Apple 2020 iMac with Retina 5K display (27-inch, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD Storage)

I’ve wanted a 27” iMac ever since I saw one in Curry’s many years ago. I just loved that huge screen. Back then I couldn’t come close to affording one. I’ve also been a PC user and since buying a Mac laptop 6 years ago discovered many things I didn’t like about how Apple does things.

Anyway HDDs are going, SSDs are in and I’ve got a home-built PC full of ageing HDDs, so I felt it was time for a change. I like Windows 7, which is no longer supported, and hate Windows 10. But my PC is starting to show its age and it was either build a new one and load it with Windows 10, or switch to that massive 27” iMac and shift all my docs and image files across to an unfamiliar operating/filing system.

The iMac won.

I’ve got a couple of Terabytes of HDDs in my PC, and could only afford the 512GB SSD in the Mac, so I decided to keep my data on external SSDs since, gigabyte for gigabyte, external SSDs are much less expensive than having Apple install them in the iMac. That has worked ok so far with the Mac having no problem accessing files in Fat2/exFat32 format. My images were my main concern and after subscribing to Adobe’s lPhotoshop/Lightroom CC versions (I had been using CS6 on my PC) I had no problem re-assigning the LR catalogues to point at the new image locations.This iMac also allows user addition of memory modules and again that is a much less expensive option than buying the memory pre-installed by Apple, so get the 8GB ram version and buy your own to expand the RAM.

I use Google chrome and Google made it easy to retain all my opened browser tabs from the PC.

Mail was the biggest problem. I had to manually enter the details of the mail servers for all my mail accounts, and Apple Mail doesn’t appear to delete mail from the servers when you open it it simply seems to show you what’s there. If I open Outlook on my PC all my mail disappears from the iMac and re-appears on my PC.PC took about ten minutes to boot up and about five to shut down. iMac 50 seconds to boot up and almost instant shutdown. There is nowhere near as much junk to run at startup on the Mac though.

The very best bit of the iMac is undoubtedly the screen. Crystal clear, beautiful colour, it’s definitely a huge improvement over the PC screen and the screen is pretty much the computer because it’s what you interact with.

The next best bit is the ton of free, quality software that’s bundled with it. There’s a full MS Office equivalent. With spreadsheet, powerpoint lookalike, word processor, and mail program. They all read the equivalent Office files so there is no problem accessing Word documents or spreadsheets in the Apple version of Office. You can even save in Office document format.There’s basic photo, video, and sound editing programs, so social media stuff is covered. If you like making music Garage Band is a fun sound editor/music creator to play around with. This all comes included in the price and, to my mind, in some way offsets the increased cost of the iMac over a similarly priced PC.

The keyboard and mouse are minimalist and bluetooth, so no wires. Recharging is via a supplied USB cable. Apple has implemented a right-click feature nowadays. This was one of the main things I had problems with the lack of when I first used a Mac many, many years ago.All in all I think the 27” is a good buy. I’m really happy with it and find the stupid low profile keyboard keys and flat keyboard much easier to use than I expected. Though there is the fn/control/option/command keys to get used to. But pretty much use command where you’d use CTRL and ignore the rest unless you use Photoshop and you’ll be fine.The switch from PC to iMac was relatively painless with a little planning. Finder instead of Explorer for file operations is painful, but that’s lack of familiarity as much as anything else. For everything else it’s brilliant and being able to use the latest version of Photoshop/Lightroom and seeing my images on this amazing screen is well worth all the hassle.

Apple no longer make 27" all in ones, so this is the last batch, and at the reduced prices you can't go wrong. If you want a new Apple 27" retina screen set up from Apple, it'll cost you £1,500 for the monitor alone, keyboard, mouse and processor box on top of that. Need to add extra RAM to this one though, but that's cheap enough. I find the performance plenty good enough for my needs, the most demanding being photo editing RAW photos in Capture One which works great, so very much in the "good enough" category - I suspect I'd hardly notice a faster machine. This replaces my previous 27" iMac, which lasted 12 years, still works, and has found another home - no doubt it will be working for a good few years more.

Very pleased with this beautifully designed aluminium iMac which has a massive high-resolution 27" screen which is perfect for watching movies and YouTube videos on, you can't beat a decent size screen.I purchased this 27" iMac model rather than one of the newer generation iMacs because it has plenty of ports on the back along with an SD card reader slot which is important to me to be able to easily transfer my photos off my cameras, also the RAM can also be increased if required unlike many of the newer models and I also believe the smaller 21.5" model which are none-expandable. Only thing it doesn't have is a built-in DVD player, might be an idea to buy an external CD/DVD player whilst they are still available.Please note the boot time is very fast and it's totally silent.The only drawback I can find on this model compared to my old 24" iMac (2007) is that when wearing headphones the volume doesn't go high enough when listening to dance music videos on YouTube, it would be nice if Apple allowed a higher volume to be selected, with a default on nanny-state tick box to restrict the volume if necessary. Can assume this is down to some petty noise regulations.Am sure that the newer generation of Macs will on paper be faster, but for my needs of photo editing, surfing the web, emails, YouTube, Flickr, etc. this is perfectly adequate.Have since added a few apps which work really well, namely 'Affinity Photo' and 'Affinity Designer' which are superb, along with 'VLC' for watching videos in different formats, and '4K Video Downloader' which is very handy for anyone that watches YouTube videos. Ought to mention the iMac comes loaded with quite a few very useful apps so you really don't need to look much further, it's the complete package.In terms of future lifespan, my old 24" Mac was a 2007 model and it still works fine so I think I got value for money. Highly recommended.