It's been two and a half years since I got my hands on the yellow iMac, and it was a
case of love at first sight, not just for me, but also a million of you too.
And now it's got its first upgrade, the M3 chip, and frankly the iMac is overdue for
an upgrade. The M1 is a great chip, but since the release of the upgraded Pro, Max, and Ultra chips,
become really hard to justify the iMac. And if I'm being honest, even before those newer chips came out, I found the iMac couldn't
handle everything I needed to do, and I found myself using another more powerful Mac whenever
I needed to deal with footage here. It's a damn shame too, because the iMac is so beautiful, and should be the only computer
I need here. With the new version, is it?
We got the orange model this time, which, in my office lighting, appears perilously
close to pink. It's definitely in that salmon coral part of the spectrum.
The colors aren't new though. What is, is the M3 chip.
It's constructed using the latest advanced 3nm process.
This helps enable performance core clock speeds that now surpass 4GHz, and bring efficiency
core clock speeds even closer to the M1's performance cores.
There's also a couple more GPU cores with 8 and 10 available, and that GPU now supports
hardware accelerated ray tracing. But crucially for me, there's the media engine with ProRes decoding and encoding, and new
for M3 and AB1 decoder. The jump from the M1 to M2 isn't that notable, but the jump from the M1 to this is.
For instance, just walking outside a house in Resident Evil Village, I got frame rates
ranging between 40 and 60, whereas our M1 model peaked at 40.
But you'd really have to lock it at 30. Game looks decent on this screen though.
When I do my DaVinci Resolve export test, the M3 takes nearly a third of the time.
That's an improvement, and though it does get the fan running on the Orange iMac, you
can barely hear it. Single core performance is always where the latest Apple Silicon chips shine, irrespective
of tier. And certainly in Lab's LZ4 compression test, which uses only one core, you can see just
how far the new architecture goes. When translated into our Blender Barbershop test, the M3 is over 12 minutes faster than
the M1. But interestingly, it's only 4.5 minutes slower than the Pricer M2 Pro, which has two
more performance cores. Because I want this to be the only computer for my desk, we expect a 16GB model.
Memory is important as I've discovered.
I once tried to get Maria Sanabria to use the base model M2 Mac Mini for her thumbnail
photoshopping, and it wasn't enough.
Whenever I use this M1 iMac to deal with our footage, it can get bogged down.
Premiere would hang on my mouse pressed down long after I release the mouse, which is really
annoying when you're trimming a clip. And Cadillaz Browse, which lets us view our Sony footage easily fills the memory.
To be honest, I was really pushing things here, because strangely both have been working
much smoother on this old iMac, which I think can be attributed to better app optimization.
That being said, the new upgraded M3 iMac is much better.
The new chip, along with the $200 RAM upgrade, means there's no waiting when you move the
playhead to another part of the timeline and hit play. In fact, when I see the editors struggle with their Threadripper systems, it makes me wonder
if they'd be better off with this. Though I don't think I have the influence capital to try and experiment in there again.
How much slower is it? 9 to 1. It takes 9 times longer.
I definitely have a lot of confidence in the new iMacs abilities, but I do have a few niggles.
One thing I'm really disappointed about is that the Ethernet port doesn't support the much faster 2.5 gigabit speeds.
Yes, Apple added support for Wi-Fi 6E, but wireless is too unreliable for multi-cam editing.
It's one big chink in this iMac's armor. And so if I want to add faster Ethernet, I'd have to spring for an extra dongle instead
of the clever port hidden under the desk that I already paid extra for.
While I'm griping about ports, the iMac oddly doesn't have Thunderbolt 4 either.
Sure this won't matter too much to the majority of people who buy this thing, but consider
that the M2-powered $600 Mac mini has it, and 10 gig Ethernet too.
Ah yes, the price. Though the iMac starts at $1300, for that you get the base model, which doesn't come
in orange, or yellow, or purple.
That means you only get 8 GPU cores and 8GB of RAM, which I'm having trouble justifying
for even grandma these days. You also only get 256GB of SSD storage.
Furthermore, there's no Touch ID on the keyboard, no extra USB ports at the back, and no Ethernet
on the floor. If you want those last 3 bonus features and the 10 core GPU, it's another $200.
This orange iMac with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage is $1900.
And phew, that's not an insignificant sum, but still a bit less than how much an equivalent
Intel power 27 inch iMac cost back in the day.
Ah yes, the long departed iMac. I just want to take a moment and note that I like this screen size.
I'm a bit of a weird person here at LMG because this is the only screen I use.
Whereas everyone else either has 2 or 3 massive screens taking over their desk, or one unbelievably
long one. I don't get it. Yes, I am flicking my fingers between workspaces if I'm researching and writing at the same
time, but I've never ever felt cramped.
Something I've felt using a 1080p ultrawide.
Which I think was the first screen I was given when I started working here.
God, that yellow iMac was an upgrade. And God is this iMac an upgrade from that.
But you will pay for it. With the release of the M3, Apple has shaken up their lineup, and so things are kinda weird.
You can get an M3 MacBook Pro with 16GB of memory for $1800.
This is $100 more. And if you want more power, an equivalent M3 Pro is $2000.
It really seems like this is the price range Apple wants to sell their computers for.
Back when we did the Pick Your Dream setup video, I picked an upgraded M1 iMac and then
guessed way less than the setup was worth. I don't know if you could tell at the time, but I regretted my pick because I knew the
iMac just wasn't up to snuff anymore. You can still get it in the refurbished store.
At a little over $1000, it's not much less than a refurbished model cost last year.
That computer is only suited for grandma or decoration.
And if you look at the more upgraded spec models, it's worth considering the shorter
lifespan these old iMacs have now. The M1 was introduced 3 years ago, and the savings are less than 20%.
So for me, I feel like the M3 has more life in it for the tasks I do, and because we upgraded
the memory this time, I do believe I have the one desktop computer that can do everything
I need it to. There's no need for me to set up a Mac Studio or Pro on the other desk anymore.