Apple iMac 21.5-inch with Retina 4K display - Unboxing & Review

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up guys Mike here the Detroit Borg and today we're checking out the brand new 21.5 inch iMac with a retina 4k display now all the 21.5 inch IMAX have been updated the retina and non retina models so we get Broadwell processors Thunderbolt 2 faster RAM and new graphics processors but this video we're going to take a look at the retina 4k display which starts off at $14.99 that gets you a three point one gigahertz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor again that's broad well eight gigs of ram is standard but you can configure this up to 16 gigs and you cannot upgrade this yourself so you want to do it when you order your iMac it also comes standard with intel's iris pro graphics 6200 GPU which is integrated so no more dedicated GPU for this iMac and it also comes standard with a one terabyte 5400 RPM hard disk drive so that's kind of a slow drive and I would highly recommend upgrading to the one terabyte fusion drive which is only $100 more that adds a 24 gig SSD in addition to the one terabyte of hard disk storage which is used for booting the system and apps which significantly improve speed so get into the unboxing they make this very simple all we have to do is pull a tab along the top to allow us to open up the box which flips for and inside we'll find our nicely cocooned IMX just covered in tons of styrofoam first thing we want to do is pull out the accessory package so inside our accessory box we'll find all of our new magic accessories which includes the new magic keyboard and the new Magic Mouse - you can also replace or add the Magic Trackpad - and I've already covered those accessories in detail in previous videos which I'll leave linked in the description below so of course we have our magic keyboard wrapped in the sort of prostate plastic it's nice lightweight and ultra thin it also has an internal rechargeable battery so we no longer need to replace the batteries like we had to with the previous generation we also have our Magic Mouse - which again has an internal rechargeable battery and is charged via a lightning connector of course we also get a lightning cable for recharging those accessories so again after you is connect your accessories to your iMac and will charge it for you we also have our lyric packet which includes a Quick Start Guide some warranty information and a set of Apple stickers we also get a microfiber cleaning cloth for cleaning the glass display now interestingly this is no longer Apple branded as it usually has been in the past so getting to the Mac it's actually fairly lightweight weighs 12 pounds so I can easily pick up this package and remove it so we can get the box of the way once we have the iMac on our desk we can go ahead and remove all these styrofoam pieces now inside one of those styrofoam pieces is the power cord so I have to do is remove the plastic pull it out and we'll set this aside until we're ready to plug it in of course like all IMAX it's covered once again in this sort of styrofoam envelope which we have to peel off so all we have to do is peel off the flaps along the backside and pull up to set it aside but wait there is more so of course we have plastic covering the pedestal so I have to do is peel it off and lift it up so we can get it off entirely and then we have plastic surrounding the bezel and the front glass so I'm just going to go ahead and peel off the edges here and once I've done that the plastic sheet comes off neatly now in terms of the design it's pretty much unchanged from the previous generation which is just fine it's a really nice looking all-in-one computer but this all aluminum shell with this razor thin edge now of course it bows out toward the center to accommodate all the internals of the computer so long the back will find this pivoting aluminum stand and it's not spring-loaded like it is on the much heavier 27-inch iMac of course we also have this black Apple logo in the back which is actually part of the radio system here so we need some transparency through this aluminum for Wi-Fi to work through this computer and the Apple logo serves that purpose also at the center toward the top we'll find a set of dual microphones so again one face is toward the back and one faces toward the top and it's etched into the metal and is nearly invisible now take a look at our IO it basically looks the same but it has been upgraded here so we now have Thunderbolt 2 in addition to 4 USB 3.0 ports a Gigabit Ethernet port in addition to an SDXC card slot and of course a headphone jack which does integrate optical output if you have a compatible cable and along the left side you'll find your concave metal power button which has a really satisfying click to it also hidden behind these stand is the single fan exhaust vent so it keeps the computer very quiet and of course toward the standard we get our power port in addition to a Kensington lock just below it so if you want to securely fasten your Mac to your desk so it doesn't walk away you can do that with this accessory so while we're back here let's go ahead and connect our power cables so the power cable itself is angled slightly so it works with the pivot of the stand and it fits nice and flush flipping to the front let's go ahead and hit that power button together booted up for the first time so we can take a look at that really sharp 4k display so once again the display is covered edge