Review: Apple iMac 24in

The fourth member of the revamped iMac range from Apple costs a hefty £1,349, but it boasts the latest Core 2 Duo processor from Intel and a humungous 24in flat-screen display.
The image quality is superb – bright, colourful and finely detailed, thanks to its 1,900x1,200 resolution.

It’s complete overkill for most computing tasks, of course; you really don’t need such a sumptuous display for wordprocessing, surfing the web or mucking about with your home videos.

However, the iMac’s 24in widescreen display is terrific for watching DVDs. The iMac also includes a remote control and Apple’s Front Row software (the Mac equivalent of Windows Media Centre), so it’s a good option if you want to use the machine as part of your home entertainment system.

The display will also appeal to professional users working in magazine design, photography or video editing, and we wouldn’t be surprised if one of these ended up on our art editor’s desk somewhere down the line.

A new, bigger desk won't be required as the iMac’s all-in-one design manages to stay relatively compact at 42.6cm wide, 43cm high and 5cm thick. At 7kg, it’s not much heavier than some of the 17in laptops we’ve seen recently.

The iMac is certainly powerful enough for professional-level work. It’s equipped with a 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB Ram, 250GB hard disk and 128MB GeForce 7300 GT graphics card. That’s a pretty good specification, given that the 24-inch display alone would cost about £700-£800 if you bought it separately.

A decent set of additional features is thrown in as well. The iMac has a built-in webcam and microphone, Ethernet and wireless networking, Bluetooth support, two Firewire ports and three USB2 ports. The all-in-one design in cludes built-in stereo speakers with a 24W digital amplifier along with digital audio input and output.

Finally, there’s the bundled iLife 06 suite that Apple includes with all Macs, which includes iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, GarageBand music software, and the new iWeb for designing web pages.
The one feature that Apple might have added is a TV tuner.

Apple has always had a bit of a blind spot when it comes to TV tuners – presumably because they want to sell you film and TV programs via the iTunes Store instead (which is both cynical and annoying, as the iTunes video content is only available in the US).

The £1,349 price tag obviously puts this at the upper end of the home computer price bracket, but it compares quite favourably with the Core 2 Duo PCs that we reviewed recently.

Although some of the PCs have overclocked the Core 2 Duo, pushing the processor speeds to almost 3GHz, it’s the iMac’s 24-inch screen that is its real selling point, and we’ve rarely seen a machine in this price range with such a big display.

Apple is never going to compete with low-cost PC manufacturers on price, but there are encouraging signs that it is making more of an attempt to take on quality brand-names such as Sony and Toshiba.

If you want something a little more affordable, there’s a 20in model with a similar specification for £999, or the low-end 17in model. In short, the 24-inch iMac is certainly one of the most attractive home computers currently available.

Like this story? Spread the news by clicking below:

 del.icio.us     Digg this     reddit!