Review: The 2019 21.5-inch iMac 4K is iterative, not transformative
We've been using and testing the new 2019 iMac 4K for about two weeks now, and while the spec bump is greatly appreciated, an otherwise unchanged machine is more iterative than transformative.
2019 21.5-inch iMac 4K
For 2019, Apple debuted new 21.5-inch 4K and 27-inch 5K iMac models. While we will be reviewing the latter soon, here will focus on the former.
The overall design of the iMac 4K remains unchanged since its 2015 debut. There isn't an abundance of additional commentary we can add to this tried-and-true design, you like it, or you don't. You're fine with it, or you think that it's dated. Mileage may vary.
The thick black bezels are still surrounding that gorgeous 4K panel, and the same narrow, tapered design that we've seen since 2012 is here in all its glory. We don't think it's that the iMac has a bad design, we just feel that it could use some slight updates for 2019.
2019 21.5-inch iMac 4K vents
The speakers on this 21.5-inch iMac 4K are still great. For such a small and lightweight all-in-one, the speakers are loud, full, and don't distort in high volumes. There's plenty of bass, and while It's not an iMac Pro which sounds a lot cleaner and louder, listening to music at max volume can fill an entire apartment just fine.
Considering this is an all-in-one, most people will find these speakers more than suitable without the need for external monitors.
The display itself, as we mentioned, is gorgeous. It's still that LG-provided Retina 4K display with a resolution of 4096 x 2304 capable of supporting one billion colors. And, it's bright. It has 500 nits of brightness which is perfect if you're using this machine in a really bright environment. It also supports P3 Wide Color gamut which makes the display richer, more vibrant and capable of outputting lifelike colors.
This display is a perfect match for those who are in the creative field who wants an all-in-one machine that can display an accurate reading of colors. High-end color accurate displays are often quite expensive in their own right. It's not going to suit every creative pro in regards to color calibration, but it will cover nearly all of them without niche, very high-end needs. And, if you have those needs, you aren't really looking for an iMac screen anyhow.
2019 21.5-inch iMac 4K ports
Port selection on this iMac is pretty good for 2019, just like its bigger brother the 27-inch iMac 5K, you get a headphone jack, an SD card reader, four USB 3.1 type A ports, two Thunderbolt 3 ports, and a Gigabit Ethernet port.
2019 21.5-inch iMac 4K Geekbench 4 results
Performance on the base model iMac is decent. If you've seen our first impressions, you know that our base model iMac got a Geekbench score of 4819 in single core, and 14410 in multi-core. It also received a CPU score of 1472 in Cinebench R20.
Next, we fired up Unigen Heaven which is a gaming benchmark to test the graphics. With everything set to default, and quality in medium, we decided to run this test several times to find out how the Radeon 555X performs under load.
Our iMac 4K got a score of 749, and an average frames per second of 29.7 with a max FPS of 56.6. But, $200 more gets you a better processor and graphics card, and there is the more expensive Vega 20 graphics option as well if you're into that -- but we'll talk more about that in a bit.
The 2019 4K iMac will get the job done in regards to 4K video editing, but we don't recommend it as a main mover for that task. It's great for light video editing, daily computing, consuming media, and some light photo editing work.
We pushed this machine pretty hard, even running three simultaneous benchmarking tests, and barely got the fans to spin up. When they did, they were very quiet and we didn't notice them much at all during our time with the machine. We're still working on the iMac 5K reviews, and beefier processors will likely spur the fans on more, but in the case of this i3 base model, it didn't happen in daily use.
Our biggest hangup with this base-model iMac is the storage, but again, your mileage may vary. For what we use a Mac for, the 5400RPM Hard Drive is just unacceptable in 2019, but that isn't the case in the far larger buying population of this particular configuration.