to edge in this glass panel which has an anti-reflective coating which is a bit better than the previous generation in fact if you look at them side-by-side again you can see the tint here is much darker on the 21.5 inch iMac with a 4k Retina display then the non retina model from the previous generation but of course this is still a glossy display so you'll still see some of that reflectivity toward the top edge you'll find your FaceTime HD camera good for 720p videos basically the same camera from the previous generation we also have an Ambu light sensor and an LED indicator letting us know when the camera is active that's where the bottom will find our classic iMac chin of course we'll find our Apple logo toward the center but if you look down below you can see that Razer edge incorporates the stereo speakers and the ventilation it's really nice designed even though most people won't even see it and the speakers themselves sound really good it's actually kind of surprising you have a good amount of bass and dynamic range so they sound nice and clear and I find I really don't need to add external speakers with these I'm pretty satisfied with them overall now carefully laying our iMac down flat we can take a look at the underside of the PESTEL which is wrapped in this sort of plastic foot which allows the iMac to move freely across the surface without scratching anything and of course all of our regulatory labeling is hidden down here in addition to our serial number now getting to the most important part of this review the display so once again we have a 21.5 inch 4k Retina display but that actually means this has a resolution of 4096 by 2304 that's actually greater than standard 4k which also means it's using a custom timing controller the same one used in the 5k iMac that means this cannot be used for target display mode because it's higher resolution than standard 4k and the current Apple hardware can support this resolution over a single cable but this is a huge improvement over the 1080p display so if you look at them side-by-side you can see just how much clearer the 4k Retina display is compared to the 1080p of the previous generation but the other big story here is the color gamut so both the 27-inch and 21.5 inch have new back lights which significantly widens the color gamut of both display so colors are much more vivid in order to achieve this my switched away from standard white LEDs for backlight is now using red-green phosphor LEDs which expands the color gamut now Apple is actually calling this a p3 display that's actually a technology used for digital movie theaters so that means this display is capable of displaying more shades of red or green now checking out the performance of this new iMac on Geekbench we see a signal core score of 37 13 a multi-core score of around 12,500 now if we compare this to the original or the last time I reviewed the 21.5 inch iMac when they got this super thin design you can see it's a pretty significant jump we go from 3,000 to 3700 and 9,000 to almost 12,500 now in terms of graphics performance this is where things get interesting remember we now have integrated graphics instead of dedicated graphics so with Cinebench we can see our opengl score was around 46 frames per second and our cpu score was a little south of 600 but if you look at the 2012 iMac with dedicated graphics we're seeing a slight gain here generally speaking the graphics performance of the integrated graphics is pretty much identical to the performance of the dedicated graphics on the previous systems now the real impediment for this computer is the standard hard disk drive so if we look at the speed of the disk you can see the read and write speed are really low now if you compare this to more modern Mac's like the 15-inch MacBook Pro that computer has a read speed of around 2,000 Meg's and a write speed of around 1200 that makes a huge difference in terms of performance so you spent a lot more time watching your icons bounce on the dock as they load it also means you spend a lot more time looking at the spinning beach ball but once again if you get that one terabyte fusion drive that speed bottleneck goes away now there is a lot to like about this iMac with the 21.5 inch 4k display that's crisp and clear with bright vivid colors it's a fantastic display to spend a lot of time behind especially if you're reading text looking at photographs or watching video and now you can watch full 4k video from YouTube or any streaming service or if you're a video editor and you want to edit 4k video you can actually see it on your 4k display now ultimately think yet to be really careful about the pricing here at $14.99 you're only three hundred dollars away from the base 27-inch iMac with a 5k Retina display which gets you discrete graphics in addition to skylake processors and of course an even larger display with more resolution to work with so you really have to want this smaller form factor and once you add a one terabyte fusion drive which I highly recommend actually think that's a must he here you get even closer to that baseline 27-inch iMac but I think it's quite clear that like the 27-inch iMac this Retina display will be dispersed across the entire lineup so it should be a lot cheaper within a year but what do you guys think would you prefer the 21.5 inch 4k iMac or the 27-inch 5k iMac for only $200 more let me know in the comments section below so that's going to do for me in this video guys hope you enjoyed it thanks