What can I say about the iPad mini 3 that hasn’t already been said? No, seriously, what can I say? Apple’s latest mini is essentially the same product as the first iPad Mini With Retina display with exactly four upgrades, only three of which are significant.
Apple’s iPad Mini 3 is exactly the same size and shape as the last model: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.29 inches. It still features a 2,048 x 1,536 Retina resolution screen, but did not get new screen technology so it's not as thin as the iPad Air 2.
Its four new features are the Touch ID home button, secure element for Apple Pay, iOS 8.1 and a gold finish option.
The last one is only worth mentioning if you care about a gold finish — oh, wait,a lot of people do. Fine. Let’s get this over with. Even though it’s not real gold, the iPad Mini 3 in gold-covered aluminum looks sharp and expensive. You can also choose space gray or white.
Still so good
The reality is, the iPad Mini With Retina was already an excellent mid-size tablet, easily my favorite. So I’m not terribly disappointed to see that Apple did almost nothing to change it. Rather, I am surprised.
Consider the new iPad Air 2 — released concurrently with the iPad Mini 3. It's noticeably thinner and lighter than the last iPad. It also has more powerful components, including that fully laminated, extra-slim, and incredibly good-looking screen. It seems that, at least for now, Apple is officially anointing the 9.7-inch iPad Air 2 as its flagship tablet. I also suspect that Apple may be trying to push the concept of productivity a bit harder than before, and no Apple mobile device is better equipped to handle word processing or image and video editing than the iPad Air 2.
That said, you can get a heck of a lot done with the iPad Mini 3. It actually has the same resolution screen as the iPad Air 2, which makes everything look super sharp.
Under the hood you’ll still find the 64-bit A7 CPU and M7 motion coprocessor. They’re just as effective at a multitude of tasks as before. Due to its size, the Mini is especially good for book and magazine reading, but it handles videos and gaming equally well.
Also unchanged is the iSight camera. It’s still 5 megapixels, which now further pales in comparison to the iPad Air 2’s 8MP iSight camera and the iPhone 6’s more powerful (better image sensor and image processing) 8MP iSight camera. iOS 8 does add some cool camera features like timelapse, but unlike the iPad Air 2, there’s no slo-mo.
The front-facing FaceTime camera is still 1.2MP and capable of capturing 720p video, meaning it's unchanged from the last iPad Mini and matches the iPad Air 2.
Touch ID
The iPad Mini 3's new touch ID home button.
IMAGE: MASHABLE, CHRISTINA ASCANI
Aside from the gold skin, the iPad Mini 3’s only other visible difference is the Touch ID home button. I’ve loved this feature ever since Apple brought it to the iPhone 5S and am thrilled to find it here (and on the iPad Air 2). It’s a real pleasure to register fingers and then unlock the device with a press (to wake) and a touch to unlock and to use it to buy apps and make in-app purchases.
With iOS 8, Apple is extending the utility of Touch ID. Now third-party developers can access it, though few Touch ID-compatible apps were available for this review. Of course, there’s also Apple Pay.
Like the iPad Air 2, the iPad Mini 3 supports Apple Pay for in-app purchases. In the app for hotel booking site Hotel Tonight, you can use Apple Pay and Touch ID to book a room.
Understand, though, that Apple Pay would not work on either the iPad Mini 3 or the iPad Air 2 if they did not also include another new piece of hardware: the aforementioned secure element. It holds device-specific credit-card information and cannot be read by you or anyone else. The merchant gets the device-specific card number and passes it on to the credit card issuer, who connects it to your real credit card number. Thus, a transaction is completed.
A changing tablet landscape
The iPad Mini 3 ranges in price from $399 for the 16GB Wi-Fi-only model up to $729 for the Wi-Fi + LTE 128GB model. The previous generation iPad Mini Retina starts at $299 at 16GB and maxes out at $479 for a 32GB Wi-Fi + LTE model.
Interestingly, there is no 32GB model for the iPad Mini 3. The question you have to ask yourself is: How much is Touch ID worth? It’s really the only significant new feature. You'll get iOS 8.1 on last year’s model, the iPad Mini With Retina Display, which means you still get better email, messaging, photo management and Continuity with Yosemite Macs (start browsing a web page on the iPad, finish on the MacBook). You’ll also have the same performance and high-resolution Retina screen.
