Apple iMac (2024) – M4 Chip, 10-Core CPU & GPU, All-in-One Desktop Computer

The 24-inch iMac with M4 is the computer for people who want the computer question settled. One power cable into a colorful, impossibly thin slab, and you have a fast desktop, an excellent 4.5K display, a very good webcam, speakers, and color-matched wireless peripherals — no monitor shopping, no cable nest, no boxes to hide. This configuration pairs the 10-core M4 with 16 GB of unified memory and a roomy 1 TB SSD.

The honest position: as a piece of computing, the Mac mini undercuts it; as a piece of furniture that computes, nothing else Apple sells comes close. Whether that trade reads as “paying for design” or “paying for simplicity” is the entire iMac debate, and it’s worth having with yourself before buying.

The screen carries the experience

The 4.5K Retina panel is the iMac’s center of gravity and the main thing you’d have to spend serious money to replicate elsewhere. At 24 inches it packs Retina-class pixel density, which means text renders like print — no fringing, no softness, none of the faint blur that ordinary 4K-at-27-inches setups show macOS users. It reaches 500 nits, covers the P3 wide color gamut, and arrives well calibrated out of the box, so photos and video look the way they’re supposed to without a settings safari. That matters for the family-archive and hobby-creative work this machine gravitates toward: the vacation photos you’re culling and the school video project on the timeline both benefit.

In practice the 24-inch size lands between the old 21.5- and 27-inch iMacs, and it works out to two comfortable full-size working windows side by side — a document and a browser, a photo library and an export queue. What you give up against a 27-inch setup is the third column and some timeline width; spreadsheet power users feel it, most households never do. The standard glass is glossy, which gives the image its depth but negotiates with windows behind you; for a sunroom desk or a bright kitchen, Apple offers a nano-texture matte option on this generation that kills reflections at some cost in sparkle. Worth it in harsh light, skippable otherwise.

Camera, speakers and mics: the hidden value

A surprising share of the iMac’s worth hides in the parts monitor makers skimp on. The 12 MP Center Stage camera is among the best built into any desktop — noticeably sharper and better in dim rooms than the grainy webcams living atop most external displays — and Center Stage’s auto-framing keeps you centered as you shift around the kitchen while on a call. It also supports Desk View, which shows your desk surface for show-and-tell moments on video calls. Three video calls into a Monday morning, this camera is the difference people on the other end actually comment on.

The six-speaker system is the same story: genuinely room-filling, with real bass presence, far beyond anything a monitor includes and good enough that a kitchen or family-office iMac often ends up as the household music machine. The microphone array holds up its end for calls and casual voice recording. Price out a comparable webcam, speakers, and mic separately for a mini-plus-monitor setup and the iMac’s premium starts shrinking — this is the honest math the spreadsheet comparison usually leaves out.

M4 performance in an everyday shell

The M4 with 16 GB of memory is comfortably more computer than the iMac’s natural workload requires, which is the right way around. Browsers laden with tabs, office suites, photo libraries, homework, light video editing, music projects — all of it feels instant, and the machine stays effectively silent doing it; the fan exists but you will go weeks without hearing it. The 16 GB standard memory deserves a nod: it removes the base-spec squeeze that made earlier 8 GB configurations age poorly, and it gives Apple Intelligence’s on-device models the headroom they want.

The ceiling exists — sustained 3D rendering, long export queues, heavy multi-cam timelines, and big compiles belong on Studio-class hardware — but almost no one shopping for an all-in-one lives near that ceiling. What owners report instead is the more relevant trait: because the M4 is so far ahead of everyday demands, the iMac feels the same in year three as in week one. The performance question for this machine isn’t “is it fast enough now” but “how long will it stay ahead of your needs,” and the answer is comfortably long.

16 GB and 1 TB: what this configuration gets right

Configuration is where iMac buyers make their one irreversible decision, and this spec makes the two right calls. The 1 TB SSD is the important one: base-model 256 GB iMacs generate more owner regret than any other choice, because a shared family machine accumulates photo libraries, school projects, and downloads at a rate that turns a small drive into a permanent triage exercise. A terabyte removes storage from the list of things you think about for years. And should you eventually fill it, the Thunderbolt ports take fast external drives gracefully — a fine home for archives and old projects, if a slightly clumsy one for the working photo library.

