SSD drive. The stock hard drive is a 5,400-rpm model, which is slow and doesn’t deliver an ideal computing experience.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple should not be selling Mac with 5,400-rpm hard drives in 2015. Period.