M3 iMac TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE!? 

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My M1 iMac with 16 gigs of memory still rocks and it's my daily driver for software development, content creation and daily tasks. I have no desire to upgrade at this time. I may feel differently when the M4 chip Macs are released. Nice video and thanks for sharing.

Love my M3 iMac setup...I currently have it as my main desktop system, connected to a 27" Thunderbolt Display and a converted 27" 5k iMac display running through a DisplayLink adapter for a 3-screen system. Tons of screen real estate to run apps across, and the thing slices and dices through everything with zero effort. Don't envision needing anything more powerful for the foreseeable future.

I have MacBook Air M1 8GB ram and very rarely notice any lag with several safari tab and Brave browser and running Final Cut and Lightroom Classic all at once. I disable the continuous rendering.

I have a soft spot in my heart for the iMac. My head says get a Mac Mini and upgrade the monitor over time. My heart says a green iMac with lots of ram and storage would be perfect.

Why didn’t you go for the 16 or 24 gb options? I would have assumed you would have Greg. Especially when talking about replacing MacBook Pro and MAC studio.

Sorry never ever purchase an Apple Mac with 8GB of shared memory. FIGHT THE SWAP!!!!! Pundits get all upset about things like GQ looks when they should be all over Apple at not making 16GB of shared memory the base starting point for a Mac. Even normal users should not purchase 8GB shared memory model.

My M1 iMac screen got lines and flickering after just 2 years of use, sent to repair and apparently the workshop said it's a common issues with the all in one iMac

I have one with 16gb and it’s awesome for my needs. Dev work, macOS vm. The display clarity is so nice when coding. I would never recommend 8gb, that’s a machine designed to use swap, and that’s going to hurt its versatility and longevity in the long run.

I love my M3 iMac. Powerful and clean setup

Top stuff Greg. It’s a nice clean setup for sure.

great video! I have been saying this since the M1 iMacs going into the M3. Happy you made this video, since the M1's and moving forward the power is there to do all tasks you need just a diff in time .

I wish they made a 27" M3 Pro iMac. I've been waiting to replace my 2015 27" 5k iMac and the 24" is too small, and that Studio Display is way too expensive... and there are no other options that look the same since 99% of competitors are only 4k and they are not glossy/glass panels (which makes a big difference for contrast).

I just ordered an 16 gb iMac with 1 tb storage. I’m upgrading from a PC I bought 8-10 years ago with 512 mb ram. I use Lightroom mostly on it, and do my taxes each year. Can you believe I’ve struggled by with Lightroom on 512 MB? If I made money from my photography, I’d have upgraded long ago.

I love the iMac 24 but I fell deeper in love with the Mac Studio so saving for a studio display so will look like and iMac

I have to have my tool bar and task bar on auto hide so that I have the most screen real-estate with any screen but it is especially handy on my new 24" iMac.

This was very helpful. I would love to see how it handles over 1TB files in Photoshop especially compared to your Mac Studio set up. Thanks!

Apple sells the iMac with VESA mount for people wanting more adjustment ability. Just pop it on an VESA arm that you can clamp to your desk and you have all the adjustment you need.

How does it look to bring your iMac screen in to Vision Pro? Everyone seems to only do that with a MacBook but would be interesting to see that with a desktop iMac.

What made you choose that color? and not upgrade the ram? or were you going for a bare bones setup video to see how it works?

I've always felt RU-vidrs putting out 10 minute videos that are little more than straight cuts of stock footage and home studio recordings with the odd title really, really do not need the same level hardware as Industrial Light & Magic. 'Oh but my video renders 5 minutes faster!' Yeah so what. So it's nice to see this more realistic approach.

I am using an m1 MBP in clamshell. 1tb/16gb . I bought a Wavlink powered TB4 hub so I have all the ports I need.