2019 21.5-inch iMac 4K
At the very least, for $1299, the internal drive needs to be a 7200 RPM one. Plus, while Apple doesn't use them in any great volume, preferring its own PCI-E flash storage, SATA SSDs are so cheap now, we'd like to see that at this price-point, and feel that it would serve the "iMac as appliance" crowd that buys this model.
With that 5400 RPM hard drive, just like any typical spinning single hard drive, it takes a long time to load into macOS after a shutdown. In our case, it took well over a minute and a half for our machine to power on from a cold boot, and only slightly less for a reboot. As compared to flash media, loading apps or files is slow.
You can, however, configure this iMac with a Fusion Drive at purchase which can improve the performance a bit, or spend a bit more and get an NVMe SSD which is what we would recommend that most AppleInsider readers do. Your grandma may not need it, or even notice the speed on a SSD, though.
But, the issue with paying $100 or $200 more on non-terrible internal storage puts you at the same price point of the next tier model.
2019 21.5-inch iMac 4K
For the AppleInsider core audience, the biggest issue with the baseline iMac 4K is the speed of the storage. If you spend $100 or $200 to correct that, you are looking already at $1499 -- the same price as the next tier up. If you opt for that instead, you get a faster 1TB Fusion Drive, better graphics, and now a six-core processor.
If you absolutely had to get the iMac 4K, our ideal setup would be to get the higher-end 21.5-inch model and add a 256GB NVMe SSD at purchase to get better performance and stick with external storage via Thunderbolt 3. Alternatively, since the machine is stationary, get the big internal spinning metal drive, get either an external SSD, be it with a SATA to USB or NVMe to Thunderbolt enclosure and boot from that.
Giving the new entry-level iMac 4K an overall score is tough. The AppleInsider audience isn't the same as the target market for this machine, like we already discussed. While this machine is a solid 4.5 out of 5 for nearly all of the iMac-using population, if you're a regular reader, it's probably a 3.5 out of 5 because of that 5400 RPM hard drive alone.
For a full rundown of the latest deals and product availability, be sure to visit our iMac 4K Price Guide, which is updated throughout the day.
2019 iMac 4K deals
2019 21.5-inch iMac 4K
For 2019, Apple debuted new 21.5-inch 4K and 27-inch 5K iMac models. While we will be reviewing the latter soon, here will focus on the former.
Specs and design
The 21.5-inch 4K iMac that we're reviewing is the base model iMac that you can buy for $1,299 (or on sale for $1,249 at Amazon) and it features a Quad-core i3 Processor, 8GB of RAM, a 5400RPM 1TB Hard Drive, and it's also equipped with a Radeon Pro 555X with 2GB of VRAM.
The overall design of the iMac 4K remains unchanged since its 2015 debut. There isn't an abundance of additional commentary we can add to this tried-and-true design, you like it, or you don't. You're fine with it, or you think that it's dated. Mileage may vary.
The thick black bezels are still surrounding that gorgeous 4K panel, and the same narrow, tapered design that we've seen since 2012 is here in all its glory. We don't think it's that the iMac has a bad design, we just feel that it could use some slight updates for 2019.
2019 21.5-inch iMac 4K vents
The speakers on this 21.5-inch iMac 4K are still great. For such a small and lightweight all-in-one, the speakers are loud, full, and don't distort in high volumes. There's plenty of bass, and while It's not an iMac Pro which sounds a lot cleaner and louder, listening to music at max volume can fill an entire apartment just fine.
Considering this is an all-in-one, most people will find these speakers more than suitable without the need for external monitors.
The display itself, as we mentioned, is gorgeous. It's still that LG-provided Retina 4K display with a resolution of 4096 x 2304 capable of supporting one billion colors. And, it's bright. It has 500 nits of brightness which is perfect if you're using this machine in a really bright environment. It also supports P3 Wide Color gamut which makes the display richer, more vibrant and capable of outputting lifelike colors.
