iMac Retina 5K Display Hands-on: Jaw-Dropping Screen
It should probably come with a drool cup. Whether I viewed it head-on or from the side (extreme sides), the new iMac with 5K Retina Display ($2,499) wowed with its highly detailed and colorful visuals.
Packing 5120 x 2880 pixels, the new iMac has the sharpest screen I've seen on any PC. But it's not just about the resolution. Apple shifted to oxide TFT from amorphous TFT in order to charge the pixels faster and let them hold longer for your viewing pleasure. The company also employs organic passivation technology, which takes the data lines and pixels and puts them on different planes, inserting an organic layer in-between to make the video signals clearer.
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Add in a new backlighting system, a new dedicated timer controller chip with 4X the bandwidth and photo alignment for better on-axis contrast ratio, and you have a wonderful canvas for editing photos and videos. The Retina iMac also uses a compensation film for better off-axis viewing. Even from the sides, the various desktop wallpapers looked incredibly life-like.
When an Apple rep fired up Final Cut Pro, the main window fit a full 4K video clip, with plenty of room left over for the timeline and other assets off to the left. Even up very close, all of the icons and menu items looked tack sharp.
Apple stressed that the 5K display makes other everyday activities more immersive. The Mail app offered crystal-clear photos, and websites in Safari had text that looked like I was reading paper.
The Retina iMac has some fairly beefy hardware under the hood, including a 3.5-GHz quad-core Core i5 processor (configurable up to 4-GHz Core i7), 8GB of memory (I'd expect more standard) and a 1TB Fusion Drive. AMD Radeon R9 M290X graphics come standard, but you can also get a higher-end R295X GPU. We're talking up to up to 3.5 teraflops of graphics power.
Other specs include a Thunderbolt 2 port, which promises up to 20 Gbps of transfer speed. That's nearly double the original Thunderbolt, although I'd like to see more peripherals offered.
No, this is not a desktop PC for the masses. It’s for creative pros, power users and others who can take full advantage of the 14.7 million pixels this screen can push. But if you can afford it, this could be the ultimate all-in-one PC.
Mark Spoonauer is editor in chief of Tom's Guide. Follow him at @mspoonauer. Follow Tom's Guide at @tomsguide, on Facebook and onGoogle+.



the additional screen real-estate is equivalent to adding 3 1280x720 monitors to the side of a 4K monitor, and 4 1280x720 screens across the top of a 4K monitor.
for the ITpro/ thats a lot of extra terminal windows ro browser tabs etc. More importantly, *for people editing 4K films*, thats enough to work in your adobe premeir interface and controls while being able to view the native resolution of your content.
if you think this is retarded, you are not the target market. who cares.
It's not just about the resolution. There were several other features and technologies that were listed that also impact the monitor.
4k is not the standard and is not dirt cheap. He we go again with ignorant fan boys looking like idiots.
How many other consumer monitor screens come in 5120 x 2880? Run along child.
the additional screen real-estate is equivalent to adding 3 1280x720 monitors to the side of a 4K monitor, and 4 1280x720 screens across the top of a 4K monitor.
for the ITpro/ thats a lot of extra terminal windows ro browser tabs etc. More importantly, *for people editing 4K films*, thats enough to work in your adobe premeir interface and controls while being able to view the native resolution of your content.
if you think this is retarded, you are not the target market. who cares.
I just wonder what the price tag is.
Someone complaining about the author ( wonder why if they are so much better technicians they don't work as reporter yet )
Someone complaining about the cheap panel (as if they yet own not only a better 5k but even just a 5k, other technologies included )
Someone complaining about the graphics ( and then dissenting about battery performance of their notebook, good luck with that carbon fiber incomparable technology... by the way carbon phobia to the touch is just plastic, metal is way more sweet )
Someone there will be a better dell in 2016 ( and what about 2020?)
The only ones i can agree with is the guy ( and the ban threatened guy as well ) noting if you don't want it don't buy it.
But probably you just want it but buying it goes against your window pc religion, in which case i agree the machine is pretty upsetting, right?
I wonder what would be the comments without an apple logo on it...
4K cameras are pretty expensive as well, so such clients wouldn't have a problem to fork $2.5k for this Mac as well.
4k is common, when you talk about professional movies and such... consumer wise... i would rather have an amazing 1080p than an ok 4k camera. the only real place you see macs commonly are in professional environments because of history (macs use to pack more ram than pc's did by a mile many MANY years ago) and people who don't know they can get better for cheaper.
@Starbound My GTX980 can't even game properly at 4k and then Ubisoft can't even properly code past 900p. So what's the point of having 5k on a mac?
well a sli/cfx is needed for a really good 4k experience, but here were talking about editing not gaming, so thats why 5k. 1080p is good but for photos the higher quality the more detailed you can make it look and spot out. Cant reply for some reason.