The 2024 iMac with the M4 chip is a stunning and powerful all-in-one. The desktop computer is an endangered breed, but if you have room for one in your life, the new iMac offers a beautiful design and some impressive performance.
Power users might find the base model M4 iMac’s small number of ports and skimpy storage capacity limiting. But the amount of powerful creative work you can get done on this thing speaks to the golden age of the Mac we find ourselves in. There’s not a single bad computer in Apple’s lineup. Everything can edit video or produce a professional podcast or develop apps. So, why not do it from a colorful iMac that sparks joy?
Keep reading or watch our video review.
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M4 iMac review: Apple’s fast and fun all-in-one computer
Colorful and capable, Apple's refreshed all-in-one desktop computer is fun and functional.
- Latest M4 chip for great performance
- Seven color options, with color-matched accessories
- 24-inch 4.5K display looks great
- Limited number of ports
The iMac is like a retro revival car, such as the new Ford Bronco or Volkswagen ID.Buzz. Computer nerds across the spectrum look back fondly upon Apple’s experimental era from 1998 to 2008. In 10 short years, computers went from clunky beige boxes to the slim aluminum unibody objects we use every day. During that period of discovery, some of the most radical, iconic and weird designs hit the market.
Like the original iMac, the M4 iMac is an affordable computer that’s fun to look at and easy to use.
Table of contents: M4 iMac review
- What I ordered
- Design and colors
- Display
- Camera
- Storage, memory and speed
- Performance
- Ports and accessories
- Should you buy an iMac?
What I ordered
I ordered the very base model iMac. For $1,299 ($1,396.43 after taxes, in Ohio) it comes with:
- 24-inch 4.5K Retina display
- 256 GB storage
- 16 GB unified memory
- M4 chip with an 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU and 16-core Neural Engine
- Two Thunderbolt 4 / USB 4 ports
- Magic Mouse and Magic Keyboard
- Wi-Fi 6e, Bluetooth 5.3
As a tech blogger, I’m very fortunate to be able to buy and test the latest and greatest products in my daily life. I wanted to get more in touch with what the iMac experience would be for the average, budget-constrained person, so I didn’t upgrade anything. If you want to read what it’s like using a more powerful iMac, check out a roundup of what others said.
Design and colors
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
With the M4 refresh, once again, the iMac is an object of stunning beauty and desire. It’s a piece of art on a level that an iPad or my beloved Mac mini can’t reach. From the truly unbelievably thin body to the solid aluminum foot, I could just stare at it and take in all its subtle details for hours.
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
The iMac now comes in six gorgeous colors; with the 2024 model, the colors are much improved and truer to their names. The green is greener, the yellow is pure sunflower, the pink is actually pink. If you order silver, the M4 iMac’s seventh “color” option, what the hell is wrong with you?
On the front, the color is a little more pastel — my green iMac looks more like mint. I highly encourage you to put the computer somewhere in your house with the back visible, so you can see the darker, richer hue as well. The color-matched Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad, and even color-matched cables, are just icing on the cake. macOS even color-matches the accent color of the user interface — the cherry on top.
The downside to offering seven different colors is the slightly complicated logistics on Apple’s end. My initial order was for a purple iMac, but when I got to the Apple Store to pick it up, I was told they didn’t have it yet — it would arrive a few hours later by UPS. I didn’t have time, so I canceled my order and bought a green one with the same specs on the spot. (I was assured that the purple iMac would then be kept as inventory upon its arrival at the store.)
Display
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
The display isn’t Apple’s biggest or its brightest. It can be turned up to a maximum brightness of 500 nits. In typical indoor settings, that’s plenty bright. Where I naturally set up the computer, I had it about a third of the way up. Placing it in the path of direct sunlight, it’s not outshined, but there are still a lot of reflections. If this is a problem with the desk you would put it on, consider the nano-texture option.
It’s a 24-inch 4.5K display. It has a physical resolution of 4480 × 2520, with the screen space of 2240 × 1260. In other words, it’s a Retina display with a little more room than a standard 1080p screen.
Some might say it’s too small for a desktop computer. Personally, I disagree. I happily used a single 24-inch display for years, with an even lower physical resolution. Surrounding yourself with as many monitors as possible always felt like the PC thing to do — like tap-to-click on a trackpad, and buying peripherals with garish RGB lights — probably because Windows is bad at window management.
In macOS, you have a bunch of tools at your disposal to do more with less. Mission Control, Exposé, Stage Manager, and now in macOS Sequoia, window tiling. Or, if you’re like me, you just make all the windows as small as you can and fill every inch of the screen.
I do sympathize with people who miss the 27-inch option. Apple’s answer to that is a Mac mini with a Studio Display. After all, the Studio Display is made with the exact same display panel that used to go in the 27-inch iMac.
In 2024, the world has simply moved beyond desktop computers. Plenty of PC manufacturers stopped making desktop computers entirely. The fact that Apple makes as many desktop Macs as it does — with an additional model joining the lineup, in the Mac Studio — is a miracle. Apple has determined that there’s a market for powerful desktop Macs without a screen, and a market for mid-sized all-in-ones, but not the intersection.
