Apple iMac M4 review: who is this for, exactly?

The M4 iMac is a beautiful computer that feels more and more like it fell out of a universe where laptops never took off. 

You can see it, can’t you? In a world without laptops, the iMac would be the ultimate computer. Instead of a box and a screen with a tangle of wires leading everywhere, everything you need is right there, jammed into an impossibly thin aluminum chassis. Monitor, processor, speakers, webcam, microphones, and all the ports: all built in. It’s elegant. It’s restrained. It’s lovely. It’s plenty fast enough for most people. The iMac would be in every library, in dorm rooms, in cubicles, in computer labs and living rooms. People would haul them to coffee shops. 

Now imagine going to that universe and showing them a MacBook Pro. People might go for that instead. 

The M4 iMac is a beautiful object and a good computer. The design is three years old, but it’s still stunning, especially from the back. It’s still the only Mac that comes in actual colors, and this year they’re even cheerier. It’s a little faster than last year, there’s more RAM in the base model, and it gets the same new webcam and anti-glare screen option as the M4 MacBook Pro.

But otherwise, it’s the same machine as it was in 2023, and it’s substantially the same as it was back in 2021. Don’t get me wrong, I love looking at this thing. I feel calmer and more productive walking into my office and seeing that unbroken expanse of blue instead of the rat’s nest of cables that come out of my regular monitor. There are just vanishingly few situations in which the most important thing about a computer is how it looks from the back, and the iMac asks you to give up too much in exchange.

The M4 iMac starts at $1,299 with an 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU M4 chip, 16GB of memory, and a 256 GB SSD. As usual, the starting configuration seems to exist only to encourage you to spend more money. Only two of the base models’ four USB-C ports are Thunderbolt ports, it only supports one external display instead of two, the Ethernet port costs extra, and the Magic Keyboard it comes with doesn’t have TouchID. All those problems disappear if you spend $200 more to get the next tier, which also bumps you up to a 10-core CPU. If you’re buying an iMac for yourself, that $1,499 model is the real starting point. 

My review unit, with a 10-core CPU and GPU, 24GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, the $200 anti-glare nanotexture coating, and the full-sized Magic Keyboard comes out to $2,329. This is more than you should spend on an iMac.  

The thing about an all-in-one computer is that all of those things have to be worth it. If you have to start plugging in a bunch of stuff to compensate for what’s built in, you might as well get something else. (This is what’s known in the biz as “foreshadowing.”) And the iMac mostly, mostly nails it. 

That 10-core processor is the same chip as the base M4 Mac Mini or MacBook Pro, and in daily use, the iMac feels plenty fast. Even the 8-core base model should be good for at least five years and probably longer, thanks to that 16GB starting RAM. My work machine is a four-year-old M1 MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM, and I have no complaints about its speed in day-to-day work. (Port selection and the fact that I can only use one external monitor, yes.) Apple Silicon has some legs to it. You do have to hand it to them.

The iMac’s speakers are as good as ever, and the mics and noise-canceling are advanced enough that I never had to plug in a headset for a video call. The 12MP Center Stage camera is a big upgrade over last year’s model and much less obnoxious than the similar ultrawide one in the Surface Pro 11, which defaults to a zoomed-way-out view of your entire surroundings. It’s better at keeping me centered in the screen than the gimbal-mounted Insta360 Link webcam I usually use. And unlike the Insta360, it doesn’t randomly decide to point at my lap or bookshelf instead of my face or refuse to turn on because it’s not getting quite enough power from the USB hub behind my monitor.

The iMac comes with a color-matched Magic Keyboard and either the Magic Mouse or the Magic Trackpad. Many people like the Magic Keyboard, and I’m happy for them. If I’m at a desk anyway, I’m going to use a keyboard with better key travel and ergonomics instead of something that feels like tapping on a pizza box. 

But even when I’m using a different keyboard, I have to keep the Magic Keyboard within arm’s reach so I can use TouchID. TouchID is great, and it’s frustrating that Apple put it on the keyboard instead of the power button, and it’s doubly frustrating that you have to upgrade from the base model to get it.

The Magic Trackpad is great, though. No complaints. 