This display is a perfect match for those who are in the creative field who wants an all-in-one machine that can display an accurate reading of colors. High-end color accurate displays are often quite expensive in their own right. It's not going to suit every creative pro in regards to color calibration, but it will cover nearly all of them without niche, very high-end needs. And, if you have those needs, you aren't really looking for an iMac screen anyhow.
2019 21.5-inch iMac 4K ports
Port selection on this iMac is pretty good for 2019, just like its bigger brother the 27-inch iMac 5K, you get a headphone jack, an SD card reader, four USB 3.1 type A ports, two Thunderbolt 3 ports, and a Gigabit Ethernet port.
Performance
That new quad-core processor is the key to the iMac 4K upgrade. We're focusing on the low-end iMac 4K configuration which we believe is 65 percent of Apple's sales historically on the iMac.2019 21.5-inch iMac 4K Geekbench 4 results
Performance on the base model iMac is decent. If you've seen our first impressions, you know that our base model iMac got a Geekbench score of 4819 in single core, and 14410 in multi-core. It also received a CPU score of 1472 in Cinebench R20.
Next, we fired up Unigen Heaven which is a gaming benchmark to test the graphics. With everything set to default, and quality in medium, we decided to run this test several times to find out how the Radeon 555X performs under load.
Our iMac 4K got a score of 749, and an average frames per second of 29.7 with a max FPS of 56.6. But, $200 more gets you a better processor and graphics card, and there is the more expensive Vega 20 graphics option as well if you're into that -- but we'll talk more about that in a bit.
The 2019 4K iMac will get the job done in regards to 4K video editing, but we don't recommend it as a main mover for that task. It's great for light video editing, daily computing, consuming media, and some light photo editing work.
We pushed this machine pretty hard, even running three simultaneous benchmarking tests, and barely got the fans to spin up. When they did, they were very quiet and we didn't notice them much at all during our time with the machine. We're still working on the iMac 5K reviews, and beefier processors will likely spur the fans on more, but in the case of this i3 base model, it didn't happen in daily use.
Our biggest hangup with this base-model iMac is the storage, but again, your mileage may vary. For what we use a Mac for, the 5400RPM Hard Drive is just unacceptable in 2019, but that isn't the case in the far larger buying population of this particular configuration.
2019 21.5-inch iMac 4K
At the very least, for $1299, the internal drive needs to be a 7200 RPM one. Plus, while Apple doesn't use them in any great volume, preferring its own PCI-E flash storage, SATA SSDs are so cheap now, we'd like to see that at this price-point, and feel that it would serve the "iMac as appliance" crowd that buys this model.
With that 5400 RPM hard drive, just like any typical spinning single hard drive, it takes a long time to load into macOS after a shutdown. In our case, it took well over a minute and a half for our machine to power on from a cold boot, and only slightly less for a reboot. As compared to flash media, loading apps or files is slow.
You can, however, configure this iMac with a Fusion Drive at purchase which can improve the performance a bit, or spend a bit more and get an NVMe SSD which is what we would recommend that most AppleInsider readers do. Your grandma may not need it, or even notice the speed on a SSD, though.
But, the issue with paying $100 or $200 more on non-terrible internal storage puts you at the same price point of the next tier model.
AppleInsider's take
The way Apple has set up its iMac models makes it (likely intentionally) a slippery slope of upgrading and/or making concessions. The legacy iMac that is still available has a 2.3GHz Dual-Core Processor and an HD display for $1099, and we don't recommend that at all. Paying $200 more gets you the model we reviewed with a 4K display, a quad-core 3.6GHz processor, faster RAM, and better graphics. That is a no-brainer.2019 21.5-inch iMac 4K
For the AppleInsider core audience, the biggest issue with the baseline iMac 4K is the speed of the storage. If you spend $100 or $200 to correct that, you are looking already at $1499 -- the same price as the next tier up. If you opt for that instead, you get a faster 1TB Fusion Drive, better graphics, and now a six-core processor.