@GregsGadgets Thanks for all your great reviews. Does your M3 iMac used in this review have a 256 SSD hard drive memory or 512? I see it's not the basic one with just 2 ports at the back. Will this upgraded basic model perform much better than the very basic one with 2 ports? I am thinking of getting the basic 2 port M3 iMac to use with a second Studio display or maybe a Dell 4 K display. I was thinking of getting a 16" M3 Pro Macbook Pro but the screen does not compare really with the size of the M3 iMac and I don't need the portability of the Macbook. I only have basic computer needs and don't edit anything but do often have many windows open. Thanks in advance for your reply.

How do the speakers of the iMac sound compared to the MBP16? Nobody makes that comparison. When people talk about MBP16 speakers they are "the best". But some people talking about iMac speakers they are "fine to fill in a small room". But I think iMac speakers are better than MBP16...what I think happens is that they compare iMac speakers with dedicated desktop speakers setups. I have the iMac M1 and MBA15 M2 and the speakers on the iMac are definitely much better than the MBA.

I don't know why, but his face reminds me a lot of the young Harrison Ford.

What if you want to use it for editing photography (raw files that can be 45 megapixels in size) with programs like Lightroom, Photoshop or Photo AI denoising. I’ve never done videos so it’s basically all Photo manipulation.

I really want to see the studio displat made into an imac pro with the mac book pro ports and the m3 max and ultra chips. Throw your old computers at me!! lol

hey does imac m3 do any noise and how does it handle if you record with OBS a game? is the game laggy or even the footage?

if you don’t have 30 tabs per window and five windows Safari then it’s not a real test ;-) Actually user profiles and tab groups has been a huge benefit for me in reducing tab count from 200+ to 30+ at any one time. the. add in numbers, pages, calendar , mail, outlook, maybe excel. acrobat (full version) with 5-10 documents. then a couple of DTP apps like InDesign and Illustrator or PS. or a NLE like Da Vinci Resolve. or a bunch of big Excel workbooks.

That M3 iMac would rock with 24GB unified memory and 2TB SSD.

I have been shopping about amongst the various Macs, and as you note, the display is much better than, honestly, most monitors available on the market that are still 1080p or topping out at 4K, which hooked to a comparable Mac mini you are facing more costs. Not doing video editing and given more to strategy games rather than those working the GPUs, I lean more to wanting RAM rather than GPU so I am leaning towards iMac with 24GB. I also have my eye on a comparable MacBook Air 15” similarly configured, essentially the two on my LAN with the iMac hosting external storage for the two as well as my Apple TV, iPad, and iPhone SE (and likely by then an Apple Watch SE). I just wish that the RAM didn’t top out at 24GB. I want to stay out of the swap as much as possible.

It does sound crazy! 🤩

Awesome episode 🙂 good to know what We lose (or not) buying cheap Mac.

Good demo of the limitations of 8GB of memory. How did you feel about the limitation of 256GB of storage? Did you miss TouchID on the keyboard?

Great review Greg. I have iMac M1 16 GB and 512 GB storage.

From what I saw, it was memory that was the limiting factor. Simply buy the iMac with improved memory and it seems you can do pretty much everything that your $10,000 can do. Mac mini is not an alternative to the iMac. If you are buying from scratch, you'd need the Mac mini, keyboard, Mouse, 4,5k monitor, cables, etc. - that take it above the cos off an iMac.

Will the iMac work well with your new Vision Pro?

It’s nice but how can Apple think so much about design but fail to make adjustable height? Shorter people and children have to strain their necks and look up at the monitor. It took years before my neck muscles adjusted to my old iMac. The new iMacs are the same as old ones in terms of vertical distance.