It is unfortunate that you can’t even get a 64GB iPad Mini Retina, but 32GB is just enough storage, and you do get some free iCloud space (5GB). And, no, Apple’s iPads do not offer upgradeable memory via microSD card like many Android tablets do.
Ultimately, the iPad Mini 3, like the iPad Mini before it, is an excellent mid-size tablet. I still prefer it for its design and mobile operating system over my second favorite mid-size product, the Amazon Kindle Fire HDX. But, there's no getting around the increasing value disparity. The 7-inch HDX offers a quad-core Snapdragon processor and starts at $179 for a 16GB model. Obviously, it lacks a rear camera (it has a front-facing one) and a fingerprint reader, but adds other consumer-friendly features like X-Ray to dive into the details of your content and May Day 24/7 tech support.
I just wish Apple had acknowledged that its new iPad Mini 3 is really still last year’s model and lowered the base price of the entire Mini line. It would certainly help it compete more effectively with products such as the Kindle Fire HDX. At $499 for the Mini 3, you're left wondering if you should just kick in another $100 and get the much more powerful and substantially larger iPad Air 2.
Apple has a great product here, but I don’t think it’s fair to charge a premium price for what clearly isn’t your premium tablet.
Apple iPad mini 3
The Good
Excellent screen and design •iOS 8/8.1 features, including time-lapse and Apple Pay •Touch ID fingerprint scanner adds convenience
The Bad
Minimal updates over last model, Relatively pricey
The Bottom Line
The iPad mini 3 is a great tablet, but so was the iPad mini With Retina Display. Can Apple really justify the premium price for last year’s (slightly updated) model?
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
The first iPad was a sturdily built, half-inch-thick, 1.5-pound device. In 2010, I thought it was remarkable. Today’s flagship iPad, the iPad Air 2, is smaller, lighter and much more powerful.
Apple’s tablet has been shedding weight and packing in components and features for years, and much of what Apple added in this update was expected: The new Touch ID fingerprint sensor in place of the traditional home button, a more powerful, 8-megapixel iSight camera and a new 64-bit A8X processor, which is slightly different and more powerful than the A8 chip in Apple’s new iPhone 6 and6 Plus smartphones.
What came as more of a surprise is that Apple managed to shave more than a millimeter of thickness off the tablet. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but the iPad Air 2 does, in fact, feel noticeably thinner than the first iPad Air and it is actually 30 grams lighter than the last Air on the Wi-Fi-only model.
Much of that space-saving came through a new screen. It’s still a 2,048 x 1,536 Retina display, but now it’s what’s known as a fully-laminated screen. Put simply, the layers that make up the touchscreen — LCD, capacitive touch layer and glass — are now one. The other byproduct of the new screen technology is that the images are closer to the surface and, when you’re touching the screen, closer to your fingertips.
By its very nature, a fully-laminated screen cuts down on refractions, which increase when there are gaps between the layers, and, as a result, builds up image contrast. Apple also added a new anti-reflective coating, in addition to the oleophobic coating that effectively cuts down on the visibility of fingerprints.
The result of all these display changes is noticeable. Even though the resolution hasn’t changed, images simply pop on the screen and, in my tests, the new coating did an excellent job. Is it 56% less reflective? That’s hard to say, but it did cut down the impact of an overhead skylight and high-hat light while I was watching a movie on the iPad Air 2.
Body matters
The new iPad Air 2 is just 6.1 mm thick
IMAGE: MASHABLE, CHRISTINA ASCANI
Despite all these changes, the iPad Air 2’s body still looks a lot like the first iPad Air. In fact, you have to look pretty closely to notice the key chassis differences. The aluminum body is still 9.4 x 6.6 inches. Unlike the iPhone 6, Apple’s iPad Air 2 didn’t get super curvy. Like the last model, it features a diamond-cut chamfer at the edge closest to the display glass.