The 10-core M4 tier also brings the better supporting hardware — this is the variant with four Thunderbolt 4 ports rather than two, and Gigabit Ethernet included on the power adapter. Memory can be configured higher at purchase, and the case for paying up is thin for this machine’s audience: 16 GB handles the everyday-plus-hobby-creative load with room to spare, and anyone who genuinely needs more probably needs a different Mac entirely. Spec for your future self on storage, relax about the rest.

Design, colors and the room it lives in

The iMac is the one computer Apple designs as a household object, and it shows. The slab is startlingly thin — visitors still comment on it — and it comes in seven colors, muted pastel from the front and saturated on the back, so the bold face points at the room rather than at you. The white display bezels read friendlier than pro-machine black, which is a deliberate domestic choice, and the whole thing sits on a slim aluminum foot with a single braided power cable running to a brick that also carries the Ethernet jack — a clever bit of clutter relocation that keeps the desk surface to one cord.

The design’s fine print: the chin below the screen is where the computer lives, the stand tilts but does not adjust for height, and the color decision is forever, so the fashionable choice competes with the timeless one. A VESA-mount variant exists for arm setups, but it’s a decision made at purchase, not a conversion kit. As furniture, none of this matters; as ergonomics, it means shorter and taller users end up adjusting chair height or propping the foot — covered properly below, because it’s the iMac’s most legitimate complaint.

Ports and peripherals

This tier’s four Thunderbolt 4 ports are genuinely useful — external storage for backups, a second display or two, a dock if the desk grows — and they all live on the back, which keeps the silhouette clean and makes plugging in a USB drive a reach-around ritual. There’s no SD slot and no front-facing anything; households with card-shuffling camera habits end up leaving a small hub or reader permanently attached. The headphone jack, mercifully, sits on the side.

In the box are the color-matched Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse, and the aesthetic coherence is real — the desk arrives looking finished. Two practical notes. First, keyboard tiers vary by configuration, and the Touch ID version is the one worth having: fingerprint unlock and purchase approval change daily friction on a desktop Mac more than any spec line. Second, the Magic Mouse’s charging arrangement remains as unflattering as ever — it charges via a port on its underside, belly-up like a defeated beetle — and opinions of its flat ergonomics divide sharply. Plenty of iMac owners quietly swap in a Logitech MX Master 3S within the first month and keep the pretty mouse in a drawer.

The all-in-one bargain, stated plainly

Buying an iMac means accepting three permanent conditions, and it’s better to accept them out loud. Nothing upgrades — memory, storage, and display are fixed at purchase, so the configuration you order is the computer forever; that’s why the storage advice above is emphatic. Everything is fused — when you eventually want a newer computer, the lovely display goes with it, unlike a mini setup where screen and computer upgrade on independent schedules. And ergonomics are take-it-or-leave-it — the stand offers tilt only, so the screen height is whatever your desk dictates, and the correction is a riser, a stack of books, or the VESA decision you had to make at checkout.

None of these are scandals; all of them are the fine print on the simplicity. The all-in-one trade has been the same since iMacs were translucent: you exchange flexibility for the absence of decisions, and the machine’s whole personality flows from that exchange.

Living with it day to day

The daily texture is what iMac owners actually rave about, and it’s mundane in the best way. The machine wakes instantly when you sit down, runs silent through everything a household throws at it, and never presents a cable to trip on or a box to dust behind. It suits the semi-public places iMacs actually live — kitchen counters, family offices, entryway desks, reception areas — where a tower and monitor would read as office equipment and the iMac reads as decor.

First-week friction is close to nil: migration from an old Mac is an evening, and the color-matched peripherals pair out of the box. The recurring small annoyances are the ones already flagged — rear ports, mouse charging, screen height — plus one more worth knowing: on a standard-height desk the fixed stand puts the screen center a touch low for taller users, which is exactly the kind of thing you don’t notice in a store and do notice in month two. A riser solves it for the cost of lunch.

