Apple iMac M4 Yellow 2024 Review

The Apple iMac M4 is a stunning all-in-one desktop with a best-in-class display and dead-simple setup, making it perfect for everyday home office use. Its integrated GPU punches above its weight, but the base 256GB storage and 16GB non-upgradeable RAM are a letdown for the price. Unless you're allergic to external drives and a bit of cable clutter, wait for a discount or consider a Mac Mini with a separate monitor.

The Apple iMac M4 is the latest iteration of Apple's iconic all-in-one, and it's here to make your desk look way cooler than it probably does right now. With the M4 chip (a 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU), 16GB of RAM, and a stunning 24-inch 4.5K Retina display, it's aimed squarely at home offices, students, and anyone who wants a powerful but dead-simple desktop. It's also built for Apple Intelligence, so all those AI writing tools and photo cleanup features are baked right in. The base model comes with a 256GB SSD, which honestly feels a bit tight in 2024 for a machine that starts around $1,124 and can go up to $1,699 depending on where you buy. But if your digital life lives mostly in the cloud, you might not mind.

Apple ships this thing in seven colors, and the design is impossibly thin—like, how-does-the-computer-fit-in-there thin. It's the kind of machine that makes a Windows all-in-one look like it showed up to a dinner party in sweatpants. Connectivity is solid with four Thunderbolt 4 ports (two on the base model), up to four USB-C ports, and yes, still has USB-A for your legacy gear. Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, and a 12MP Center Stage camera round out the package. If you're deep in the Apple ecosystem—iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch—the integration is seamless. You can copy on your phone and paste on your Mac, take FaceTime calls on the big screen, or mirror your iPhone wirelessly. It all just works, as the saying goes.

We've been tracking all-in-one desktop data for a while, and the iMac M4 lands in a weird spot. It's an absolute darling for social proof and reliability, and buyers rave about how easy it is to set up. But those warm fuzzy feelings crash against a couple of hard numbers: storage and RAM are way behind the competition. If you're looking at this machine and wondering "is the iMac M4 good for gaming?"—short answer, no. Its gaming score is a 43.4 out of 100, so unless your idea of gaming is Apple Arcade, look elsewhere. But for everyday productivity, creative work, and keeping your desk photogenic, it's a top contender.

The M4 chip in this iMac doesn't break records in raw CPU muscle, but it's not meant to. It sits at the 55th percentile among all desktops we track, which means it's solid, middle-of-the-pack. For things like spreadsheets, video calls, and Lightroom, it's more than capable. But the integrated 10-core GPU is a different story—it's in the 91st percentile, making it one of the best integrated graphics solutions we've seen. In practice, that means smooth 4K video editing in Final Cut Pro and enough oomph for 3D rendering apps like Blender, as long as you're not throwing Hollywood-level scenes at it.

Where you'll feel the squeeze is in memory and storage. Only 16GB of RAM puts this iMac in the 29th percentile, which is mediocre at best. It'll handle a few dozen browser tabs and Slack without sweating, but push it with large Photoshop files or a Parallels virtual machine, and you'll start to see the beach ball. The 256GB SSD is even worse, lagging at the 13th percentile. That's one of the smallest capacities out there, and after macOS and your essential apps, you'll have room for maybe a decent photo library before you're hunting for an external drive. Apple charges a steep premium for upgrades, so consider an external Thunderbolt SSD if you need more space. For the price, this base storage feels like Apple nickeling-and-diming you.

Pricing on the iMac M4 is all over the place, ranging from $1,124 to $1,699 depending on the vendor. We're seeing Best Buy consistently come in at the low end with that $1,124 tag, while Amazon and Apple themselves push toward the higher end for the exact same base spec—so definitely shop around. At $1,124, you're getting a phenomenal display, fantastic build quality, and the full macOS experience. But when you cross $1,400, the value proposition gets dicey. For that money, you could snag a Mac Mini M4 with an external monitor or even a MacBook Air and have more flexibility. And if you actually need the storage Apple should have included, you're immediately dropping another $200 or more on an external drive. The iMac is a luxury piece of tech, and you're paying a premium for that all-in-one aesthetic. For the right person—someone who values design and simplicity above raw specs—it's justifiable. For everyone else, it's a tough sell.

Stacked against traditional desktop towers, the iMac M4 might as well be from another planet. Take the HP OMEN 45L GT22-3080 or the ASUS ROG GM700TZ: these are hulking gaming rigs with discrete GPUs, tons of storage, and upgrade potential galore. They'll demolish the iMac in any gaming or GPU-heavy workload. But they also take up half your desk and scream "gamer" with RGB fans. The iMac's competition is really the Lenovo Legion Tower 5i Gen 10 or Dell XPS EBT2250—but again, those are towers with monitors sold separately. If you just want a clean, powerful home computer, the iMac wins on design and ease of use hands down. For raw performance per dollar, though, those towers leave it in the dust.

For a more apples-to-apples comparison, the base Mac Mini M4 with a decent 4K monitor will give you similar performance (with more ports) for less money. But then you lose the all-in-one charm. The iMac's true rival is itself—the previous M1 or M3 iMac models, which you can find refurbished for hundreds less. The M4 chip is a nice bump, but if you're coming from an M1 iMac, the real-world difference is subtle. Unless you crave Apple Intelligence features or the brighter display, a used M1 iMac is a smarter buy for most people.

Skip the iMac M4 if you're a gamer—this machine just wasn't built for it, and even a budget gaming tower will embarrass it. You should also pass if you rely on internal storage for large media libraries or expect to run Windows natively for work. Anyone who wants to upgrade RAM or storage later should look elsewhere, because everything is soldered down. For those folks, the Mac Mini M4 with a user-chosen monitor is smarter, or a Windows all-in-one like the Dell XPS EBT2250 (though the design won't win any awards). And if the price tag makes you wince, a refurbished M1 iMac is honestly still a great machine for hundreds less.

The iMac M4 is a beautiful, frustration-free desktop that'll make 95% of people perfectly happy. It's fast for everyday tasks, quiet as a mouse, and that display is just a joy to look at. But Apple's insistence on selling a premium machine with a 256GB SSD in the base model is a real head-scratcher. That alone pulls it out of "instant buy" territory for anyone who saves files locally. And the non-upgradeable 16GB of RAM will age about as well as milk left on a sunny countertop.

So should you buy this? If you're a student, a creative pro who works mostly in the cloud, or a family looking for a shared computer that doesn't look like a plastic monstrosity, the iMac M4 is a solid choice—just budget for an external drive. But if you need serious storage, plan to do any kind of gaming, or want a machine that'll grow with you over five years, you're better off building a mini PC setup or even looking at a MacBook. Wait for a sale around the $1,100 mark, and it becomes a lot easier to stomach.