ItInsightsWorld General Brief: Apple M6 iMac Offers 24-inch 4.5K Retina Display, Seven Colors, and a $1,499 US Launch Price

Apple has presented a new iMac that keeps the outward style of the M4 generation while moving the platform to the M6 chip. The machine is offered in seven color options: blue, green, pink, yellow, purple, orange, and silver. Its display remains a 24-inch 4.5K Retina panel, and the 12-megapixel front camera continues to support Center Stage and Desk View.

How the M6 Chip Differs From the Earlier Apple Silicon Baseline

Apple had first introduced the M6 chip in a Mac mini this August. For the new iMac, the chip is described as the first Apple silicon design to use a dual neural engine structure, made of two 16-core Neural Engine units. Earlier Apple chips relied on a single neural engine. In the graphics section, the M6 also introduces Neural Accelerators inside each GPU core. The unified memory bandwidth increases to 170GB/s, up from 120GB/s on the M4 chip.

United States Pricing and Configuration Levels

In the United States, the entry price is $1,499. That version pairs the M6 chip with a 10-core CPU, a 10-core GPU, and a dual 16-core Neural Engine, along with 16GB unified memory, 256GB storage, and two Thunderbolt 4 ports. Apple also noted that the matching previous-generation model was also priced at $1,499 after its price adjustment in June this year, while its original launch price had been $1,299.

The $1,699 step-up model replaces the 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU with a 12-core CPU and 12-core GPU, and it moves from two ports to four Thunderbolt 4 ports. Across the new iMac line, storage can be configured up to a 2TB SSD, while unified memory can be configured up to 32GB.

Wireless, Ethernet Adapter Choices, and Storage Speed

Wireless hardware uses Apple’s N1 chip, bringing Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 to the new iMac. That is an upgrade from the prior generation’s Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 support. For wired networking, buyers of the base configuration can pay an extra $30 to receive a power adapter with a 2.5Gb Ethernet port; the higher-priced version includes that adapter by default. The earlier iMac adapter provided only a 1Gb Ethernet port.

Support for PCIe 5.0 also changes storage behavior. Apple says the SSD read and write speed can improve by up to twice compared with the M4 version, which helps system response and file-transfer performance.

Order Window, Release Date, and Included Accessories

Preorders in the United States begin on October 28, and the official sale date is November 6. The included two accessories remain the Magic Mouse and the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID, and neither accessory received an update with this iMac refresh.