Apple iMac 21.5-inch (2012) - Slimmer, Faster, Better

The Next Episode

The latest Apple iMac was announced on 23 October 2012. However, it was quickly overshadowed by the announcement of another Apple product - the iPad Mini. Because of the iPad Mini, much of the new iMac’s features and improvements were glossed over and largely ignored. This is understandable given the current emphasis and focus on mobile computing, but in actual fact, if one were to examine the new iMac closely, there’s a number of major improvements.

Most notably, the latest iMacs are much slimmer. This is not immediately noticeable when viewed head-on, but turn the iMac to the sides and you will notice that at the edges, the machine is just 5mm thick. This was achieved by removing the 2mm gap of air that used to separate the front glass surface and the screen itself and using a new method of welding called friction-stir welding to bond the glass and display together. According to Apple, a strong friction-generated heat is used to intermix the molecules of the two surfaces under pressure, creating a seamless and strong bond. Additionally, following in the footsteps of the MacBook Air and Retina MacBook Pro, the optical drive is now defunct. All of these contribute to the machine's ultra slim chassis; in fact, many would easily mistake it as a monitor rather than a full fledged system!

And as you shift and move the iMac around to appreciate its svelte profile, another thing that strikes you is how light the machine is. Our test machine, the 21.5-inch model that weighs just 5.68kg. The larger 27-inch model, in case you are wondering, tips the scales at just under 10kg. To get a sense of how light the new iMac is, consider this, the recently reviewed ASUS ET2400INTI with its slighter larger 24-inch display weighs 10.8kg.

While the edges might be just 5mm thick, there’s a considerable bulge in the middle of the display that houses all the hardware. Inside our iMac test machine is the latest third generation Intel "Ivy Bridge" Core i7-3770S processor that runs at 3.1GHz. Complementing it is 8GB of 1600MHz DDR3 memory, NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M discrete graphics with 512MB of GDDR5 memory and a 1TB Fusion Drive.

Apple iMac 21.5-inch (2012 edition) - test system specs:-

• Intel Core i7-3770S
• 8GB DDR3 1600MHz RAM
• 1TB Fusion Drive
• NVIDIA GT650M 512MB GDDR5

Fusion Drive

This leads us nicely to Fusion Drive, which is one of the highlights of the new iMac. Fusion Drive is a combination of a flash drive and traditional mechanical hard disk, and it borrows heavily from Intel’s Smart Response Technology and also the recently reviewed SanDisk ReadyCache, in that it stores frequently used applications and files on the flash drive, leaving the rest of your files on the mechanical hard disk. The idea behind this is so that users can have the best of both worlds - the performance of a flash drive and the capacity of a mechanical hard disk.

However, unlike Intel’s and SanDisk’s solutions, the flash drive and mechanical hard disk in Apple’s Fusion Drive is fused into a single volume. This means our iMac with its 128GB flash drive and 1TB mechanical hard disk has 1.1TB of storage in total. The same is true if you have specced your iMac with a 3TB mechanical hard disk - you’d have 3.1TB of storage in total.

Additionally, Fusion Drive doesn’t cache files in the traditional sense of the word. What actually happens is that Mountain Lion will automatically move frequently used files onto the flash drive and keeps files that you seldom use on the mechanical hard disk. And in true Apple fashion, this takes place behind the scenes and requires zero user intervention. We'll be running time tests later to see if Fusion Drive technology translates to any real world performance gains.

Design & Features

Although, the new iMac is significantly slimmer and light, it has not differed that greatly in design when compared to its predecessor. In fact, to the untrained eye, it might not be immediately apparent that it is the new iMac. That said, there’s good reason why the design of the iMac hasn't changed much since it remains to be one of, if not the best looking AIO systems in the market.

Apple loves their glossy screens and the new iMac models are no different - there’s no option of matte screens. Fortunately, for those who complain that glossy screens have too much distracting reflections, Apple claims that for the new iMacs, they have been able to reduce unwanted reflections and glare by up to 75%. Although there’s no sure way for us to back up that 75% figure, the new iMac does seem to throw up less noticeable reflections.

The display itself is an IPS LCD panel that offers full 1080p HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) resolution, and while it is not a "Retina"-class screen, images displayed are sharp, bright and crisp.

Round the back, the new iMac offers a good selection of ports and connectivity options. The four USB ports are now of the speedier SuperSpeed USB 3.0 variety and there’s two Thunderbolt ports, which users can to drive external displays (with the use of a suitable adapter) or with Thunderbolt storage devices.

