- So you may know that
I use a Mac at home,
not a desktop mind you a
laptop, I've got a MacBook.
Which until recently really
hasn't had any competition
from Apple as far as
a decent MacBook goes,
but that's not why we're here today.
Today, we're looking at this,
the brand new 27 inch iMac.
This is still Intel
base, which is gonna put
a few people off.
I know I'm not entirely sure
if I would buy one right now.
You know, maybe it'll
grow on me, who knows?
The box is basically unchanged
from the past 10 years.
It's got this kind of
trapezoidal design here
with a nice little handle,
the box already been opened
up by our warehouse staff.
We are going to review
this on Linus Tech Tips.
So without further ado, let's pop it open.
(soft music)
Yeah, it's not too much fanfare.
Okay, so we've got these a little
and then I'll kind of like wheel chocks.
In this one actually is
the nice flush sitting
Apple branded power cable.
And in this one, we
got our accessories box
inside of which we have magic
mouse and a magic keyboard.
And not much else, there is a little,
this is a cleaning cloth.
Let's see here, yeah nice,
actually really nice
microfiber cleaning cloth.
Single charging cable for
both the magic keyboard
and the magic mouse,
which of course still goes
into the bottom, one day maybe
they'll do wireless charging.
That'd be nice.
And there probably are
some stickers in here
if Apple is a creature
of habit and sure enough,
here they are.
So that's the accessories, let's move on
to the main event here.
Got this nice fabric key, I'm not sure
what this is to be honest,
it doesn't feel like paper
it's like cotton maybe.
It helps prevent any kind of scuffs
or other damage during
shipping, which is nice to see.
And we also have this,
well, it would have been
a lot tighter but I
actually took it off earlier
cause I wanted to see what was underneath.
And I think you will too.
When we had our Pro Display XDR review,
we ended up not opting
for the nano-texture glass
because that would have
delayed it by quite a lot.
But in this case, for
the first time an iMac
is getting that treatment
and it wouldn't have delayed
our shipment based on the
other specs that we had.
So why not, right?
Good a time as any to take a look at it.
There we go, yeah, look at that.
It's kind of a weird mix
between glossy and matte
cause like from this angle
I can see reflections
but if I, yeah, like
from this angle I cannot.
- [Andy] I have a reflection
but its got like matte film.
- Yeah, except it's not a matte film,
it's actually laser etched into the glass.
So it's at a nano level,
I'm not entirely sure
what Apple means by that,
but basically you cannot see
the individual little markings,
which I think is actually a better effect
just because you don't
get that sparkle so much.
At least I don't think you will,
plan to turn it on to find out.
Round back though, we've
got the usual suspects.
We've got headphone jack,
so it's not a very courageous
product, I'm sorry.
SD card slot, four USB
I believe 3.1 ports,
two Thunderbolt ports,
10 gigabit Ethernet Port.
This is upgraded to the 10 gigabit model,
just get a nice 10 Gigabit Ethernet
and yeah, you're pretty much cool.
Even if you just use WiFi for internet
and 10 gig for your NET,
it's still a lot better
than the alternatives.
And this here is the final peel.
One thing I've always liked about the iMac
cause they have these
removable Ram Bay covers.
So you don't have to
take anything else apart,
You just press a little button in there
and this panel just pops right off.
And underneath, we can see that we have,
I think that's four slots
with two sticks installed.
So that's really it for the outside.
Again like the box,
hasn't really been changed
since I don't know, 2011.
Let's get it plugged in and fired up.
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One thing Apple does really
well is the fact that
you just really only need one cable
and it just fits flush
right in here like this.
That's nothing new, but
I still think it's deep.
The magic mouse one had an indicator
whenever you turned it
on, this didn't have it.
How unfortunate, magic keyboard is on,
also doesn't have an LED, just
the little green bit here.
I guess that saves battery.
Hey, okay, I raise the bomb.
- [Robot] To use English
as the main language,
press the Return key.
- Cool, thank you for a matte finish,
like there's no fringing or anything.
Like it's a little bit
of a frosted effect,
but it's not that distracting.
I usually find like a heavy
matte to be really distracting,
so like I kinda actually
preferred the glossy.