There are some changes, though. The speaker grid along the bottom edge is now two rows of round holes. Apple upgraded the audio signal processing a bit, but they haven’t done a thing to improve what happens to sound when your hand is covering the speaker. To be fair, most of the time I used the tablet with a set of 3.5mm headphones (not included).
Also unchanged are the headphone jack, lighting port and button positions. Apple did move the mute/rotation-lock switch. At first this really bothered me because I always thought it was the easiest way to completely mute the device (app, notification and system sounds). Now I have to go into the control panel — I sweep up from the lower edge of the screen to bring it up -– to access the new silence option. I got used to this, but aside for the slimmer profile, Apple hasn’t really offered an explanation for why they removed that button.
Apple also moved both of the microphones. One is now right next to the iSight camera and the other is where the lock switch used to sit: Right above the volume rocker buttons. I did some FaceTime tests, but didn’t notice significant audio differences.
The iPad Air 2 is not only thinner, it features some subtle design changes, like the single line of speaker holes.
IMAGE: MASHABLE, CHRISTINA ASCANI
The other key difference is the home button. It’s now, like the iPhone 5S, 6 and 6 Plus, a Touch ID fingerprint scanner. You can use it to unlock the iPad Air 2 with any of your registered fingers, to complete app and in-app purchases, and with Apple’s new Apple Pay to buy products in retailer apps that support the system. While Touch ID is paired with a secure element inside the tablet's chip, there is no NFC support, so you won't be waving your new tablet over a touchless NFC kiosk at your local Target.
Registering fingerprints for Touch ID on the iPad Air is just as easy as it is on the iPhone, though the software now offers a bit more guidance during fingerprint registration. It now not only tells you when to place your finger on the sensor, but when to lift it as well. With iOS 8.1, Apple is rolling out third-party Touch ID access to apps like OnePass and LastPass. In other words, if the apps have a lock or passcode on them, you'll be able to use Touch ID to unlock them.
I especially enjoy using Touch ID to unlock the iPad Air 2, and if I pick up an older iPad I'm instantly frustrated by its absence. Touch ID to complete App downloads and in-app purchases is also quite convenient. Apple Pay was still rolling out as I started testing the iPad, so while I was able to add a credit card (the one I already use for iTunes), I couldn’t buy anything.
Components
Runnign Geekbench on the iPad Air 2 revealed some fascinating component details.
IMAGE: GEEKBENCH SCREENSHOT
Inside the iPad Air 2 is the new A8X chip. According to Apple, it’s 40% faster than the iPad Air’s A7 chip. It’s also a little more powerful than the iPhone’s A8 CPU.
To get an anecdotal sense of the performance, I installed a pair of console-level games: Asphalt 8 Airborneand Modern Combat 5: Blackout. Each of these games is notable for rich imagery and physics including smoke, water, rain, and reflections. The games looked and worked great on the original iPad Air and worked just as well — if not better — on the iPad Air 2.
Apple's A8X chips packs impressive graphics power. It handles the action game Modern Combat 5 (left) and all its atmospherics (smoke, water, reflections) as well as any console box and also impressively handled hundreds of distinct cherry blossom leaves in Epic Zen Garden (right).
IMAGE: SCREEN SHOT COMPOSITE
However, Apple isn’t just blowing smoke when it says the A8X is more powerful. I ran Geekbench 3 on both Airs and found that that Apple’s A8X has 3 cores (the A7 had 2) and that the multicore score for the iPad Air 2 is nearly double that of the original Air. The singlecore score for the iPad Air 2 is only slightly better than that of the iPad Air.
Even more interesting is how much memory Apple stuffed inside the slimmer Air 2. For the first time, we have an iPad with nearly 2GB of RAM. Not only will that speed up overall performance, it should help with multitasking.
There’s also a new M8 motion co-processor, which takes the task of monitoring motion sensors (gyroscope, accelerometer, compass) off the A8X chip's hands. It’s also, according to Apple, better at the job. Apple also added a barometer, the same sensor you’ll find in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. On those devices, it’s used to measure relative altitude and can tell, for instance, when you’ve climbed a flight of stairs. On the iPad Air 2, though, there is no Health App to keep track of this activity, so I’m not sure why it has a barometric sensor. Perhaps third-party companies will use it.
