New iMacs – faster, sharper and more expensive

The 21.5-inch will have a new Retina 4K display with 4096 x 2304 resolution and 9.4 million pixels, 4.5 times more than the standard 21.5-inch iMac display. The new Retina display has a wider colour gamut and spectacular image quality.

Apple said the iMacs will also have new storage options and more powerful processors and graphics. The Magic devices have been redesigned to feel more comfortable than ever, and feature rechargeable batteries that completely eliminate the need for disposable batteries. But unlike its big brother, the 27-inch iMac, the latest entry to the family is built like a MacBook. Retina has arrived on Apple’s most affordable iMac model.

The previous generation 21.5-inch iMac scored a slightly higher score due to the ability to upgrade RAM and hard drive components. In contrast, here’s the iMac with 4K Retina display. The new Magic Trackpad 2 features a 29 percent larger surface and brings Force Touch to the desktop for the first time. Those displays also now show a 25% greater range of colors, making photos look more detailed and eye-poppingly vibrant.

But the features most likely to draw the attention of Mac fans are the new displays Apple is introducing. In a report released yesterday, Morgan Stanley analyst Kathryn Huberty maintained a Buy rating on AAPL, with a price target of $162, which implies an upside of 45.2% from current levels. The higher-end iMac models include Iris Pro graphics, and RAM has been improved from 8GB of 1600MHz LPDDR3 to 8GB of 1867GHz LPDDR3, which is upgradeable to 16GB.

If you don’t need the space but would love things to be as fast as possible, and you will be frequently accessing large media files, the Flash Storage options will be preferable. Every model of the 27-inch iMac will ship with a 5K display, which means that Apple fans will be able to get a 5K display for $1,799, instead of the previous starting price of $1,999. The new trackpad marks the first time Apple has made its Force Touch Trackpad feature available for a desktop. I’m a little red-green color blind, and even I could detect the differences. This week, Apple updated its line of iMacs with a few nice-to-have display and input technologies that you won’t find on other consumer desktops.

The 27-inch iMac is also being upgraded to Intel’s new Skylake processors, and configurations begin at 3.2GHz quad-core i5 and top out at the 4.0GHz quad-core i7.

For more on the new iMacs, head over to Expert Reviews. They come with built-in rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, and they have a better composition than their predecessors. I haven’t had a chance to test how long the batteries last, but Apple reports all three can go for about month on a single charge, and the mouse can give you a nine-hour day’s worth of pointing and clicking with a two-minute charge.