What Corners Were Cut With Apple’s New $1,099 iMac?
Previously, Apple’s least expensive Intel Haswell-based iMac was the 21.5-inch version with a quad-core Intel Core i5 (2.7GHz) that started at $1,299, but the Cupertino company has bumped the bottom line down a bit with a new model that costs $1,099.
Apple tends not to skimp on specs with its pricey machines, but the company surely had to make some sacrifices on hardware to push that price down. So what were the concessions?
Simply compared to the aforementioned $1,299 iMac, the $1,099 version has a dual-core Core i5 clocked at 1.4GHz instead a quad-core chip at 2.7GHz. It has half the storage (500GB versus 1TB), and it has Intel HD Graphics 5000 instead of Intel Iris Pro Graphics (or discrete NVIDIA graphics like the rest of the iMac line).
Further, it appears that although the new model also has 8GB of RAM, it’s not upgradeable and is a single DIMM instead of two 4GB DIMMs like the other iMac models.
The new iMac will surely post solid performance, and it’s nice to see the line with a more affordable model, but you have to wonder how much more you’d get by spending just $200 more on the next level up.
Apple tends not to skimp on specs with its pricey machines, but the company surely had to make some sacrifices on hardware to push that price down. So what were the concessions?
Simply compared to the aforementioned $1,299 iMac, the $1,099 version has a dual-core Core i5 clocked at 1.4GHz instead a quad-core chip at 2.7GHz. It has half the storage (500GB versus 1TB), and it has Intel HD Graphics 5000 instead of Intel Iris Pro Graphics (or discrete NVIDIA graphics like the rest of the iMac line).
Further, it appears that although the new model also has 8GB of RAM, it’s not upgradeable and is a single DIMM instead of two 4GB DIMMs like the other iMac models.
The new iMac will surely post solid performance, and it’s nice to see the line with a more affordable model, but you have to wonder how much more you’d get by spending just $200 more on the next level up.
