The 27in Apple iMac features the same impossibly thin design as its smaller brother, yet somehow seems even thinner and more impressive in this larger version.
See: more reviews of Apple Macintosh computers.
The screen itself is really very impressive indeed, with its 2560 by 1440-pixel IPS screen delivering a near-perfect image with excellent brightness and contrast, and colours which are spot on straight out of the box. If you want an all-in-one for serious work on images on video, this is most definitely the one to go for.
Our review sample is the faster of the two 27in Apple iMac models available, and with plenty of optional extras added – hence the higher £2179 price.
This gets you the top of the range 3.4GHz Intel Core i7-3770 quad-core processor, 8GB of memory and a 1TB Fusion drive. This automatically stores your most frequently used files on an SSD while also providing a cache to speed access to the rest. This iMac takes the optional nVidia GeForce GTX 680MX graphics processor.
This combination delivers awesome performance, whether you’re running office applications, creativity suites or even games. Where the best of the rest struggled to reach 15 frames per second (fps) on our full-HD Aliens vs Predator test, the 27in iMac effortlessly turned in 43.9fps.
Our recorded score of 4114 points in PCMark 7 was excellent and it doesn’t even exploit the Fusion drive as the iMac doesn’t use the flash storage when running Windows. This gives Dell’s XPS One 27 Touch an unfair advantage here as its flash cache is designed for Windows use.
If you’re willing to cut back a bit on the fastest CPU and GPU, you can have a 27in iMac for £1499. This will get you a 2.9GHz processor, much slower graphics and a standard hard disk, and will bring the price more in line with an entry-level Dell XPS One 27.
The iMac is no longer fitted with an internal optical drive, so you may need to find an external USB drive.