There are also new Wi-Fi and cell radios in the iPad Air 2. On the Wi-Fi side, Apple now supports 802.11ac MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output) technology. This can result in faster Wi-Fi performance, but only if your Wi-Fi router supports that standard, as well. For now, many home routers, which are supplied by cable companies, still do not. On the cell side, Apple promises faster LTE, but the reality is LTE is getting slower all the time because most of the towers are overloaded with an ever-increasing proliferation of LTE traffic. What I found is decent LTE performance when I had three or more bars.
On the Wi-Fi side, performance was good in my 802.11n home. One thing I did love is that iOS 8 and Keychain (Apple’s password management system), which is paired with iCloud, knew my Wi-Fi router’s password, so as soon as I entered my home I was connected. Now that’s convenience.
I spy iSight
These side-by-side images illustrate the differences between the Apple ipad Air 2 iSight camera (right) and the more powerful Apple iPhone 6 iSight camera. Both are 8 MP, but they are clearly not the same camera. Note the clarity and color richness of the iPhone six image compared to the iPad Air 2 one, which was taken moments later.
The original iPad didn’t even have a camera, so it’s no surprise that the tablet has always lagged behind Apple iPhone’s image-capture prowess. I also wonder if Apple held back the iPad’s camera chops to discourage people fromusing the large device as their primary camera. I can just hear them saying, “Buy an iPhone, you’ll love it as your go-to point-and-shoot.”
Nothing, it seems, can stop people from holding up an 8.9-inch tablet wherever they are to take a picture. Now the iPad Air 2 has an 8MP iSight camera. But before you start cheering, “We won!” remember that this isn't exactly the same camera as you’ll find in the iPhone 6, which is perhaps why it’s still flush against the iPad Air 2 body (the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus cameras stick out roughly a millimeter).
This is a panorama (not full size) taken with the iPad Air 2. While it does a decent job, the exposure control is not as good as it is with the iPhone 6.
The new FaceTime camera essentially achieves parity with its counterpart on the iPhone 6. You get 720p video, as well as burst-mode photography.
iOS 8 and 8.1
Apple's iOS 8 is a great update that continues the work started with the drastic iOS 7 overhaul. The new OS add things like QuickType, which offers word suggestions right above the keyboard, great mail management tools like sweep to delete, a brand new Photos App complete with photo editing, improved and gesture-friendly Messaging, AirDrop between iOS and OS X devices, and iCloud Drive.
iOS 8.1, which was running on my test device, finally turns on Continuity, a seriously cool cross-platform technology that weds, for example, the iPad to your MacBook Air — as long as it’s running Mac OS X Yosemite. I could start viewing a webpage on Safari on the iPad Air 2, put the iPad down next to the MacBook Air and see a little icon on the desktop indicating that I had started an activity on my iPad and could continue it on the MacBook. I just tapped the icon and in an instant I was looking at the exact same webpage in Safari on the MacBook Air.
iOS 8.1 also brings back the Camera Roll. Commence cheering now.
Apple's iPad Air 2 has the power and performance to handle pro-level photo editing in Photoshop Touch.
IMAGE: SCREENSHOT, ADOBE
It's worth noting that a tablet of this size is excellent for productivity. In landscape mode, email gains the always-present inbox on the left-hand side of the screen. The iPad Mini and even iPhone 6 Plus get it, too, but managing and writing email on a screen this size is simply better.
Applications are not only larger, they can pack in a lot more information. I spent time working in Adobe Photoshop Touch, a powerful photo-editing app that’s designed for the iPad and really appreciated all the breathing room (not to mention the sheer editing power). When I paired the iPad with the Microsoft Universal Mobile Keyboard, it was a pure joy to use Microsoft Word for the iPad and write this review.
Battery life
Apple rates the iPad Air 2 for 10 hours of battery life. Using it throughout two days on a single charge and for a variety of activities, I got at least that much time. There is a lot of room for battery in a tablet this size, but Apple iPad Air 2’s battery is actually a shade thinner than the first Air, which makes it all the more impressive that it can still run for more than a day. Part of the credit may go to the now more power-efficient A8X chip.