The software story, and the iPhone in the room

The iMac’s role as a household hub is half hardware, half macOS, and the software half has gotten meaningfully better at the job. Continuity features knit the family’s iPhones into the desk machine: AirDrop moves the weekend’s photos over in seconds, Handoff picks up the email you started on the phone, calls and texts ring through to the big screen, and iPhone Mirroring puts the phone itself in a window when an app lives only there. For the kitchen-counter iMac fielding recipes, calendars, and FaceTime calls to grandparents, this connective tissue is used daily in a way spec sheets never capture.

Apple Intelligence is the newer layer, and the M4 with 16 GB runs its on-device features comfortably — writing tools that tighten an email, photo cleanup that removes the stranger from the beach shot, notification summaries of varying wisdom. The sober assessment: these are conveniences rather than reasons to buy, improving at Apple’s pace, not yours. What they do signal is headroom — this hardware was built with those workloads in mind, which bodes well for how long the machine stays on macOS’s feature train.

The long game

An iMac’s lifespan is a two-part story. The computing half ages slowly — Apple-silicon Macs have a strong record of staying responsive for many years, Apple’s macOS support horizon for its own chips is long, and the M4 starts so far ahead of household workloads that obsolescence will arrive by software cutoff, not by slowness. Owners of the first-generation Apple-silicon iMacs commonly describe machines that still feel new; there’s little reason to expect this generation to age worse.

The fused design is the other half: there are no upgrades to extend life mid-stream, and any single component failure — display included — is a service visit rather than a part swap. In practice the failure rate on these has been unremarkable, and the realistic end of life is a working computer whose OS support lapsed. Because a display failure would total the machine in a way it wouldn’t total a mini setup, AppleCare+ is a more defensible line item here than on most Macs — one of the few contexts where the extended coverage math genuinely favors buying it. Resale is the consolation: iMacs hold value unusually well, partly because the used market prices the display in, so the exit cost of the all-in-one bargain is smaller than it looks.

iMac or Mac mini plus a display?

The unavoidable comparison: a Mac mini with the same M4 plus a good third-party 27-inch 4K monitor costs less and upgrades in pieces — the rational-spreadsheet answer, and the right one for tinkerers. A Mac-tuned panel like the BenQ MA320U even gets you more screen than the iMac offers, though at ordinary 4K density rather than Retina crispness. Pairing a mini with an Apple Studio Display gets you a bigger, brighter Apple panel with the same print-like text — and blows past the iMac’s price doing it. And households leaning portable should note a MacBook Air plus a monitor covers the desk and the sofa with one machine.

What the spreadsheet misses is that the iMac’s screen quality per dollar is genuinely strong — Retina density in a third-party monitor essentially means the Studio Display’s price bracket — and that the no-decisions, one-cable tidiness has real value in the kitchens, family offices, and reception desks where iMacs actually live. The mini path wins on flexibility and exit strategy; the iMac wins on the day it arrives and every day it just sits there being pleasant.

Who it’s for

Buy the iMac if you want a beautiful, capable, zero-fuss desktop for a visible spot in a home or office, and the 24-inch size suits your work — it’s the best version of the appliance computer, and this 1 TB configuration is the comfortable spec, because storage is the regret to avoid. It fits families consolidating onto one machine, home offices where the desk is part of the room, and anyone whose relationship with computers improves as the number of decisions approaches zero. Skip it if you want a larger screen, height-adjustable ergonomics, or upgrade flexibility; the mini-plus-monitor path serves tinkerers and power users better, and they were never who the iMac was for.

Our take

Verdict: The most charming all-in-one you can buy — a lovely desk computer for homes and offices that value tidiness.

The problem. You want a fast, beautiful desktop without juggling a separate monitor, cables and boxes. Why it matters. An all-in-one trades upgradeability for simplicity and a clean desk — a fair deal for many. What it is. Apple’s 24-inch M4 iMac: a superb 4.5K display, capable M4 performance, colour-matched accessories and a famously thin design.

Pros

• Gorgeous, sharp, well-calibrated 4.5K screen
• Plenty fast for everyday and light creative work
• Clean single-cable setup with matching peripherals

Cons

• Nothing is upgradable after purchase
• Base storage/RAM tiers feel mean for the price
• You’re paying partly for the design

Who should buy it

• Families and professionals who want a beautiful, fuss-free desktop

Who should skip it

• Power users who’d rather pair a Mac mini with their own larger display

Bottom line. A delightful all-in-one — buy it for the simplicity and screen, and spec storage up if you can.