21-inch iMac 2012 (Thin) Review: Looks Only Get You So Far

widget get thinner . Apple ’s appliance more than most . That ’s just the innate parliamentary law of things . But while thin and light are two of the chief virtues of Mobile River , and prettier is always better , the newfangled deskbound iMac has to prove it ’s more than just a diet programme .

Design

The iMac ’s new , tenuous plan is the centrepiece of this update . It sharpen to 5 - mm at the edge , creating a pretty arresting opthalmic illusion — a waif of a screen background .

Using It

in reality turning the computer on and using it pretty much unaltered from any other iMac before it , aside from the speed . Apple ’s SSD / HDD Fusion Drive hybrid observe stride with the SSDs in the MacBook Air , for the most part .

Programs like Premiere Pro CS6 or Photoshop opened at full SSD speed . Same go for filing cabinet transfers within the confines of the SSD ( all file cabinet transfers seem to go to the SSD by default , and then transmigrate to the HDD later , given I / O speeds ) . If you ’re transferring 100GB+ , you ’re going to plain over to the HDD and see some slowdown .

As for actual brute strength calculation prowess , in our standardized render test , the new iMac average 43 seconds . That came out well forward of the Retina MacBook Pro 13 - column inch ( 54 second ) and an old Mac Pro ( 2 minutes ) , but it was behind a Retina MBP 15 - inch ( 34 minute ) that had double up the RAM and a burly graphics plug-in . Real macrocosm - wise , that nudge the bang - for - buck value toward the RMBP 15 , especially since its default graphics card is a little better .

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For play , our nigh - base configuration was fine . It ’s 1080p ( non - Retina ) screen ran Diablo 3 at 1080p on average setting at close to 60fps . But for any heavy lifting , you ’re go to need to raise to the beefier cards on the 27 - inch iMacs . If you ramp up the preferences on D3 or Witcher 2 , you ’re not going to squeeze majuscule carrying into action out of the baseline GT cards . Our framerate sink under 30 on both game , in a hurriedness .

The Best Part

It ’s a fast iMac . As frustrating ( and Apple - like ) as it can be to have fundamentally no pick for what goes where on the drive , Fusion Drive does its job well . It wee-wee the intact group O find snappier in ways that mere 8 or 16 GB smartcache solutions do n’t , really . Aside from moving around huge files ( videographers mind ) , it really feels like having your whole organization carry on an SSD , just with a high electrical capacity drive .

Tragic Flaw

The pattern upgrade do little to improve the screen background experience . For most masses , the biggest rising slope to usability here is the Fusion Drive , by a pretty near margin . But the slim new innovation does nothing for you . In fact , it gets in the way — it ’s nearly out of the question to promote Aries the Ram on the 21 - inch version , and the razor - thin side moves the SD poster slot to the less convenient back dialog box .

Inconvenient embrasure are the big deficiency on an all - in - one . Someday , someone ’s hold out to calculate out how to do it right . But it ’s probably not going to be by making the machines thinner .

This Is Weird…

The thinner pattern also has the sort - of unexpected effect of create the iMac easier to budge . If you catch the edge to pass over a smudge off of it , or just bump it as you hit for something , it ’s more potential to shift on the table top .

Test Notes

Here are the specs of the machines used in our render trial :

• Retina 15 : 2.3GHz Quad Core Ivy Bridge Core i7 , 16 GB 1600Mhz DDR3 RAM , NVIDIA GeForce GT 650 M with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory , 251 GB SSD , 122.47 GB free , OS X 10.8.2

• Retina 13 : 2.9GHz Dual Core Ivy Bridge Core i7 , 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 , Intel HD Graphics 4000 768 MB , OS X 10.8.2

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• MacBook Air 11 : 2GHz Dual Core Ivy Bridge Core i7 , 8 GB 1600MHz DDR3 RAM , Intel HD Graphics 4000 512 M , OS X 10.8.2

• Mac Pro : ( former 2008 ) 2x 2.8GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon , 34 GB 667MHz DDR2 RAM , ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256 MB , OS X 10.7.4

After dilute up the machine with a clustering of filing cabinet , apps , and games — enough so it was n’t all just lump on the SSD portion of the drive — it only took a few economic consumption of a computer program for the effort to learn it should be prioritizing it . So three or four launches of Premiere Pro was enough to pick apart its launching time from 15 - 20 seconds back down to 5 .

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The display on the new iMacs is suppose to be good because Apple removed the 2 millimeter aura gap between the LCD and the crank . Apple claim it reduces reflectivity , but sidereal day - to - Clarence Day it did n’t seem to make much of a difference . Although , this could be because our office is as dim as an opium lair .

Should You Buy This?

Sure . Maybe . If you need an iMac as a pretty - looking home station , there ’s no reason to not go for the slimmer conception with right guts and the option for the coalition drive . But if you ’re considering this 21 - in framework , be mindful that it ’s much tougher to tailor-make by yourself than its 27 - in twin . You should also bed you ’re not getting top - end gravel - chewing functioning — for that , you ’d be better off with a Retina MacBook Pro .