One weird thing though
is that the webcam cutout
obviously doesn't have the nano texture.
So it just kinda like sticks
out like a sore thumb up here.
- [Robot] Press the Escape key.
- I thought I'd had my
fill with that Cortana,
but apparently not.
I mean, it's an assistive thing.
So like if you can't see very well,
if you have vision issues,
then having the talk back is good.
It's just really annoying
when you're just trying
to set up the computer.
Touch a sign in here, a bit of WiFi there,
verifying GarageBand,
come on Apple, who cares?
I mean, I'm setting the system up.
True tone, yeah.
Can't really turn it off
from here, I don't know why.
I'm just like, hey look at
this feature that we have.
It's something we
complain about every time,
but it's still annoying that
they haven't fixed that.
Let's put a more vibrant wallpaper on here
and see how the screen looks.
Yeah, that's pretty good, I
don't use iMacs too often,
so I'm not entirely up to
speed on how bright they get.
I feel like the MacBooks
get a little bit brighter,
I am off access though.
So I've got a couple of
little benchmarks download,
first let's take a look
at the system itself.
This is the Retina 5K 27
inch 2020, we knew that.
We've got a 3.6 gigahertz,
10-Core Intel Core i9,
that's the Core i9, 10, nine, 10, I think.
16 gigabytes of 2667 megahertz DDR4.
And the AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT 16 gig,
one terabyte of storage.
One of the new features of
the 27 inch for this year
is the addition of Bluetooth 5.0.
I don't think Apple has any 5.0 devices
aside from the iPhone, maybe the iPad.
Alright, let's throw
up Intel power gadget.
Yep, 3.6 looks to be about the frequency
that it would be a baseline
at, currently below that.
Temperature is 37 degrees,
I think it's like 21
or 22 in here right now.
Okay, Power Drum went way up above,
was like 150 almost, 145
ish, yeah, 155 actually.
Temperatures at 85.9, 86.9, 88,
oh, temperature is at 96.
Apple please, you are doing so well,
98 who runs over that's
what Apple's banking on.
The CPU is just not gonna have
to get that hot for very long.
Yeah, I don't like it,
alright, let's hit it
with a more sustained load
and see what the temperatures look like.
I don't expect that it's
gonna be very happy.
Prime 95 can't be opened
because Apple cannot check it
for malicious software,
who cares, let me do it.
Alright, we're at 160 Watts, okay?
I dropped out of hyper-turbo
and now it's just double-turbo 145 Watts.
Fan is not at maximum
speed hovering around 97
and 98 degrees right now.
Oh no, it just dropped down 94, 93, huh?
Maybe Apple's learned
something, still not perfect,
but I'll take that over cooking it.
So that's better than
I expected it would be,
but at the same time,
I'm still very concerned
about the longevity of this machine
cause this is a brand new machine
and it hasn't sucked
any dust into its fans.
You're not getting any
kind of cleaning solution
in there without taking
the whole thing apart.
Hopefully Arm fixes this problem,
Arm is a much more efficient architecture.
But if they can get this
kind of performance level ish
in like I don't know, 70 or 80 degrees.
That could market it as
the quietest Mac ever,
like the fans are running right
now and you can hear them.
At 70 or 80 degrees, the
fans wouldn't have it
running like this.
Finally, I wanna see how
this Radeon Pro 5700 XT
works in the iMac's enclosure.
Just throw key punch out at this kinda
like the Mac benchmark.
Okay, so a 16 inch MacBook
Pro actually got a score
that is a fair bit lower than ours
with an external 3700 XT.
So I would call that pretty good.
And this performance does come at a cost,
a pretty significant one.
This thing starts at
1799 U.S. and that's with
a six core processor
with eight gigs of Ram,
a 256 gigabyte SSD and a Radeon Pro 5,300.
This configuration with the nano textured
glass is $500, the 10 core processor
is another $400.
16 gig of DDR for that's another $200,
Radeon Pro 5,700 XT with
16 gigs of Ram another $500
and another $200 for the one terabyte SSD
and another a $100 for
the 10 gig Ethernet,
brings us to a brand total
of 4,199 U.S. dollars.
I can't recommend that,
but I can recommend
you check out the full review on LTT.
So get subscribed over
there and subscribe here
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