I do not love that there are only four ports (not counting the headphone jack) and that they’re all USB-C. It does look pretty, until you have to transfer images from an SD card or plug in a USB-A adapter, and then you’re in dongletown again. I have lived in dongletown for a long time now, but I don’t love it any more than I did in 2015. 

I also do not love that the stand has no height adjustment, and you can’t swap it for a more ergonomic option without buying an entirely different computer. Apple sells a version of the iMac with a VESA mount, but it doesn’t come with a stand at all, and most height-adjustable VESA mounts are not as pretty as the iMac. The Studio Display has a height-adjustable stand option, so we know Apple can make one it’s willing to put out into the world. It just hasn’t done so here. But whatever. I have hardcover books. It’s fine.

And now we come to the display, which is the reason you’d buy the iMac and the reason most people shouldn’t. The 23.5-inch, 4480 × 2520 LED-backlit panel is lovely, as far as it goes. It has a wide color gamut, the optional nanotexture finish is great at glare prevention in bright rooms, and True Tone rules. I love the way the screen brightness and color temperature change in response to the light in the room. This is a feature I now take for granted on my phone. My regular monitor doesn’t do it, and it’s nice that the iMac does. 

(Side note on the nano-texture screen: it’s great at cutting glare from the window during daylight hours, which lets me keep the blinds open so I feel less like I’m living in a cave. But my spouse, who also works at a computer all day, saw it in the evening and said it was grainy and made her eyes hurt.) 

It’s just that the screen is a little small. I’m used to working on a 27-inch or 32-inch 4K monitor, with several apps open next to each other. Although the iMac has a higher resolution, the physical size of the screen means I can’t fit as much on it without scaling everything down to the point where I go looking for a pair of reading glasses. It’s also stuck at 60Hz and only gets up to 500 nits of brightness, with no HDR support.

Even that isn’t the problem with the iMac. The problem is that the display only works with one computer, is inextricable from that computer, and that computer starts at $1,299. If you want a bigger screen or a faster screen or an OLED screen or HDR or a screen you can use with any other computer or you want a more powerful computer or a more portable computer or a cheaper computer, then the iMac just isn’t for you. 

Chances are, the display is going to feel cramped and dated long before the rest of the computer does. Or the opposite: you’ll have a display you’re still happy with that can only be used with a computer you aren’t. And since we live in a world that contains the excellent Mac Mini and the MacBook Pro, as well as a robust selection of monitors that aren’t locked to one computer forever, the only real reason to get an iMac is for the vibes.

If you want an Apple desktop, you can get a Mac Mini with the same specs as an iMac and have a thousand dollars left over for a monitor, webcam, speakers, keyboard, and mouse, even if you somehow don’t have any of those things already. 

If you want flexibility, you can get a MacBook Pro with the same specs as an iMac and have a machine with all-day battery life; a great display, speakers, mic, webcam, keyboard, and trackpad; and more ports — and still have enough money left over to buy a monitor to plug it into.

Granted, it will be uglier from the back, but who’s looking at the back? 

Back in the iMac’s heyday — the late ’90s and early 2000s — laptops weighed five pounds or more and lasted a couple of hours on a charge. Smartphones weren’t a thing. Tablets weren’t a thing. Most families that had a computer at home had one shared desktop — two, if you were lucky. That’s where the iMac came from. But that’s not where we are. 

In this universe, in late 2024, we are spoiled for computers. My kids use either an iPad or a school-issued Chromebook. My spouse has a work laptop and a tablet. And I have a 32-inch monitor with a bunch of peripherals plugged into it, which I use to swap between my Windows desktop and any of several laptops, including my M1 Air. And of course, we both have our phones. Even if I were to set up a family computer — which I’ve considered! — I can’t see a situation in which I’d opt for an all-in-one instead of buying a monitor and computer separately. 

The problem with the iMac is that it’s just not built for this world. Most people should get something else, and most people do. It really only makes sense if you’re buying a computer for a reception desk or lobby area or somewhere you want to project a calm, sophisticated, uncluttered aesthetic. In that case, the cheapest model is going to be fine. Hope you don’t need to plug in too many things, or you’ll wreck the vibe.

For the rest of us, it makes a lot more sense to buy a Mac Mini or a laptop and a separate monitor. And tidy your desk every once in a while. 

Photography by Nathan Edwards / The Verge