27-inch iMac (2020)

The last of the Intel Macs shows off some eye-watering specs (and prices)

- ROB MEAD-GREEN

From £1,799 (£4,628 model tested)

FROM Apple, apple.com/uk

FEATURES 5120x2880-pixel Retina display, 3.6GHz 10-core Intel Core i9, 32GB 2667MHz DDR4, 1TB SSD, AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT 16GB, 2x Thunderbolt 3 ports, 4x USB-A ports, SDXC card reader, Gigabit Ethernet, 3.5mm headphone jack, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0

How does it perform? From startup to shutdown, this iMac is fast

This could be your last chance to own an iMac in its current form – after eight years, that slim unibody could soon be making way for an all-new design and with it a shift away from Intel to Apple silicon inside. This 2020 model then could be its last hurrah.

In its 27-inch Retina 5K guise, it’s certainly going out with a bang, not a whimper. While the outside hasn’t changed since its last refresh in March 2019, key components on the inside are new. Out are the old ninth-generation Intel Core processors, replaced by shiny new 10th-gen versions. The 2020 model also gets solid-state drives across the line, addressing one of the biggest performance bugbears in previous machines (the Fusion Drive is now only available as a Build To Order option on the 21.5-inch iMac). The 27-inch iMac can also take twice as much memory (up to 128GB) as before, plus it also gets beefier graphics, with the new AMD Radeon Pro 5000 series GPUs offering up to 55% more performance, according to Apple, and the top-end Radeon Pro 5700 XT bringing up to 16GB of video memory to the iMac for the first time.

Upping the specs

Other changes include Apple’s T2 Security Chip, a 1080p FaceTime camera (up from 720p) for those all-important video chats, plus better sounding speakers and microphones.