The iMac target market wants a sleek, well-designed, all-in-one solution. Not a computer, a monitor, a webcam and speakers. The latter could likely be a better value, overall, but it ain't about that for many iMac buyers.
This would just be taking the display from the next Apple Silicon iMac 27"/30"/32" and putting it in the XDR-style enclosure with a basic stand. Maybe it would cost a bit more than $999 but still a nice option to have.
The above LG could get close to this style from the front with a custom stand. Of course if the next larger iMac looks like that, it would be more cost-effective to just buy that and if they allowed display input, people could even buy iMacs to use as displays. $1799 wouldn't be a crazy price to pay just to use it as a monitor.
The iMac target market wants a sleek, well-designed, all-in-one solution. Not a computer, a monitor, a webcam and speakers. The latter could likely be a better value, overall, but it ain't about that for many iMac buyers.
I did, but they just priced it too high with a crappy neutered model on the bottom rung. After 15 years of iMac’s I now once again own a Mac Mini.
It is the same as marketing foolishness from years ago about 32 millions of colors while human eye can recognize about 300,000. Selling on technical specs does not pay off.
Says someone who apparently doesn't understand human vision or how computers manage color.
And actually, the human eye can discriminate up to ten million colors. However, since the gamut of a display is smaller than the range of human vision, this means this should cover that range with more detail than can be perceived. Then again, displays do not evenly distribute the colors in human perception space, so humans can see the changes between some adjacent colors as color banding. Monochromatic images set all three channels to the same value, resulting in only 256 different colors.
10-bit color is only 1024 steps per color channel, and one can still easily see color banding under many circumstances.
Can the new iMac 24” be used as a monitor to a PS5?
Not directly. You can always stream the video form your console to it, but that isn’t ideal.
Ok, thanks for the answer. So this use-case is yet another reason to read this article. I can’t be the only Apple user in the world with a PlayStation.
The Apple displays (in any Mac) differ from many 3rd party screens in being pretty darn good at everything. Colour, Light, dpi ++. That makes the displays expensive.
With a 3rd party monitor the users can pick the one that has the qualities most important to them, and wind down the specs that's less important. Therefore the user can save quite a few dollars, yet get something brilliant for them.
My take on the 24 is that it's small. True, it obviously is bigger than MacBooks but not that much bigger really - if you do much writing/documents++ You still stuck with 1 page. If you have the space for it, 16:9 32" (4k,140 dpi) is good for photo/film/Cad+++, and 21:9 34" (usually 110 dpi) or 40" (140dpi) is good for office work. I would not recommend below 27" be it iMac or anything else stationary. The user just won't get the extra productivity advantage.
Thus, stick to the Mac you have (if applicable) and get the monitor that suits your needs. Need new Mac? Get a MacMini or a MacBook Pro M1 if you need portability and good battery life.
...and get a decent monitor arm, even to your iMac 32".
I always wondered why they did not put the „Mac“ inside the base of an iMac stand in form of a Mac mini and simply produce the 24 inch screen only.
A VESA mount solution wouldn't be available in that case. The lightstand iMac used that approach. The base was round and Pixar used that image for their animated mascot.
Love my white 27" LG 4K monitor with thin black borders, and adjustable Ht. (no USB-C; ~$350 over 3 years ago) and would have a very hard time going back down to 24". Have it hooked up to my Late 2013 15" MacBook. I think the new iMacs look cool but would probably only tolerate silver or the blue (need to see in person). M1 MacMini will probably be my choice when upgrading.
Both iMac and Mac mini solutions are pretty cheap. I have never gone for an iMac simply because I like the idea of having flexibility with my home office setup. A Mac mini was a good option back in 2009 and I was able to keep it going for ~7 years with ram and SSD upgrades. The mini now seems less attractive because of the lack of upgrades but, say that, the new M1 model will have years of headroom based on its superior processor. If connectivity is your main concern, being limited to 2 screens with either an iMac or mini, should not be an issue for most people. A dongle can provide extendibility for most needs and USB-C hubs are cheap nowadays with plenty of options. My main concern for entry level Macs is the SSD drive size. 512 GB is really the minimum given that OS and applications can take a good chunk of a 256 GB drive. I've run into space issues with the smaller drive especially if you have legacy data that you do not want to trust to a backup. RAM for me is not as much of an issue but 16 GB would be preferable. In a way, if you want better aesthetics in a 2 monitor setup then the mini is the better option. You can then have 2 identical monitors and hide the mini. I like the option of being able to mount it to the back of a monitor. For a single monitor setup the iMac makes more sense if you can afford it. Still for me it would cost 1699 for a 512 GB SSD model with 16GB RAM. However you could upgrade the base model with 512 GB SSD for a total of 1499.
