New iMacs pack Iris Pro and 8 GB of DDR3, plus lots of ports -- at a relatively low price
Hot on the heels of its iPhone 5S/5C launch, Apple, Inc. (AAPL) has refreshed its iMac lineup. The new release brings fresh Haswell cores courtesy of Intel Corp. (INTC), new NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA) GPUs, improved Fusion drives, and impressive allotments of ports/DRAM.
I. New iMacs -- Tons of Ports
The iMacs -- for the uninitiated -- are Apple's all-in-one (AIO) personal computers. All-in-ones are a general term for computers that have the internals (motherboard, memory, CPU, GPU) squeezed into the monitor casing or its base.
Apple needed to make a move with the iMac. After dominating the AIO PC market for several years, in late 2012 Apple was bumped from its number one spot by The Lenovo Group, Ltd. (HKG:0992), who has since clung on to that rank. Apple is still ahead of perennial third place Hewlett-Packard Comp. (HPQ). But the latest bump may be just what the doctor ordered for Apple's bid to regain the AIO sales lead.
Whereas the Oct. 2012 iMac refresh was a bolder revamping of the iMac line, which saw the introduction of new 5 millimeter thick aluminum frames, this week's bump is filled with minor changes that make Apple arguably the best AIO PC value on the market.
The new iMacs all come with 8 GB (upgradable two 32 GB for 27-inch, 16 GB for 21.5-inch) of 1600 MHz DDR3 and a 1 terabyte "Fusion" drive, a mostly hard disk hybrid drive with an undisclosed amount of NAND flash onboard (upgradable to 3 TB traditional HDD, a 256 GB SSD, or a 512 GB SSD).
The iMacs come with a wireless "Magic Mouse" and wireless keyboard. On top of that they come with 802.11ac Wi-Fi and a wide selection of ports:
- SDXC card slot
- Four USB 3 ports (compatible with USB 2)
- Two Thunderbolt ports
- Mini DisplayPort output with support for DVI, VGA and dual-link DVI (adapters sold separately)
- 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45 connector)
- Kensington lock slot
II. Haswell, Iris Pro, and GeForce 700M Cards Offer Top Performance
In terms of processing power the base $1,299 USD 21.5-inch model trades last generation's NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M for the on-die Iris Pro GPU inside the Intel Haswell 2.7 GHz quad-core Core i5-4570R processor. The new processor can turbo clock up to 3.2 GHz.
Overall the new processor with its on-die GPU consumes only 19 W more than the last generation's Core i5-3330S processor, for a net reduction of 13 W of GPU+CPU TDP when the last generation's 32W TDP GeForce GT 640M GPU part is considered -- although it's worth noting that the on-die GPU part itself only saves 4 W (it has a TDP of 28 W) with the remaining savings (9 W) coming from improvements to the CPU cores.
Aside from being power efficient, the on-die GPU should be slightly faster than the GT 640M. Benchmarks have shown the Iris Pro (HD 5200) to be 10-15 percent faster than last generation's GT 640M, roughly neck-and-neck with this generation's GT 740M part, and 10-15 percent behind the GT 750M part.
The Intel part is a BGA design that is soldered to the motherboard, so there's no direct pricing information available from Intel. But given that the other members of the family retail for $192 USD (tray) versus $184 USD (tray) for the last generation, it appears that NVIDIA has next to no hope of competing against Intel's latest generation Iris Pro graphics on a price versus performance basis. Hence, Apple likely improved its margins substantially -- perhaps $50 USD or more -- from a hardware cost standpoint, while giving the consumers slightly better performance.
A bump to the slightly more expensive Core i5-4570S part (which bumps the turbo clock to 3.6 GHz) and a slightly faster NVIDIA GeForce 750M discrete card costs $1,499 USD. The i5-4570 has a tray price of $195 USD from Intel, while the GeForce is rumored to cost around $60 USD, based on bill of materials, so Apple is likely pocketing nearly $150 USD (if not more) for this modest performance bump. The good news for the customer is that if they're brave enough to want to disassemble their motherboard, the i5-4570S isn't a BGA part, so it may be upgradable.
The 27-inch iMac starts at $1,799 USD and gets a peppier NVIDIA GeForce GTX 755M and a Core i5-4570 processor (quad-core, 3.2 GHz standard, 3.6 GHz turbo). And $1,999 USD buys you an upgrade to a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M and a Core i5-4670K processor (quad-core, 3.4 GHz standard, 3.8 GHz turbo)
III. Well Priced in a Sea of Shoddy Competitors
Overall, though, Apple's prices for the 21.5-inch SKUs are surprisingly aggressive, compared to competitors. While competitors offer devices for as much as $500 USD less for a given screen size, they feature much weaker hardware, making them a pretty unappealing alternative.
For example the $1,299 USD Lenovo IdeaCentre does pack a 27-inch screen, but features a slower processor (the Intel Core i5-3337U 1.8GHz), less memory (6 GB DDR2), slower storage (a 1 TB HDD with no flash), no 802.11ac support, a far bulkier body (0.19 in. for the iMac v. 1.17 in. for the IdeaCentre), a weaker NVIDIA GeForce 720M GPU, and only 2 USB 3.0 ports. To be fair the Lenovo device does have a unique selling point -- it can act as a tablet, with stand-alone battery -- but like many competitive offerings it come up short hardware and design wise versus the iMac.
If you want a cheap AIO, Lenovo has a number of options that outsell the iMac, but for an AIO with premium design, a ton of ports, and decently powerful hardware, the rivals still has no real answer to the iMac.
Even those who want a Windows 8 AIO may opt to look at the new iMacs as an option via Boot Camp, which finally supports Windows 8.
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