Very informative video! I've owned Macs and other Apple products since 1987. I have a 2017-era 4k Retina 21" iMac with 16 GB RAM and a 1 TB Fusion Drive that I bought in January 2019. I'm looking to upgrade. My concern about the current M3 iMacs is that the Ethernet port allegedly handles just 1GB speed...same as my iMac. I live in "Comcrash" Xfinity-land, and 2 GB speed has just started being available. If I were to buy the M3 iMac now, I would max out the build with 24 GB RAM, and probably upgrade to a 2TB SSD, although I still have 500 GB free space remaining on my iMac fusion drive. The other options (Mac Mini or Mac Studio w/Studio Display) are more expensive, especially when configuring a moderate-build Mac Studio with the lowest option Studio Display. I don't do big-time video editing like what you do, so in some respects the M3 iMac would work for me, except for the underwealming 1GB speed on the Ethernet port. If I were to upgrade my internet service to 2 GB, would a new M3 iMac be able to recognize and take advantage of the bump-up in speed? I'm not sure...

I still do plenty of hobbyist music video re-editing and photo editing on my M1 mini (8gb). For that small video load, it works great.

Those 15k unread emails trigger my OCD hard!

Is Trend Micro only for Apple products? Or will it work with windows pc’s?

If Apple hadn't killed off the 27" iMac I would buy now. Currently I'm still on my 27" i9 ten core iMac and do most my audio work on it. I also have a MBPro M1 Max and performance for my audio work my old iMac i9 is about the same at the M1 Max. In fact the DAW I use displays CPU usage on the menu bar and the i9 uses less CPU than the M1 weird. Apple give us a large screen iMac be it 27" or 32" would be amazing with M3 Max chip that would be great.

We’re can we buy the computer riser that you have

Love the IBM t-shirt. Where did you get it?

Anybody comment how this will perform on local large language models? Assuming the IMac is beefed up .

The result of the evaluation indicates that despite the consumer-grade specifications, the M3 iMac proves to be surprisingly capable for various tasks. While it may not match the performance of high-end Mac setups in demanding applications like Final Cut Pro, it handles basic tasks and even 4K video editing reasonably well. The all-in-one design and aesthetic appeal of the iMac are praised, making it a recommended choice for those seeking a desktop with an integrated design. Additionally, the M3 iMac is seen as a good value proposition compared to other options like the Mac Mini or M3 MacBook Pro, especially for users prioritizing an all-in-one form factor.

Good afternoon… I work with photo editing and advertising materials. My photo edits have a lot of layers, and I work with a very large flow of batches of images. I was thinking about buying an iMac M3 24GB 1TB. Will I be able to complete my production with this machine? I currently use a 2010 Mac Pro with 12-core Intel Xion and 16GB of Ram. Great video!!!

why did you do that you have Vision Pro?

@GregsGadgets What is the exact spec of this iMac? What is the hard drive memory?

I think good job overall. I would like to suggest that mot people buying this won't have the discipline to only have 5 tabs open. I'd say more like 32 tabs across 2 browsers like safari and chrome is more realistic. And with that you definitely start seeing SSD swapping. Furthermore doing color grading with white bezels can impact your perception. Not enough focus on the negatives... my 2 cents.

You lost me by running Trend Micro's Premium Security Suite into your regular dialogue... oof.

I'm trying to count money, and it looks like that Mac Mini + monitor + accessorises = 300 euros cheaper.

why doesn’t apple put hdmi into the imac 🤔 main reason i went for the mac mini m1 🔥 them options 💯🤙🏾

I wish we could buy a matching 24” display for dual display

My current work machine is a 2019 MacBook Pro i9 32GB that I use for development, video edits, and a dozen other tasks. Recently, I borrowed my wife's M2 MacBook Air (16GB) and that thing ran circles around my MBP. I'm starting to question how much computer I really need after that. Ideally I'd upgrade mine with the current M3 Max ... but with the lower model showing such great performance, one really does have to ask "Is it enough?"

Wouldn't the comparison be more fair if you had given it 16GB?

I suppose I’m unusual in that I don’t have dozens of things open at the same time. I have never been into this “multi-tasking” practice. At worst I might have three things open at the same time and more often it’s never more than two. In that respect I would never overload the iMac particularly with 16gb RAM.