Perspective
The Apple iPad Air 2 is, without question, the best iPad Apple has ever produced.
It feels light, but not flimsy, the screen is gorgeous and performance is impeccable. However, since the early days of the iPad, companies such as Samsung, Google, Sony, Acer, Asus, HTC and Amazon have jumped into the fray and some of them are meeting or beating Apple on the spec front.
Amazon’s Kindle Fire HDX 8.9, in particular, is at least 60 grams lighter than the iPad Air 2, though the iPad Air is, at 6.1mm, thinner than the 7.8mm HDX. I do wonder if Apple’s adherence to metal — even aluminum — is hurting them. Amazon uses magnesium and I can only imagine how light the iPad Air 2 would be if it switched to a similar alloy.
The Kindle Fire HDX is also running a 2.5GHz quad core processor. Apple's A8X CPU runs at 1.5GHz. But numbers can be deceiving. As I noted above, the iPad Air flawlessly runs the most punishing console-level games. Part of this is because the A8X also includes a powerful graphics processor. Apple doesn’t speak much about the raw numbers behind its performance beyond saying that it’s 2.5 times faster than the A7 GPU, but it’s clearly strong enough to run games with fairly intense physics requirements.
I’ve spent a lot of time with the first Kindle Fire HDX (a slightly updated and more powerful one is coming soon) and can say that it, too, performs well.
Apple’s App library is more extensive, but Amazon’s curated one isn’t really lacking for any of the key apps. Both tablets are strong performers when it comes to movie playback and content options. And while iOS remains my favorite mobile platform, I'm impressed with how well Amazon has suppressed Android’s sometimes confusing nature underneath its own Fire OS.
Apple doesn’t even beat the Kindle Fire HDX on resolution. The latest model has 339 ppi (pixels per inch), while the iPad Air 2 is at 264 ppi. Of course, image quality is more than just resolution and, as I noted, Apple’s new screen technology creates pretty spectacular imagery.
Price
I had hoped Apple would drop the entry-level price for the new iPad Air 2. Imagine what a blockbuster a $399 16 GB iPad Air 2 would’ve been. Amazon’s 16GB Kindle Fire HDX costs $379. It’s not as beautiful as the iPad and doesn’t meet the iPad or iOS 8 on every feature, but consumers may not care.
Moreover, Apple discarded the 32GB option, which means if you want more storage — really enough storage — you have to make the leap to 64GB for $599. You can, of course, go for the original iPad Air 32GB model, which costs $449, but if you’re like me, you want the latest and greatest technology (Touch ID is worth it).
Obviously, if you buy an iPad with cellular service, add roughly $129 to any of these prices. I still find that there’s enough Wi-Fi around, and tethering to your iPhone is so easy with iOS 8 that a cell-ready iPad isn’t really a necessity.
It boils down to this: The iPad Air 2 is still the best tablet on the market, but it comes at a premium price.
If you are married to iOS, there is no better choice. However, if you’re open to other platforms, you have to consider the Amazon Kindle HDX. It’s a tremendous value and you likely won’t notice all that you’re missing, including Touch ID, Continuity, slo-mo video, AirPlay and AirDrop, a truly vast app store and Microsoft Word for iPad.
Apple iPad Air 2
The Good
Beautiful, light and powerful •Incredible screen • Touch ID fingerprint sensor adds convenience
The Bad
Pricey • No lock/mute switch.
The Bottom Line
The Apple iPad Air 2 is the best tablet Apple has ever produced. It will please Apple fans, but may not have raised the bar far enough on tablet technology to hold onto its crown indefinitely.
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Putting aside everything else about the Retina iMac, the real story and the reason you're interested in this machine is the screen.
The iPhone 6 Plus notwithstanding, Apple tends to define "Retina" as a display that has double the pixels of the product's previous (non-Retina) display. Apple doubles the pixels but then adjusts text and graphics so they take up the same amount of space on-screen, keeping things readable.