for watching and we'll see you again in the next onewhat's up guys Mike here the Detroit Borg and today we're checking out the brand new 21.5 inch iMac with a retina 4k display now all the 21.5 inch IMAX have been updated the retina and non retina models so we get Broadwell processors Thunderbolt 2 faster RAM and new graphics processors but this video we're going to take a look at the retina 4k display which starts off at $14.99 that gets you a three point one gigahertz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor again that's broad well eight gigs of ram is standard but you can configure this up to 16 gigs and you cannot upgrade this yourself so you want to do it when you order your iMac it also comes standard with intel's iris pro graphics 6200 GPU which is integrated so no more dedicated GPU for this iMac and it also comes standard with a one terabyte 5400 RPM hard disk drive so that's kind of a slow drive and I would highly recommend upgrading to the one terabyte fusion drive which is only $100 more that adds a 24 gig SSD in addition to the one terabyte of hard disk storage which is used for booting the system and apps which significantly improve speed so get into the unboxing they make this very simple all we have to do is pull a tab along the top to allow us to open up the box which flips for and inside we'll find our nicely cocooned IMX just covered in tons of styrofoam first thing we want to do is pull out the accessory package so inside our accessory box we'll find all of our new magic accessories which includes the new magic keyboard and the new Magic Mouse - you can also replace or add the Magic Trackpad - and I've already covered those accessories in detail in previous videos which I'll leave linked in the description below so of course we have our magic keyboard wrapped in the sort of prostate plastic it's nice lightweight and ultra thin it also has an internal rechargeable battery so we no longer need to replace the batteries like we had to with the previous generation we also have our Magic Mouse - which again has an internal rechargeable battery and is charged via a lightning connector of course we also get a lightning cable for recharging those accessories so again after you is connect your accessories to your iMac and will charge it for you we also have our lyric packet which includes a Quick Start Guide some warranty information and a set of Apple stickers we also get a microfiber cleaning cloth for cleaning the glass display now interestingly this is no longer Apple branded as it usually has been in the past so getting to the Mac it's actually fairly lightweight weighs 12 pounds so I can easily pick up this package and remove it so we can get the box of the way once we have the iMac on our desk we can go ahead and remove all these styrofoam pieces now inside one of those styrofoam pieces is the power cord so I have to do is remove the plastic pull it out and we'll set this aside until we're ready to plug it in of course like all IMAX it's covered once again in this sort of styrofoam envelope which we have to peel off so all we have to do is peel off the flaps along the backside and pull up to set it aside but wait there is more so of course we have plastic covering the pedestal so I have to do is peel it off and lift it up so we can get it off entirely and then we have plastic surrounding the bezel and the front glass so I'm just going to go ahead and peel off the edges here and once I've done that the plastic sheet comes off neatly now in terms of the design it's pretty much unchanged from the previous generation which is just fine it's a really nice looking all-in-one computer but this all aluminum shell with this razor thin edge now of course it bows out toward the center to accommodate all the internals of the computer so long the back will find this pivoting aluminum stand and it's not spring-loaded like it is on the much heavier 27-inch iMac of course we also have this black Apple logo in the back which is actually part of the radio system here so we need some transparency through this aluminum for Wi-Fi to work through this computer and the Apple logo serves that purpose also at the center toward the top we'll find a set of dual microphones so again one face is toward the back and one faces toward the top and it's etched into the metal and is nearly invisible now take a look at our IO it basically looks the same but it has been upgraded here so we now have Thunderbolt 2 in addition to 4 USB 3.0 ports a Gigabit Ethernet port in addition to an SDXC card slot and of course a headphone jack which does integrate optical output if you have a compatible cable and along the left side you'll find your concave metal power button which has a really satisfying click to it also hidden behind these stand is the single fan exhaust vent so it keeps the computer very quiet and of course toward the standard we get our power port in addition to a Kensington lock just below it so if you want to securely fasten your Mac to your desk so it doesn't walk away you can do that with this accessory so while we're back here let's go ahead and connect our power cables so the power cable itself is angled slightly so it works with the pivot of the stand and it fits nice and flush flipping to the front let's go ahead and hit that power button together booted up for the first time so we can take a look at that really sharp 4k display so once again the display is covered edge to edge in this glass panel which has an anti-reflective