Apple Macs are well known for their striking hardware designs, so it’s ironic that for the new iMac all-in-one PC its dazzling new design talking point isn’t even obvious while you’re actually using it. At first frontal glance, the new Apple iMac looks virtually identical to its predecessor. It’s only when you peek around the side that you notice the amazingly slim profile of this new model. See also: Group test: what's the best all-in-one PC?
Getting rid of the DVD drive helps of course, but a new lamination process has also helped to slim down the glass screen panel of the 21.5in iMac, reducing it to just 5mm thick around the edges. It does bulge out a bit more towards the centre of the back panel, but it makes the two-year old iMac in our office look decidedly chunky.
Apple iMac 21.5in (Late 2012): screen quality
There’s also a noticeable improvement in screen quality with the new 21.5in iMac. The screen itself remains unchanged – a 21.5in IPS panel with 1920 x 1080 resolution – but that new lamination process and an improved anti-reflective coating help to reduce glare and reflection quite considerably. Again, the contrast with the old office iMac is quite striking, with colours looking much brighter and richer.
It also runs a lot cooler than that old iMac. Even with various benchmarking programs thrashing away at full tilt the back panel never became more than merely warm to the touch. We couldn’t detect any significant noise from the fan or through the small heat vent at the back either.
Thankfully, Apple has finally updated updated the four USB ports on the iMac to USB 3.0, and there are two Thunderbolt ports also available, along with an SD card slot, ethernet and headphone socket. Sadly, though, this year’s model finally says goodbye to FireWire (and hello to the £25 Thunderbolt-to-FireWire adaptor). See: How to install extra RAM memory in the new iMac to save on Apple's high prices.
There’s no denying that Apple’s engineers have gone all-out with the design of the new iMac. It is, however, disappointing to see that the iMac is now even more expensive than ever before. We tested the ‘entry-level’ model, which has increased in price by £100 to £1099.
Apple iMac 21.5in (Late 2012): Ivy Bridge
This model gets an Ivy Bridge update for its Intel quad-core Core i5 processor, and a modest speedbump from 2.5GHz to 2.7GHz, along with 8GB of RAM and 1TB hard disk.
That i5 processor does provide plenty of raw horsepower for tasks such as photo or video-editing – aided, of course, by Apple’s bundled iLife software suite. Yet there are signs of compromise elsewhere inside that slimline chassis. The use of a 5400rpm notebook hard disk is a cost-cutting measure that has a definite impact on overall performance.
Boot time is a relatively sluggish 40 seconds. Using Boot Camp to easily install Windows 7, we ran the PCMark 7 benchmark software and saw a modest score of 2487. This test, as in real life, rewards faster solid-state storage with the higher scores we’re now seeing with SSD-based computers.
Apple iMac 21.5in (Late 2012): gaming performance
And, at this price, gaming performance could be better too. To be fair, the GeForce GT 640M graphics card with 512MB of video memory will be fine for a spot of casual gaming.
It only managed 27fps when running the Mac version of Batman: Arkham City at full 1920 x 1080 resolution, but we managed to bump that up to a smooth 40fps by lowering the resolution to 1280 x 960.
Interestingly, we generally got an extra 5fps when using the Windows version of Arkham City at similar resolutions – even with all the DirectX 11 eye-candy turned on – which indicates the difference in raw performance between the OpenGL and DirectX graphics APIs available to OS X and Windows respectively.
In any event, a machine costing over £1000 might be expected to have a beefier graphics card – especially as it doesn’t provide any expansion slots for future upgrades.
There is another 21.5in model available, with faster nVidia GT 650M graphics and 2.9GHz quad-core, although that takes the price up to £1240.