With the Retina iMac, Apple doubled the 2,560 x 1,440 resolution of the old 27-inch iMac in both directions — to a mind-boggling 5,120 x 2,880 pixels. Apple dubs this 5K, and it's a significant increase over other high-resolution desktops.
With 14.7 million pixels on the panel, Apple says the Retina 5K iMac has seven times the resolution of full HD (1,920 x 1,080). Even more impressive, it has 67% more pixels than a 4K display.
Kent Akgungor put that in perspective when he figured out that you can fit 80displays from the original Macintosh from 1984 into the resolution of the new Retina iMac. That's a lot of display advancement over the last 30 years.
To push all those pixels, Apple had to create its own timing controller. A timing controller, or TCON, is what ensures that pixels light up in the right places at the right time.
Historically, a big bottleneck with displays with this kind of density is bandwidth for the stream itself.
I've tested a few 4K displays in the past and although those displays look great, most use what's called Multi-Stream Transport (MST) to get the image to appear. MST basically outputs two 2K images (a 1,920 x 1,080 screen) and then combines the two images together. MST works fine, but in some applications, you can sometimes see tearing artifacts.
Apple's custom TCON gets around this issue by combining two DisplayPort 1.2 streams onto a single chip. This ends up being 40Gbps (gigabits per second) of bandwidth, which is four times that of the previous 27-inch iMac. As a result, there is no tearing on the Retina 5K iMac and no pauses where the display seems "off." It's seamless.
Apple is also using oxide TFT (thin-film transistor) LCD technology to charge all of those pixels and to make sure they charge faster and last longer. Apple is also using organic passivation — a technique it introduced with the first Retina iPad — to make sure there isn't any pixel cross-talk.
Experiencing the screen
As for the display quality itself, it's an absolute stunner. My first reaction to seeing the screen was to say quite simply, "I want to live in this screen."Blacks are black and whites are white. Colors pop and the tone and calibration are fantastic to the naked eye. Apple calibrates each of its displays before they leave the factory and the results here are fantastic.
The screen is glossy, but not overly reflective. I tested this machine adjacent to a big picture window and although I could certainly angle my head to see reflections in the display, it took a lot of effort and it wasn't evident at all head-on.
The 5120x2880 display in its full resolution.
Although you can use the Retina iMac in its full 5,120 x 2,880 resolution, most users aren't going to want to do that. The screen real-estate is simply too immense. Instead, the scaled mode, which makes windows and objects the same size as on a traditional iMac, is probably the best bet for most users.
If you have ever used a MacBook Pro With Retina Display, the experience is very similar. Text is crisp, icons are sharp, and every detail (or pixelated imperfection) is visible.
The nice part about Apple's scaling technology is that video files still play back at their native resolution. As a result, a 1080p video file in full-screen on the Retina iMac doesn't look pixelated or blurry; it looks excellent.
If you want to edit photos or videos, the Retina iMac is a treat. The resolution is so high, you can actually view every pixel of a 4K video clip in Final Cut Pro X, along with the timeline for edits, all in one monitor. That's just phenomenal.
Likewise, anyone doing pixel-precision work, such as illustrators, will love the screen. Zooming in on vector drawings in Sketch or Illustrator is an absolute joy.
Specs
As for the Retina 5K iMac itself, well, it's a top-of-the-line iMac. In fact, core for core, the results were actually better on GeekBench 3 than the 8-core Mac Pro I reviewed earlier this year.
We tested the base model Retina iMac, which includes a fourth-gen Haswell Intel Core i5 quad-core running at 3.5GHz. For the GPU, it includes an AMD Radeon R9 290X with 2GB of RAM. You can upgrade the Retina 5K iMac to a quad-core Intel Core i7 running at 4GHz and you can raise the graphics card to an AMD Radeon R9 295X with 4GB of RAM.
The base system comes with 8GB of RAM, but it can be expanded to 32GB. The system also came with a 1TB Fusion Drive, which combines a 128GB SSD with a 1TB standard hard drive for an experience that offers faster reads and writes for frequently-used files and OS stuff, but uses a traditional hard drive for files that are accessed less often or for media such as music.
The Fusion Drive is a great concept, but for users who value speed above all else, we'd suggest configuring the Retina iMac with an SSD-only option.