I've been trying to buy the newer Dell U3219Q monitor, which came out late last year, because it has a built in KVM to let me connect my two Mac Minis. However every time I go to the "Dell.ca" website to get one, it says "Temporarily Out of Stock." It feels like it's permanently out of stock.
I see it's out of stock on the US store also. I presume it's been out of stock since it debuted last year.
No it is not. Monitor in 24 inch size is way too small and it is ill idea of someone who does not understand principles of human vision. It is the same as marketing foolishness from years ago about 32 millions of colors while human eye can recognize about 300,000. Selling on technical specs does not pay off.
If you really want to squeeze more information on screen that is expressed with 4K resolutions then you need minimum 27 inch monitor or better: 32 inch monitor. Tiny fonts do not work when you have to start using eyeglasses to see them. 24 inch monitor is for 1080/HD resolutions and it is old standard at this point, but popular with many applications including some office work.
I wouldn't be so biblical about it, but yes at 24 inches 1080p is fine, although I would probably go 2K, like that very nice 25 inch u series dell and pocket the savings, or get a second monitor. Only because I have used higher res iMacs for so long and you do notice pixels at 1080p from 50 cm viewing. I too would only consider 4K a requirement at 27 inches or above. At the 24 inch size you would struggle to get anything else with the screen quality of the iMac anyway, and if you did it would be more expensive. The point of going the Mac mini instead would be to save money on a lower res screen that would still be perfectly fine at that size.
A mystery as to why Apple doesn't make an external monitor. I think I estimated that they could have made >1b USD per year with them. That's just 1m units per year at an ASP of $1000. That's about 5% of new Mac buyers, also getting an Apple external monitor at the time of purchase. Not userbase, but existing sales. Seems like easy money here as lot of MacBook buyers would love an Apple branded monitor.
The new iMac 24 is even closer to being a monitor, chin and all. A 23.5" monitor at 4480x2520, with 6 speakers, 1080p webcam, mic array, Ethernet, TB/USB4, and audio ports would be bonkers good. Sell it for $800 and it would be very competitive imo. You will not find a monitor like this from someone else. The only thing close is the LG UF27, which has an MSRP of $1300.
I considered a Mac mini for awhile. The biggest issue is that 3rd party monitors options suck. You will have to give up something, other than the LG UF27. The 21:9 monitors are nice options, but you won't get similar pixel densities, or a webcam, or a builtin dock. Even when the monitors are "4K" monitors, it's really 3.8K as virtually all of them use 3840x2160. Apple's iMac 24 has 36% more pixels. The iMac 4K has 14% more pixels than these 4K monitors. It was pretty dissatisfying to shop for 3rd party monitors.
A Mac mini with a LG 5K2K 34" was my choice if I had to replace my 2013 iMac 27. Not sure if the monitor is actually sold anymore though. Giving up on some sharpness. The only reason to get a Mac mini in lieu of an iMac 24 is really flexibility. That is, the option to change monitors down the road. The option to use monitors that you want. Perhaps another thing are the peripherals in the shape of a Mac mini, so they would be neatly stacked, like the OWC miniStack eHDD and various IO docks. Saving $200 on a computer that you use for 4 to 5 years is a poor savings of money IMO.
Comments
https://www.amazon.com/LG-32UL950-W-Ultrafine-Thunderbolt-Connectivity/dp/B07K8877Y5
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Double-49-Inch-Monitor-LC49RG90SSNXZA/dp/B07L9HCJ2V
But it would be so much better if Apple made more affordable standalone displays like the 27" Cinema Display that was $999:
https://everymac.com/monitors/apple/studio_cinema/specs/apple-led-cinema-display-27-inch-specs.html
The mini connected to the XDR display looks nice:
This would just be taking the display from the next Apple Silicon iMac 27"/30"/32" and putting it in the XDR-style enclosure with a basic stand. Maybe it would cost a bit more than $999 but still a nice option to have.
The above LG could get close to this style from the front with a custom stand. Of course if the next larger iMac looks like that, it would be more cost-effective to just buy that and if they allowed display input, people could even buy iMacs to use as displays. $1799 wouldn't be a crazy price to pay just to use it as a monitor.