Sonically, the new iMac isn’t as accomplished as the ASUS ET2300INTI that we reviewed recently, lacking bass and bite. On the upside, it was pretty loud and vocals sounded clear and bright. If you intend to use the machine for a lot lot audio playback, invest in a decent PC stereo speaker system.

Performance (Part 1)

We began our benchmarking of the new iMac with Geekbench and testing the Fusion Drive. These benchmarks run in Mac OS X and we’ll be pitting the iMac against three other Mac systems - a Mid 2012 Retina MacBook Pro, a Late 2011 MacBook Pro and a Mid 2011 MacBook Air.

Geekbench

We begin our iMac performance benchmarking with Geekbench, a popular Mac OS X benchmarking tool. Geekbench runs a variety of tests that taxes individual components of a system such as the processor and memory and then gives an overall score of the system’s performance.

To ensure Fusion Drive is being utilized (if at all), we ran Geekbench on the iMac several times before recording down its result. In all, its score of 13700 was the highest, easily surpassing the Mid 2012 15-inch MacBook Pro Retina (Core i7-3720QM) by around 5%. How much of this was due to the iMac’s superior Core i7-3770S processor or Fusion Drive was hard to tell, but it is clear that the new iMac is a speedy system.

The new iMac was also substantially faster than both the Late 2011 15-inch MacBook Pro (Core i7-2720QM) and the Mid 2011 MacBook Air (Core i5-2557M).

Fusion Drive Testing

Since Fusion Drive works completely in the background, we decided to run time trials to see how fast the iMac starts, reboots and loads Adobe Photoshop 6. If Fusion Drive is working, we should see timings that are comparable to our Retina MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, since they both use flash storage. Our Late 2011 15-inch MacBook Pro which has a 750GB (5400rpm) hard disk will serve as a baseline reference.

Bearing in mind that the iMac has a Fusion Drive that consists of a 128GB SSD unit and a 1TB traditional mechanical hard disk, we would say that the results we've obtained below are pretty impressive. Although, cold start and reboot timings are noticeably slower than the Retina MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, it was still very much quicker than our Late 2011 MacBook Pro and its mechanical drive. Fortunately, the time the iMac took to fire up Adobe Photoshop CS6 is blazing quick. Clearly, Fusion Drive works and provides users with measurably and tangible speed gains.

Performance Part 2

In Part 2 of our Performance report, we’ll compare the new iMac against recently reviewed Windows-based AIOs such as the ASUS ET2411INTI and ET2300INTI and the Lenovo IdeaCentre A720. To do this, we ran Boot Camp on our iMac, installed Windows 7 and ran SYSMark 2012, PCMark 7, Dirt 3 and Far Cry 2.

SYSmark 2012

Last year, BAPco recently released SYSMark 2012, the latest edition of their popular benchmarking software. SYSMark 2012 puts the system through a rigorous series of various workloads ranging from office productivity, data analysis, media creation and 3D modeling.

In terms of specifications, the 21.5-inch iMac is pretty comparable to the ASUS ET2300INTI. They have the same processing platform (Intel Core i7-3770S processor and both have 8GB of DDR3 1600MHz). However, the ASUS machine has a faster 7200rpm hard disk, but the iMac trumps it in the graphics department with its beefier NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M GPU (which is hardly used in this benchmark). Also note that the iMac scored considerably better than the Lenovo IdeaCentre A720, which is still a fairly recent AIO machine.

PCMark 7

The iMac didn’t do too well on PCMark 7 and was outscored by the ASUS duo in PCMark 7 by around 20%. It also lost out slightly to the Acer Aspire Z5. Looking at the breakdown of scores, we can see that it was undone by its lackadaisical score in the "System Storage" workload. Since the Fusion Drive works only in an OS X environment, the iMac when running in Windows is entirely dependent on its 5400rpm mechanical hard disk, which explains the poor scores. 

Far Cry 2 & Dirt 3

Thanks to its NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M GPU, the iMac managed to score a convincing win over the rest of the Windows-based AIOs, which only have an entry-level GeForce GT 630M GPU. This meant that even at 1080p resolution and with moderate graphics settings, the iMac was able to maintain an average FPS of above 60. With these kind of results, you can even choose to crank up the in-game graphics quality settings and even consider anti-aliasing. 