If you absolutely had to get the iMac 4K, our ideal setup would be to get the higher-end 21.5-inch model and add a 256GB NVMe SSD at purchase to get better performance and stick with external storage via Thunderbolt 3. Alternatively, since the machine is stationary, get the big internal spinning metal drive, get either an external SSD, be it with a SATA to USB or NVMe to Thunderbolt enclosure and boot from that.
Giving the new entry-level iMac 4K an overall score is tough. The AppleInsider audience isn't the same as the target market for this machine, like we already discussed. While this machine is a solid 4.5 out of 5 for nearly all of the iMac-using population, if you're a regular reader, it's probably a 3.5 out of 5 because of that 5400 RPM hard drive alone.
Where to buy
Apple's new 2019 21.5-inch iMac 4K is currently $50 to $150 off at Apple authorized reseller Adorama with coupon code APINSIDER. Prices start at just $1,349 for the CTO models after the coupon discount, with full step-by-step instructions for redeeming the code available in our savings guide.For a full rundown of the latest deals and product availability, be sure to visit our iMac 4K Price Guide, which is updated throughout the day.
2019 iMac 4K deals
- 21.5" iMac 4K Quad-core (3.6GHz 8GB 1TB FUS Radeon 555X): $1,349* ($50 off)
- 21.5" iMac 4K Quad-core (3.6GHz 8GB 1TB FUS Radeon 555X): $1,449* ($50 off)
- 21.5" iMac 4K Quad-core (3.6GHz 8GB 512GB Radeon 555X): $1,649* ($50 off)
- 21.5" iMac 4K Quad-core (3.6GHz 8GB 1TB SSD Radeon 555X): $1,999* ($100 off)
- 21.5" iMac 4K Quad-core (3.6GHz 16GB 1TB HDD Radeon 555X): $1,449* ($50 off)
- 21.5" iMac 4K Quad-core (3.6GHz 16GB 1TB FUS Radeon 555X): $1,549* ($50 off)
- 21.5" iMac 4K Quad-core (3.6GHz 16GB 256GB Radeon 555X): $1,649* ($50 off)
- 21.5" iMac 4K Quad-core (3.6GHz 16GB 512GB Radeon 555X): $1,849* ($50 off)
- 21.5" iMac 4K Quad-core (3.6GHz 16GB 1TB SSD Radeon 555X): $2,199*($100 off)
- 21.5" iMac 4K Quad-core (3.6GHz 32GB 1TB HDD Radeon 555X): $1,849* ($50 off)
- 21.5" iMac 4K Quad-core (3.6GHz 32GB 1TB FUS Radeon 555X): $1,949* ($50 off)
- 21.5" iMac 4K Quad-core (3.6GHz 32GB 256GB Radeon 555X): $1,999* ($100 off)
- 21.5" iMac 4K Quad-core (3.6GHz 32GB 512GB Radeon 555X): $2,199* ($100 off)
- 21.5" iMac 4K Quad-core (3.6GHz 32GB 1TB SSD Radeon 555X): $2,599* ($100 off)
- 21.5" iMac 4K 6-core (3.0GHz 8GB 1TB FUS Radeon 560X): $1,489 ($10 off)
- 21.5" iMac 4K 6-core (3.2GHz 32GB 512GB Vega 20): $2,799* ($150 off)
*Price with coupon code APINSIDER. Need help? Send us a note at deals@appleinsider.com and we will do our best to assist.
Plus dozens more 2019 iMac 4K deals...
Comments
The iMac 4K is basically a computer for space constrained people? Ie, their work surface is too small for the base model iMac 5K?
The only place I can see for this machine are kids’ bedrooms, but then it would be competing rather poorly with laptops. Even the secretaries at dentist, doctor offices, receptionists, use 27” monitors or 27” AIO these days. My banker uses, what, a 24” SFF PC to run virtual MS Windows environments off a server somewhere. Maybe there?