Camera with Center Stage and Desk View
The new built-in camera supports Center Stage. While it always outputs a 1080p image, it’s a 12 MP ultra-wide sensor. It’s good enough for a FaceTime call or a meeting, because those are ephemeral, but you don’t want to record videos with it. It’s too fuzzy and grainy.
For those moments when quality matters, Apple makes it really easy to use the much better camera you already have in your pocket. With a simple mount offered by Belkin, Continuity Camera will use your iPhone’s advanced camera system instead.
Desk View is a really awesome feature that skews the bottom half of the video to show the surface of your desk. It’s like having a second top-down camera. Unfortunately, it requires a really long desk. On the somewhat narrow desk I set up my iMac on, Desk View was more like Legs View.
Storage and memory
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
The entry-level iMac comes with 256 GB of storage and 16 GB of unified memory.
The bump in unified memory from 8 GB to 16 GB is long overdue. Now, there’s no “bad” Mac. You don’t need to give any qualifications or warning when someone asks you what Mac they should buy. Conducting all kinds of tests in Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator and more, my Mac always felt zippy fast. Even when it ran out of physical memory and swapped old memory to the disk, it still felt seamless. I couldn’t notice a difference if I hadn’t checked Activity Monitor.
256 GB of storage is now the pinch point — the next most obvious thing that could be improved — but unlike 8 GB of memory, 256 GB of storage is enough for more people.
A lot of work happens on the web. Local storage is becoming less relevant. The biggest amount of data people have, by far, is in their photo library and messages — both of which can invisibly sync to iCloud (although it is good to have a local backup). Desktop apps are becoming rarer and rarer, but 256 GB is enough to comfortably install all the top productivity apps.
Two notable exceptions to that are video editing and software development. Both Final Cut Pro and Xcode will eat up every last megabyte of your disk if you don’t regularly empty caches, clean your library and delete old SDKs and simulators. If this is your work, it’s unfortunate that Apple charges truly outrageous prices for adding more storage, but at least with a desktop computer, adding external storage is cheap and convenient.
2024 M4 iMac performance
Image: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
I ran a speed test with various benchmarks of real tasks that I do on a regular basis: exporting a video, editing The CultCast, upscaling an image, building apps in Xcode and running some Python scripts. The delta on some of these is impressive, considering this is the base model and I’m stacking it up against an M2 Pro chip. Audio was 46% faster, video exporting 11% faster, image upscaling 21% faster.
But in most cases, the differences are down to a few seconds. Whatever-percent-faster doesn’t really improve your day if it’s 10.9 seconds compared to 12.8. Don’t think that you have to get a Pro chip — even the base model is an incredibly powerful machine.
And it goes without saying that if you have any Intel iMac, the time has come to switch to Apple silicon. It is a world of difference.
Ports and accessories
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
The number of ports on the entry-level model is a bit of a letdown. You have two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a headphone jack. Higher-end configurations come with an Ethernet port (built into the power brick, because the computer itself is too skinny to fit it).
Other Macs with an M4 chip have more ports. The MacBook Pro has three Thunderbolt 4 ports; the Mac mini has three Thunderbolt 4 ports and two USB-C ports. I’m not sure why the iMac gets short shrift. (Apple did not respond to my request for comment.)
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
The entry-level model comes with a basic compact Magic Keyboard; any upgraded model comes with a compact Magic Keyboard with Touch ID. Without Touch ID, there’s a key that locks the screen. You also get a Magic Mouse; upgrading to a Magic Trackpad (a very worthy upgrade, in my opinion) costs $50. You used to be able to spend a little more to get both, but you’re no longer able — a real tragedy considering you can only buy the color-matched versions with an iMac, not separately. If you decide down the road you’d like a trackpad instead of a mouse, you can’t easily get a purple trackpad.
I was hoping for a more substantial update from these accessories, beyond the new USB-C port — but I’ll cover all that and more in my upcoming reviews.
Should you buy the 2024 M4 iMac?
In the late ’90s and early 2000s, the iMac was a bold proclamation against the status quo. Now, the lovable machine is asking some philosophical questions about what it’s still doing here.
The original iMac was the anti-desktop computer. At work, you had a beige PC with a Pentium processor running Windows 2000, a beige CRT monitor, a beige keyboard and a beige rollerball mouse. Apple’s pitch was that at home, you wanted something simple and fun. Because you live in a house, not a cubicle — you don’t have to buy the computer your boss bought you.
Today, people don’t really have a family desktop computer. Everyone has an iPhone, maybe an iPad, maybe a laptop that might be a MacBook.
Ironically, it’s the businesses that are still buying desktops — and the iMac is an attractive option. For the employee doing work mostly through web apps who just needs a midsized screen, the iMac is more than capable, looks clean on a desk and can be bought with a single purchase order. For the check-in desk or customer service desk, a color-coordinated iMac telegraphs that your business has taste.
I liked my time with the 2024 M4 iMac because of the novelty. It’s nice having a beautiful computer in a fun color in a brighter room in the house. It’s nice having something simple that doesn’t feel like a workstation. It just made me happy every time I sat down in front of it.
★★★★☆
Buy from: Amazon
Colorful and capable, Apple's refreshed all-in-one desktop computer is fun and functional.
- Latest M4 chip for great performance
- Seven color options, with color-matched accessories
- 24-inch 4.5K display looks great
- Limited number of ports
