We realize not everyone out there loves Apple products, but this computer has so many cool features, it couldn’t not be our pick for best home computer. The 27-inch iMac has looks and brains, and as you’d expect from any Apple computer, it runs advanced multimedia programs quite smoothly.
Starting with the pretty parts, it has a massive 27-inch screen you’ll never find yourself squinting at. You’ll honestly have a hard time looking away from it because of its 5K resolution. Put simply, 4K is known as ultra high definition, and this 5K display is even better than that. The measurement of how much light something puts out is called a nit, and this computer put out a very bright 463 nits in our tests. It supports a billion colors too, so whether you’re editing a photo for Instagram or watching a cat video on YouTube, it will look amazing.
This all-in-one has the recognizable look of a modern Mac. Its slim profile has a curved back chassis with an L-shaped stand holding the monitor up off your desk. It doesn’t give you as wide of a range of motion as the Asus Chromebook Flip C302CA, for instance, but then again it is a full-sized desktop and not intended to be a laptop. The iMac also lacks a touchscreen, but would you really want to smudge up that glorious massive screen?
The innards are equally impressive as the look of this sleek machine. You get a powerful Intel Core i7-7770K processor and a 512GB solid state drive. You also get 16GB of RAM to accompany all that processing power. In our tests, were able to multitask without any glitches. We had 20 browser tabs open, played videos and downloaded software simultaneously without any problems.
The AMD Radeon Pro 580 graphics card with 8GB of VRAM is an important update for this iMac model that helps it perform much better, especially when it comes to video rendering and media work. We put it to the test with some games, and they ran smoothly at 2560 x 1440 resolution. If you plan on using this home computer for streaming video, you’ll never have to suffer through grainy video unless there’s a bad internet connection.
We realize this iMac’s price point is similar to the Dell XPS 27 7760, so it isn’t exactly cheap, but it’s just so pretty and powerful, we feel it’s worth the expense. It comes with the typical Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse 2. The silver, wireless keyboard is small and its white keys have a slim profile that make typing easy. The mouse has a smooth glass surface that feels nice in the palm of your hand all the while giving you good tracking and feedback. You get a one-year warranty on everything too, the same as all the other home computer models we tested.
The iMac comes in different configurations in case you want to personalize it. You won’t need to go all out if you’re mostly using it to check Facebook and stream Netflix, so you could pick out a slightly more affordable model. The base model with a 27-inch screen has a 3.4GHz Intel Core i5 processor that's not quite as powerful as the one we reviewed. It also comes with 8GB of RAM and a less impressive AMD Radeon Pro 570 graphics card with 4GB of video memory. However, that one does cost a few hundred less than the primo model we tested.