A lot of these virtualize environments don’t even need the internals of the classic iMac 21.5” with HDD even. Everything is gated by how fast the Internet or network is, and HDD would be just fine and dandy in those environments. Not a Mac market though.
Then don’t buy the cheapest 21” iMac, as the 27” all have Fusion or SSD. If you need the cheapest base model for some reason, upgrade the storage. Problem solved, something for everyone. Users like my dad are not performance oriented, and just want something to hold photos, surf, etc.
A Fusion Drive at least should be included in all the iMacs, especially when all the MacBooks and the old MacBook Air has an SSD and costs less than the iMac. They recently nerfed the Fusion Drive's SSD down to 64GB from the 128GB it used to be. Oh and even the top tier model that starts at £2,250 still has a hard drive. Apple's just taking the piss there. Plus upgrades to a SSD are ridiculously overpriced. Not only that, it's incredulous that the base iMac only has a 5400RPM drive. If that's not nickel and diming I don't know what is, and how you can try and defend that I dont know, and totally discredits anything you say.
A friend recently bought the base HDD iMac before the recent refresh, and it's so sluggish it's embarrassing. It's like a machine that's 5 or 6 years old. Hell, my 2012 iMac is faster than the HDD 2015 model she purchased in 2019.
Why is it so bad that Apple has this lower cost option for customers that are pushing for it? My guess is that education and other bulk sales, but I guess it could be entry-level Mac users or switchers, and if any of those help sell more Macs then what is there to be upset about?
exactly what I was going to say... like, it's an iMac.
In any case you're missing the point: for a machine positioned as the "best" configuration, to have only 8GB of RAM is verging on scandalous. People buying that configuration aren't doing run-of-the-mill Number/Excel/Pages work, they're power users. They'll almost certainly need more than 8GB RAM. Why do you keep making excuses for Apple giving customers a bad experience, for a company that can easily afford to stop ripping off its customers? I'm a big an Apple fan as the next guy, and I hold Apple shares, but I don't assume my use case is the same as everyone's, and I can see their flaws and ripoffs.
The point is if they're able to provide a SSD in the MBA for less than £1000, they should be able to in the iMac that starts at more than £1000; or at a minimum a Fusion drive across the board. Users want value, not cheap. A HDD isn't good value in a £1000 computer, and it makes the computer a bad experience for the user, reflecting badly on Apple. Oh and remember Apple doesn't even put a 7200RPM drive in them, when they're just a couple of quid more than the 5200RPM ones. You're telling me Apple's margins on those base iMacs are so thin they can't afford to spend a few extra quid per machine on a HDD that's noticeably faster? Maybe they should stop being quite so obsessive on the things that don't matter.
The first time I setup a friend's brand new base 21" iMac I thought it was broken as it took such a long time to start up. It was literally 10 minutes, and subsequent reboots took a good 6 or 7. If I got a new computer, PC or Mac, and it took 15 seconds to launch Safari/the web browser as that iMac does it'd be going back the same day. Funny how they never have those base iMacs on display in the Apple Stores isn't it?
This Dell is £1029, slightly less than the base iMac. It has an 8th Gen i5, newer than the iMac. It has faster RAM. It has a much better GPU, a Nvidia GTX1050 vs Intel Integrated. It has a 128GB SSD and a 7200RPM 1TB HDD. Still think the iMac should have a HDD? Granted, the display is likely to be better (though the iMac one is smaller, and neither are 4k)
The iMac is actually much closer to Dell's £749 offering. That still has a faster HDD, and faster RAM, though the graphics are slightly worse. Other than that, you get pretty much the same machine for £300 less. Of course you have to then deal with Windows, but Windows 10 whilst not exactly great, is nowhere near as bad as older versions. I love Apple, but the prices are just becoming ridiculous. The prices are markedly affecting sales, but for some reason Cook is obsessed with maximising profit, even if it means less sales and ultimately, less total revenue.
Oh geez I didn't realise they'd gone down to just 32GB now. That's a f**king piss take.