Apple unveiled the new 24-inch M1 iMac in April 2021, a radically redesigned desktop machine that comes in a range of fun colors. The iMac now features an Apple-designed “M1” Arm-based chip, replacing the prior Intel chips, to bring significant speed and efficiency improvements.
The M1 chip is Apple’s first System on a Chip for the Mac, integrating the CPU, GPU, RAM, and more. The M1 has an 8-core CPU with four high-efficiency cores and four high-performance cores along with an integrated GPU that has up to 8 cores, and it is the same M1 chip that was first used in the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini.
According to Apple, compared to the previous generation 21.5-inch model, the M1 iMac offers up to 85 faster CPU performance, up to 2x faster GPU performance, and up to 3x faster machine learning. As with the prior entry-level 21.5-inch iMac models, RAM maxes out at 16GB, but the higher-end models that continue to have Intel chips are configurable with up to 128GB RAM.
