Now’s the time to finally upgrade that aging iMac sitting on your desk–because this morning Apple quietly announced an upgraded version of the popular 21.5-inch version featuring faster RAM, a beefier processor, improved graphics hardware, and a vastly-improved 4K display.
The 21.5-inch iMac’s upgraded 4K display (that’s a resolution of 4096 x 2304 for those of you keeping score) doesn’t just pack in more pixels, though. Apple also claims to have improved the screen’s color gamut, allowing it to display somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 percent more colors. That won’t do much to improve the experience of watching compressed YouTube or Netflix videos, but it does make the improved 21.5-inch version of the iMac a more viable (and affordable) option for photography or graphic design work.
However, if you prefer to work on a larger screen, Apple has also refreshed the 27-inch 5K iMac with the improved color gamut display as well.
On the inside the new 21.5-inch 4K iMac runs on a fifth-generation 3.1GHz Intel quad-core Broadwell processor with enhanced Intel Iris Pro Graphics, and RAM has been upgraded to 8GB of 1867GHz LPDDR3 that’s upgradeable to 16GB.
The 21.5-inch iMac will still be available in the older configurations for those needing a simpler machine that can handle basic office applications. But it now tops out with the new 4K model that starts at $1,500 for the base configuration.
