Apple Silver Review

This is a screen with a very old computer attached. The stunning 5K display and reliable all-in-one design are its only real strengths. With a CPU in the 19th percentile and only 8GB of RAM (9th percentile), it feels slow for modern tasks. Only buy it if you're obsessed with the form factor.

This refurbished 2017 iMac 5K is a classic design with a massive 27-inch screen, but its internals tell a very different story. The numbers are stark: its CPU performance lands in the 19th percentile, and it's saddled with just 8GB of RAM, which puts it in the bottom 9th percentile for memory. That's a tough starting point in 2024, even for a basic office machine.

What you're really buying here is the legendary 5K display and the iconic all-in-one design. It scores a 99th percentile for reliability, which is a huge plus for a refurbished unit, and its port selection is surprisingly good for its age. But you have to be okay with the fact that the core computing power under that beautiful shell is, frankly, quite dated.

Let's be direct: the performance is not this machine's strong suit. The quad-core Intel Core i5 from 2017 is a major bottleneck, sitting in the 19th percentile. In our database, that means it's significantly slower than the median modern desktop CPU for multitasking and demanding applications. The AMD Radeon Pro 580 GPU fares a bit better at the 48th percentile, but that's still just average. It can handle the 5K display for general use and light photo editing, but don't expect to game or do serious video work on it.

The 2TB Fusion Drive is an oddball by today's standards. It combines a small 128GB SSD with a large hard drive. It scores in the 81st percentile for storage capacity, which is great, but the overall speed will feel sluggish compared to a modern NVMe SSD. The 8GB of RAM is the real performance killer, though. For any kind of modern web browsing or app use, you'll feel that limitation immediately.

At around $510, the value proposition is entirely about the screen and the form factor. You are paying for that beautiful 5K display and the all-in-one convenience. From a pure specs-per-dollar perspective, it's hard to recommend. A modern mini PC or a used business desktop paired with a nice monitor will give you significantly better CPU and RAM performance for a similar or lower price. This iMac's value is emotional and aesthetic, not computational.

Compared to modern desktops like the HP Omen 45L or even a Lenovo Legion Tower, this iMac is in a different universe performance-wise. Those machines have CPUs and GPUs that will run circles around this 2017 hardware. But that's not a fair fight. A more apt comparison might be against other all-in-ones or even Apple's own base-model Mac mini. The Mac mini with an M2 chip, while more expensive, offers dramatically better CPU performance, modern software support, and a smaller footprint, though you'd need to supply your own display. This iMac wins on having that incredible built-in screen and a lower upfront cost, but loses on every performance and longevity metric.

Skip this iMac if you need performance for work, gaming, or creative tasks. Its 19th percentile CPU and 9th percentile RAM make it a poor choice for a workstation (it scored a 43/100 there). Also avoid it if you want a future-proof machine or need to run the latest software, as it's no longer supported by new macOS versions. It's not a computer for getting things done quickly.

We can only recommend this 2017 iMac 5K to a very specific buyer: someone who values the iconic design and that spectacular 27-inch screen above all else, and whose computing needs are extremely light and static—think web browsing, email, and document editing. For anyone else, the severely outdated CPU, anemic 8GB of RAM, and lack of modern macOS support make it a tough sell, even at $510. It's a beautiful relic, not a performant tool.