iMac Retina 5K display Review

Having evidently decided that 4K isn't enough resolution, Apple has gone with a '5K' screen on its latest 27-inch computer. A full 5120 x 2880 resolution, it offers over 14.7 million pixels, and it looks absolutely incredible.

It works out at about 217 pixels per inch - which is lower than the pixel density of the iPad Air 2, but at the distance you sit to use an iMac, it looks pretty much perfect. In fact, it's barely believable at times.

The colours are stunning, and the visibility is superb from angles. The astonishing part was taking an 8K picture from a Hasselblad and picking through its detail at 100% on the screen - and it was all totally smooth.

Flicking through a whole library of ludicrously high-resolution images, taking them to full size and zooming right in was all without stutter.

We fired up Final Cut Pro and took it full screen to see some 4K video footage at 100% in the corner, with the timeline and other clips visible around it, for live editing. Again, 4K video playback was smooth as it went through the timeline, without any pausing or hanging between clips - of course, the SSD portion of the Fusion Drive was probably in use here, keeping it running as well as it possibly could for Apple's demo are.

OS X Yosemite was designed with Retina-class screens in mind, of course, so it looks as good as it ever will on the display, though when you come out of the creative and imaging applications on the Retina iMac, you see where it might have some practical issue.

The controls in apps such as photo editing suites are tiny, and way off to the side, as is text in most of Apple's apps. Apple already includes some robust scaling options, at least, and we think most people will want to consider making use of them.

Still, small as some of these elements are, it's lovely to read on the crisp screen, and you can fit a huge amount of information on there, of course.

That being the case, we're surprised it only comes with 8GB of RAM as standard. And while the M290X GPU that comes as standard seem to power it fine in our tests, we do wonder if it provides enough headroom for pros - the higher option of an M295X is the much more interesting offering, if you can afford it.

Try $2,499 (£1,999, AU$2,999) on for size.

iMac Retina 5K from Tech Reviews on Vimeo.

Courtesy: Techradar and Verge

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