Would save on a lot of landfill material.
The HomePod also failed in a the similar way (not having wired audio connections a stupid design).
And actually, the human eye can discriminate up to ten million colors. However, since the gamut of a display is smaller than the range of human vision, this means this should cover that range with more detail than can be perceived. Then again, displays do not evenly distribute the colors in human perception space, so humans can see the changes between some adjacent colors as color banding. Monochromatic images set all three channels to the same value, resulting in only 256 different colors.
10-bit color is only 1024 steps per color channel, and one can still easily see color banding under many circumstances.
That makes the displays expensive.
With a 3rd party monitor the users can pick the one that has the qualities most important to them, and wind down the specs that's less important. Therefore the user can save quite a few dollars, yet get something brilliant for them.
My take on the 24 is that it's small.
True, it obviously is bigger than MacBooks but not that much bigger really - if you do much writing/documents++ You still stuck with 1 page.
If you have the space for it, 16:9 32" (4k,140 dpi) is good for photo/film/Cad+++, and 21:9 34" (usually 110 dpi) or 40" (140dpi) is good for office work. I would not recommend below 27" be it iMac or anything else stationary. The user just won't get the extra productivity advantage.
Thus, stick to the Mac you have (if applicable) and get the monitor that suits your needs. Need new Mac? Get a MacMini or a MacBook Pro M1 if you need portability and good battery life.
...and get a decent monitor arm, even to your iMac 32".
It's worth it! Ergotron LX (or HX for 40") or this one: https://www.colebrookbossonsaunders.com/monitor-arms/ollin/ ;
I got a 32 4K with Ergotron LX and it's good, but the Olin is probably way smoother.
If connectivity is your main concern, being limited to 2 screens with either an iMac or mini, should not be an issue for most people. A dongle can provide extendibility for most needs and USB-C hubs are cheap nowadays with plenty of options.
My main concern for entry level Macs is the SSD drive size. 512 GB is really the minimum given that OS and applications can take a good chunk of a 256 GB drive. I've run into space issues with the smaller drive especially if you have legacy data that you do not want to trust to a backup. RAM for me is not as much of an issue but 16 GB would be preferable.
In a way, if you want better aesthetics in a 2 monitor setup then the mini is the better option. You can then have 2 identical monitors and hide the mini. I like the option of being able to mount it to the back of a monitor.
For a single monitor setup the iMac makes more sense if you can afford it. Still for me it would cost 1699 for a 512 GB SSD model with 16GB RAM. However you could upgrade the base model with 512 GB SSD for a total of 1499.
I see it's out of stock on the US store also. I presume it's been out of stock since it debuted last year.
I too would only consider 4K a requirement at 27 inches or above.
At the 24 inch size you would struggle to get anything else with the screen quality of the iMac anyway, and if you did it would be more expensive. The point of going the Mac mini instead would be to save money on a lower res screen that would still be perfectly fine at that size.
The new iMac 24 is even closer to being a monitor, chin and all. A 23.5" monitor at 4480x2520, with 6 speakers, 1080p webcam, mic array, Ethernet, TB/USB4, and audio ports would be bonkers good. Sell it for $800 and it would be very competitive imo. You will not find a monitor like this from someone else. The only thing close is the LG UF27, which has an MSRP of $1300.
I considered a Mac mini for awhile. The biggest issue is that 3rd party monitors options suck. You will have to give up something, other than the LG UF27. The 21:9 monitors are nice options, but you won't get similar pixel densities, or a webcam, or a builtin dock. Even when the monitors are "4K" monitors, it's really 3.8K as virtually all of them use 3840x2160. Apple's iMac 24 has 36% more pixels. The iMac 4K has 14% more pixels than these 4K monitors. It was pretty dissatisfying to shop for 3rd party monitors.
A Mac mini with a LG 5K2K 34" was my choice if I had to replace my 2013 iMac 27. Not sure if the monitor is actually sold anymore though. Giving up on some sharpness. The only reason to get a Mac mini in lieu of an iMac 24 is really flexibility. That is, the option to change monitors down the road. The option to use monitors that you want. Perhaps another thing are the peripherals in the shape of a Mac mini, so they would be neatly stacked, like the OWC miniStack eHDD and various IO docks. Saving $200 on a computer that you use for 4 to 5 years is a poor savings of money IMO.
https://www.apple.com/pro-display-xdr/