Excellent but Pricey

From a design standpoint, the latest iMac is hard to fault. To some, it might not inspire, perhaps even boring. But it’s so slim and light that it's hard to believe that it is a full-fledged system. One could easily pass it off as just a display and not an all-in-one system.

Performance-wise, the iMac isn’t exactly up to scratch compared to the latest Windows-based AIOs from ASUS. The ASUS ET2300INTI is a much more capable performer. Obviously, this has much to do with the fact that in Windows, the iMac cannot call upon its Fusion Drive to boost its performance and instead has to rely solely on its 5400rpm mechanical hard disk.

When comparing it with other Mac systems, the latest iMac more than held its own. As revealed by Geekbench, the iMac was more than a match for the quad-core Retina MacBook Pro notebooks. Also, its Fusion Drive technology really works to provide faster startups, reboots and application loading times (against older systems using only mechanical disk drives). Furthermore, we are happy that Apple has decided to outfit the iMac with a more powerful GeForce GT 650M GPU, which will make it suitable for gaming at moderate game quality settings. This makes it much better than most typical AIO machines.

Unfortunately, as is the case with all things Apple, all this comes at a price. The basic entry-level iMac comes in S$1,788, which doesn’t sound so bad. But if you want an iMac with the same specifications as the tested unit, you’d be looking at a grand sum of S$2,717! The main culprits that add up to the cost are the optional Intel Core i7-3770S processor (additional S$280) and the 1TB Fusion Drive (additional S$350), this is on top of the $2,088 base price of the next step-up model.

Additionally, much like the new Retina MacBook Pro notebooks, Apple no longer allow user upgrades for the 21.5-inch iMac machines. The larger 27-inch iMacs, however, still feature four user accessible SO-DIMM slots so users can still upgrade their memory. But for the 21.5-inch iMacs, the memory is soldered onto the logic board, which means you can’t add memory later if you decide the default 8GB is not enough. And as you might already know, Apple charges a pretty penny for their upgrades. A 16GB DDR3-1600MHz SO-DIMM memory kit costs around $130 from the shops, but Apple charges significantly more, S$280 to be exact. Since you can't do much about the cost, you should spec your iMac for current and near future usage needs to the best of your efforts to avoid any frustrations later.

The Value Quotient

That said, for those not picky about performance, the entry-level iMac costs a more palatable S$1,788, and at that price you are still getting decent specifications - Core i5-3330S processor, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD and NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M. This makes it substantially cheaper than comparable Windows AIOs from makers like Acer and ASUS. Heavy multi-taskers might want to consider adding another S$280 to double the memory capacity but most mainstream users can comfortably get by with 8GB of memory.

The next model in the lineup costs slightly more at S$2,088 and for that you get a faster Core i5-3470S processor and a beefier NVIDIA GeForce GT650M. If you would like to indulge in games often, this spec should be a good option that should satisfy most prospective buyers of the 21.5-inch iMac.

Fusion Drive is optional no matter which spec you go for and it’s a S$350 option. Whether this is beneficial for you depends very much on your usage habits. It’s probably worth going for it if you are using it strictly in a Mac environment. Even then, the cost is a bit steep. However, if you frequently need to use Bootcamp to run specific Windows applications or games, Fusion Drive might not be as useful for you as it operates only in the OS X environment.

Our Verdict

In closing, the new 21.5-inch iMac is a stunning piece of machinery from the Cupertino tech giant. Its slim profile defies belief, especially when you consider the level of performance it offers. The display is also bright and brilliant, but audio performance is expectedly average.

Unfortunately, all this comes at a price. If you want levels of performance similar to our test unit, you’d be looking at a final price in excess of S$2,700. In fact, if you want to max out the unit's specs, it can cost you over S$3,000. If you're not picky about the OS and overall system design, ASUS’ ET2411INTI and ET2300INTI both come in at under S$2,200 and offer more better audio capabilities, optical disc drive, a screen space which is also a touchscreen and better processing power but are equipped with more basic discrete graphics engines. The latter model from ASUS even allows you to tilt the screen to various angles - even to push the screen down flat for touch-based games and educational purposes. Furthermore, both units also allow your screen to double-up as a regular display for other devices like game consoles or other set-top devices, making it more versatile. 

So from a functional and versatility aspect, the iMac doesn't fare well for its asking price. If you can look past some of its limitation and asking price, it excels in the design and performance departments so much that the new iMac is hard to resist and is easily one of the leaders pushing the boundaries of desktop AIO systems.

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