Apple iMac 27-inch and iMac 21.5-inch review

With the iMac getting an aluminum body last year, the desktop system just

became more drool-worthy. The current generation of iMac comes with a faster

Core2Duo processor with two variants in terms of display size. We got our hands

on both variants and tested with X-bench and Geekbench benchmarks. The iMacs

still have no competition when it comes to the bright LED backlit displays.

Last year, when we reviewed the 20-inch iMac we wished that Apple would make the

keyboard and mouse wireless. With the 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMac desktops, Apple

has included a wireless keyboard and the wireless magic mouse. The keyboard has

the same aluminum body as the iMac and looks absolutely gorgeous. Both the

accessories connect via Bluetooth and work seamlessly. The desktop comes

preloaded with Snow Leopard OS and iLife 09 suite.

The 21.5-inch iMac that we got was running on an Intel Core2Duo E7600

processor at 3.06GHz, 4GB DDR3 RAM at 1067MHz, NVIDIA Geforce 9400M graphics

with 256MB of dedicated memory and 500GB hard drive. In the X-bench test it

scored 168.71 points and in Geekbench we got a score of 4286. The X-bench score

has improved by over 20 points compared to the 20-inch iMac from the previous

generation. The average score on the X-bench website for Intel Core2 iMac

desktop is 138.33, whereas for Geekbench the average score is 4212. Clearly, the

21.5-inch iMac is better than its previous version. It has a resolution of 1920

x 1080, which is great for watching full HD videos. The sound output through the

built in speakers is loud with great clarity!The 27-inch iMac that came to us

had the same configuration as the 21.5-inch iMac. The only difference was that

it had an ATI Radeon 4670 graphics instead of Nvidia and had a 1TB hard drive.

The display resolution of this huge display is a whopping 2560 x 1440 pixels,

which means that you have a lot of space to work around with. It scored 178.50

X-bench points and a score of 4288 in Geekbench. The improvement is basically

because of the better performance by the ATi card as there is no other change in

configuration here. The iMac systems have seen a relative performance upgrade

than its previous generation machines and the inclusion of wireless keyboard and

mouse makes it all more appealing. Although both of them stayed around 45-degree

temperature most of the time, but when the temperature started rising, the

cooling fans came on. With the cooling fan running, the 27-inch iMac was so loud

that it almost sounded like a hair dryer.

Bottomline:  The iMac desktop would not just add to your performance,

but also  to your room décor. However, at the same price you can get a much

powerful desktop PC assembled or the Dell Studio XPS 8100.