Apple iMac 27-inch (Late 2013) Pro Reviews

The latest version of this 27in all-in-one is powerful and stylish but it’s no longer without rivals

The 2013 refresh is a solid, if unremarkable, update for Apple's most popular desktop computer. It wasn't a radical overhaul, but nor did it need to be. Instead, the specifications got a welcome boost while retaining the well received form factor of the previous generation. The £50 increase in the cost of the more expensive 27-inch model is simply inflationary, while the £100 price hike for the cheaper one is justified by the advances it makes. An excellent refresh.

A formidable all-in-one, with updated Haswell internals and new Nvidia graphics - at an even higher price

The 2013 refresh is a solid, if unremarkable, update for Apple's most popular desktop computer. It wasn't a radical overhaul, but nor did it need to be. Instead, the specifications got a welcome boost while retaining the well received form factor of the previous generation. The £50 increase in the cost of the more expensive 27-inch model is simply inflationary, while the £100 price hike for the cheaper one is justified by the advances it makes. An excellent refresh.

The slimline design of the iMac is still impressive, but it comes at quite a price. That said, other big-name AIOs are not much different. Lenovo’s 27-inch IdeaCentre A730, for instance, is £100 cheaper, but you only get 6GB of memory, a GeForce GT 745M GPU and 802.11n Wi-Fi. On the other hand, its chip is a Core-i7 (though only 2.4GHz), its 1TB HDD comes has an 8GB SSD attached, a digital TV tuner and a Blu-ray drive. It's by no means as much of a looker as the iMac, mind. You can get a PC tower and separate monitor for a lot less money still. You have to decide whether you want or need to pay extra for aesthetics and high-spec construction, both nice to have but not exactly essential. But that's always been the case with Apple kit, and this new model does at least offer an improvement in performance, the graphics in particular, over its predecessor. And you've got to love that big, high-quality display.

The 27-inch iMac is available with a 3.2 GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.6 GHz and Nvidia GeForce GTX 755M for a suggested retail price of £1,599. Our review unit would cost an impressive £2,229 thanks to its 3.5 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 with Turbo Boost up to 3.9 GHz and the Nvidia GeForce GTX 780M. If you go all-out crazy and tick every box for internal upgrades then it'll cost a whopping £3,349. However powerful you need it, if your wallet is deep enough then the iMac will be able to dig just as deep in the power stakes. If you're after a Mac and your work is desk bound - yet needs an injection of oomph behind it - then the large-screen iMac is a no-brainer, despite its potential price tag. The combination of speed, design, and screen real estate make it a lovely machine to use, even if it's not a Retina screen. Once bought you won't be able to tinker with anything much, except for adding in RAM, so the concept of upgrading isn't just a pain, it's pretty much off the table unless you're taking the unit back in to Apple. But that's part of the beauty of the iMac: this is a simple and unfussy solution that looks great and is a wonderful workhorse for pretty much anything you'd care to throw at it.

First things first: if you want a computer that’s amenable to hardware tinkering, an all-in-one is not the way to go, iMac or otherwise. Apple’s gamble was that its users would rather have compactness, power, and premium design, even if it meant accessing the inside of their iMac (or, indeed, MacBook Pro) was less straightforward, and the market seems to have proved it right. For a large section of the computer-using population, getting elbows-deep in a PC case holds little to no appeal. Compared to 2012′s iMac, the 2013 model is a step up in all ways. Even if you stick to the more affordable end, our must-have upgrade, the Fusion Drive, is now $50 less than it was a year ago; you can now also specify it on the entry-level iMac, which wasn’t an option before. Yes, we know you don’t get that instant gratification of walking out of an Apple Store with your new purchase, but you’ll thank us later on.

In you already own last year's slim iMac, there's no reason to upgrade. The new Haswell CPUs, Nvidia graphics cards, and faster Wi-Fi and flash storage are good to have, but don't radically alter the iMac experience. If you have an older model, then it's a more compelling case. And now that it has the latest parts, you don't need to worry about paying top dollar for out-of-date tech. Keep in mind that Apple's extra-cost AppleCare extended warranty is practically required, as these are much less user-serviceable than many other desktops. At least at $169 for a three-year term, it's a small add-on relative to the system's premium price. Power users may be waiting for the radically redesigned new Mac Pro, coming later in 2013, but for everyone else who wants a big-screen Apple experience, this is the default.

Though it's mainly a speed bump, the inclusion of the latest 4th-generation Intel Core i5 quad-core processor and Nvidia GeForce GTX 775M Kepler graphics bump the Apple iMac 27-inch (Intel Core i5-4670) back to the top spot on our high-end all-in-one desktop list.