The Retina iMac comes with a gigabit ethernet port, 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0, four USB 3.0 ports and two Thunderbolt 2 ports, plus an SDXC slot.
Because of the bandwidth required to run the display, the Retina iMac cannot act as a secondary display. That's a shame, because Target Display Mode has always been one of my favorite iMac tricks. Still, it makes sense, especially given the nature of the TCON. It also suggests that Apple might not have a standalone Retina 5K Display until Thunderbolt 3 becomes a reality.
Running Cinebench, the OpenGL results for the Retina iMac are solid. True, this isn't going to be as great as what you could get on a Mac Pro or a higher-end gaming PC, but it's solid.
Performance
I tried to run the Retina iMac through the paces to test its performance. I'm happy to say that even with the base model, it came through with flying colors.
I never noticed any issues with tearing or dithering on the screen. Editing 4K content in Final Cut Pro X with real-time effects was flawless, just as it was on the Mac Pro.
The system never stalled on me, even with two different browsers open and dozens of tabs open at once, along with Final Cut X, Photoshop CC 2014 and other apps running in the background.
Retina iMac with Final Cut Pro X
The Mac isn't a gaming platform; we know this, but I decided to test out Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance to test the graphical prowess.
At 2,560 x 1,440 (the maximum resolution I could use) and at "ultra" settings, the game remained crisp and solid without any dropped frames. Although I wouldn't say that the Retina 5K iMac is an ideal gaming machine, even the base graphics card managed to keep up. I can only imagine that an upgrade to the 4GB AMD Radeon R9 295X would be even better.
All in all, I have to say I'm impressed with how well the Retina iMac kept up with what I threw at it.
Is it necessary?
A colleague asked me an interesting question about the Retina 5K iMac: Is it necessary? The idea being, do we actually need screens this big with this type of clarity?
Needs are subjective, of course, and it's certainly true that anyone who has an older 27-inch iMac will probably still enjoy the screen and the experience. Plus, although the web is now more Retina-friendly than ever and almost every major Mac app I tested had great Retina support already, it's true that when it comes to video content, 4K and higher is hard to come by.
Netflix offers 4K video on select SmartTVs, but not in the web browser. YouTube offers 4K too, but not for commercial video — plus, YouTube's compression algorithms are far from pristine. iTunes still only offers content in HD, and sure, it looks great on the Retina iMac, but obviously it's not 4K.
It could be fair to say, that at least from a video content perspective, the Retina iMac is ahead of its time. So what's the point? Why did Apple release a Retina iMac now?
Well, to paraphrase George Mallory (and Sir Edmund Hillary), "because it can."
The technical achievement of the Retina iMac is immense. It's a fantastic response to anyone questioning Apple's record on hardware innovation. The fact that Apple was able to get this type of screen, with this quality, working the way that it has in an all-in-one machine is incredible. It's even more impressive when one realizes that the new screen actually uses less power than the older model and that it was able to fit everything into a housing that is incredibly, incredibly thin.
Still, the greatest part is the fact that Apple is doing all of this in something that retails for $2,499. For the same price as a good 4K display (or one of those new 5K displays), you get an entire system — and a powerful system at that.
The Retina 5K iMac might not be necessary, but I'm sure glad it exists.
Final image
As I said at the outset, the real story with the Retina 5K iMac is the screen. The screen is so good, it makes the $2,499 price point seem quite reasonable. If you've been looking for a new desktop and have an affinity for quality displays, the Retina 5K iMac is probably for you. For video and photo editors, depending on what you're doing, the iMac could be a better fit than the amazing Mac Pro.
Even if you're not interested in buying the new Retina 5K iMac, do yourself a favor and check out the display in person at an Apple Store. You can thank me later.
Apple 27-inch iMac With Retina 5K Display
The Good
Amazing screen • Solid performance • Solid price point
The Bad
Can't use as external monitor •Only RAM is upgradeable • Very little 4K content
The Bottom Line
The 27-inch iMac With Retina 5K Display is the most impressive screen we've ever seen and the best all-in-one computer on the market.
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