coating which is a bit better than the previous generation in fact if you look at them side-by-side again you can see the tint here is much darker on the 21.5 inch iMac with a 4k Retina display then the non retina model from the previous generation but of course this is still a glossy display so you'll still see some of that reflectivity toward the top edge you'll find your FaceTime HD camera good for 720p videos basically the same camera from the previous generation we also have an Ambu light sensor and an LED indicator letting us know when the camera is active that's where the bottom will find our classic iMac chin of course we'll find our Apple logo toward the center but if you look down below you can see that Razer edge incorporates the stereo speakers and the ventilation it's really nice designed even though most people won't even see it and the speakers themselves sound really good it's actually kind of surprising you have a good amount of bass and dynamic range so they sound nice and clear and I find I really don't need to add external speakers with these I'm pretty satisfied with them overall now carefully laying our iMac down flat we can take a look at the underside of the PESTEL which is wrapped in this sort of plastic foot which allows the iMac to move freely across the surface without scratching anything and of course all of our regulatory labeling is hidden down here in addition to our serial number now getting to the most important part of this review the display so once again we have a 21.5 inch 4k Retina display but that actually means this has a resolution of 4096 by 2304 that's actually greater than standard 4k which also means it's using a custom timing controller the same one used in the 5k iMac that means this cannot be used for target display mode because it's higher resolution than standard 4k and the current Apple hardware can support this resolution over a single cable but this is a huge improvement over the 1080p display so if you look at them side-by-side you can see just how much clearer the 4k Retina display is compared to the 1080p of the previous generation but the other big story here is the color gamut so both the 27-inch and 21.5 inch have new back lights which significantly widens the color gamut of both display so colors are much more vivid in order to achieve this my switched away from standard white LEDs for backlight is now using red-green phosphor LEDs which expands the color gamut now Apple is actually calling this a p3 display that's actually a technology used for digital movie theaters so that means this display is capable of displaying more shades of red or green now checking out the performance of this new iMac on Geekbench we see a signal core score of 37 13 a multi-core score of around 12,500 now if we compare this to the original or the last time I reviewed the 21.5 inch iMac when they got this super thin design you can see it's a pretty significant jump we go from 3,000 to 3700 and 9,000 to almost 12,500 now in terms of graphics performance this is where things get interesting remember we now have integrated graphics instead of dedicated graphics so with Cinebench we can see our opengl score was around 46 frames per second and our cpu score was a little south of 600 but if you look at the 2012 iMac with dedicated graphics we're seeing a slight gain here generally speaking the graphics performance of the integrated graphics is pretty much identical to the performance of the dedicated graphics on the previous systems now the real impediment for this computer is the standard hard disk drive so if we look at the speed of the disk you can see the read and write speed are really low now if you compare this to more modern Mac's like the 15-inch MacBook Pro that computer has a read speed of around 2,000 Meg's and a write speed of around 1200 that makes a huge difference in terms of performance so you spent a lot more time watching your icons bounce on the dock as they load it also means you spend a lot more time looking at the spinning beach ball but once again if you get that one terabyte fusion drive that speed bottleneck goes away now there is a lot to like about this iMac with the 21.5 inch 4k display that's crisp and clear with bright vivid colors it's a fantastic display to spend a lot of time behind especially if you're reading text looking at photographs or watching video and now you can watch full 4k video from YouTube or any streaming service or if you're a video editor and you want to edit 4k video you can actually see it on your 4k display now ultimately think yet to be really careful about the pricing here at $14.99 you're only three hundred dollars away from the base 27-inch iMac with a 5k Retina display which gets you discrete graphics in addition to skylake processors and of course an even larger display with more resolution to work with so you really have to want this smaller form factor and once you add a one terabyte fusion drive which I highly recommend actually think that's a must he here you get even closer to that baseline 27-inch iMac but I think it's quite clear that like the 27-inch iMac this Retina display will be dispersed across the entire lineup so it should be a lot cheaper within a year but what do you guys think would you prefer the 21.5 inch 4k iMac or the 27-inch 5k iMac for only $200 more let me know in the comments section below so that's going to do for me in this video guys hope you enjoyed it thanks for watching and we'll see you again in the next one\n"