Love my new iMac m3 ..The sound quality is kinda disappointing. Everyone oversold that a bit too much!! 😢 My Harman Kardon desktop speakers are staying!!

iMac with M3 is great for day to day tasks. But for serious 4k or 6k editing, or 3D Modeling, or gaming, you need lots of RAM and a powerful GPU. Just look at NVidia for extreme power at reasonable prices. The M3 iMac has low RAM, and modest GPU.

All these benchmarks with rendering times are not that important when you edit not a lot of videos but when I try to time transitions and everything just stutters, it's almost impossible to get the editing done unless you jump through hoops. I wish more videos would focus on that. Obviously any new Apple computer is good for web browsing and simple tasks.

Great Video

Wow great video

I tried an IMAC and sent it back !

I usually just disable the rendering.

Still using my ‘last of the series’ 27” iMac. 24”: sometimes less is just less.

If you actually went for the 24GB RAM this could be even considered temporally do-able. Not just insane

Why doesn’t apple put m3 pro/max chips in the iMac? There is enough space inside for it.

I got carried away with m2 studio with 2TB SSD and studio display. I’m just a home user who pretends to be a photographer 😂.. a full specced iMac would have suited me better and saved a grand

Unified Memory equals planned obsolescence. Say you really buy an iMac with just 8 Gigs of RAM. After 2-3 years when newer software is more demanding, you cannot just upgrade the RAM. You have to buy a new Mac. And even if you choose to tough it out, swapping will soon kill your SSD, which you ALSO CAN'T SIMPLY REPLACE. Meaning either way you have to buy a new Mac. Thanks, but no thanks.

My wife is the type that would have an iMac. I like customization and 27-inch monitors too much to ever get one. Now, the M3 Mac Mini in a month from now will be interesting to me.

The only place where my iMac disappoints me is…well, macOS. In particular the memory and app/window management. My iPad Pro has 4GB of RAM and I can just use it without ever even thinking about quitting anything. I can have countless Safari and Numbers windows with a ton of tabs, and I don’t have to close any of them of them, let alone quit the respective apps. My iMac has 4 times the memory but feels 4 times more restrictive. I don’t want to be the janitor for a computer. Reminds me of the manual memory allocation days.

A new studio plus a display when they update the studio to m3 otherwise it’s a waste of money for me , couldn’t live with that display, it’s too small , they should be giving at least at 27”.

Im fine with an M1 as long as it has at least 16gb ram and 1 tb ssd

Coolking on this one

The real reason is because you had to pay for that Apple Vision Pro somehow!

Remember when Apple got rid of the startup sound? 😂😂😂😂

Stopped watching when he installed antivirus on the Mac 🎉

For little web videos using Apple devices the iMac with FCP is a great solution. Step outside that workflow and you'll run into issues.

Funny - it should come with 16 gigs of ram - it is totally worthless with 8 gigs of ram; so is the MACBOOK AIR - TOO

Loved you in Oasis, man. Don't Look Back in Anger is a great song!

If you have Apple care and the memory swap degrades the SSD, Apple will replace it .I can't understand why more people don't get it. Apple smokes all the competition comparing price to performance. In geekbench my MacBook Air M2 outscored my maxed out windows desktop pc.

Well this video has been a bit click-baity. Not long ago you had another video saying this was not the computer for you. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qRnyLbDe3yk.htmlsi=YUvCHD2C23BMFrws Now you are switching a bit the game here. Seems more like Apple told you to help them advertise. It would have been better if you had made reference to that video and really what changed since then.

Everyday Greg wakes up, looks at a Lego minifigure for look inspiration, and combs his hair by putting a bowl full of hair gel on his head and pressing down😂

No iMac please. I need a portable one!

you are really annoying with this click-bait titles

Dude, you need to do something with your hair. It's ridiculous.

You're not fooling anybody