Hands-on: First impressions after 72 hours with the all-new M1 iMac

The all-new M1-powered iMac has officially arrived in all of its colorful glory. Head below as I unbox and go hands-on with the new iMac and share some initial impressions and observations after 72 hours with the first iMac redesign in over a decade.

Unboxing

Gone is the wedge-shaped box that previous iMacs have shipped in. The new 24-inch iMac ships in a flat box with a neat nylon handle at the top. When you unbox the iMac, it features a beautiful screen protector with “hello” printed on it, color-matched to the iMac itself.

I opted for the blue iMac with the Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad, paired with the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad. All of these accessories came packaged nicely in the iMac’s box.

The iMac power cable is braided, as is the included Lightning to USB-C for charging the accessories. As a side note, I really hope this braided cable design makes its way to other devices in the future, including the iPhone and even the MacBook power cable.

Design

As I said, I opted for the blue iMac, and I’m almost 100% sure I made the right decision. The two-tone design is wonderful, with the subtle color on the stand and front matching perfectly with the bolder color on the back.

There are a variety of different easter eggs to celebrate the colorful design of the iMac. These easter eggs include color-matched wallpapers, the macOS accent color and highlight color being matched to “This Mac,” and the Apple stickers included in the box. For my configuration, I opted for 16GB of unified memory and 512GB of SSD storage.

Do I wish there was an Apple logo on the chin of the iMac? Honestly, not really…I enjoy the clean design of the front, and the logo on the back has gotten even bigger to compensate. I also really enjoy the white/gray bezels as well.

While I opted for the blue iMac, my girlfriend opted for the silver. She thinks she might have made the wrong decision and is contemplating swapping it for a green model. I think the silver looks pretty nice, albeit a bit more traditional than the colorful options.

Misc. notes and observations after 48 hours

• I wish the stand was adjustable, or at least a bit taller. The iMac feels a bit low as it comes configured, and I’m looking forward to accessory makers like Twelve South releasing their solutions to this problem.
• The bezels are not at all distracting — they are more off-white/gray than pure white. That being said, Dark Mode creates a bit of a clash.
• The 24-inch 4.5K resolution display is gorgeous, but it makes me want a redesigned 30-inch/32-inch iMac even more. Later this year, maybe?
• The speakers are really powerful, though if you’ve used a newer-model 27-inch iMac, the improvement might not be as noticeable.
• The 1080p FaceTime camera is truly fantastic. It’s sad that it took Apple so long to make this improvement, but at least it’s here now.
• While I still hope the Mac eventually adds Face ID support, having Touch ID support on an iMac has been a game changer. The setup process is identical to other Touch ID-equipped Macs, and performance is instantaneous.
• This goes without saying, but the M1 chip is both fast and completely silent. There are fans inside the Mac, unlike the M1 MacBook Air, but I have not yet heard them kick up.
• The 3.5mm headphone jack being relocated to the side is actually a very nice design change.
• The silver iMac comes with only one sticker.
• This iMac is incredibly lightweight at 9.88 pounds — this has virtually no effect on real-world use, but it is impressive nonetheless.
• Two USB-C ports and 2 Thunderbolt ports are a nice port configuration, but I wish I had more ports. As you can see in the image above, I am already using two dongles and only have one port left, though my paired LG UltraFine 4K has some additional ports as well.

I’ll update this post as I gather more thoughts and observations from using the M1 24-inch iMac. After these first 72 hours, however, I am very impressed. The star of the show here isn’t the M1 chip itself — it’s the physical iMac design that the M1 chip allowed Apple to create. The ultra-thin profile paired with six colors and silver makes for one of the best Apple industrial designs in a long time.

Did you purchase a new M1 iMac? If so, which color did you choose? Have any questions for me? Let us know (and share pictures!) down in the comments.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.