The iMac deserves more. Over the last few generations, Apple’s all-in-one desktop has languished with repeat refreshes that have left it sinking into obscurity. The way forward, as it seems to be with many of the tech giant’s oft-relegated products, is to provide a prettier screen.
And by better display we of course mean OLED. Korean news site The Elec (via MacRumors and read with machine translation) reports that Apple may be working with LG to source a new 27-inch penta-tandem OLED display for its next iMacs. According to The Elec’s unnamed supply chain sources, the screen would also employ the latest RGB strip technology, which helps reduce fuzziness around text that you can sometimes get on OLED screens.
To break this down a bit: an organic light-emitting diode display contains a layer of self-emissive lights capable of displaying red, green, and blue colors. A penta-tandem display instead uses five layers of diodes to enhance overall screen brightness. That display technology can look gorgeous with the right content, such as with recent monitors like the Lenovo Legion Pro 27UD-10 and Alienware AW3426DW. Adding OLED would also bring the iMac in line with other, prettier all-in-ones, like the 31.5-inch Lenovo Yoga AIO Aura Edition.
The most recent iMac models, including the 2024 M4 iMac, make use of a 4.5K resolution “Retina” display. Retaina is Apple’s name for its IPS LCD, which has a higher pixel density than you can find on some other screens. The OLED displays may max out at a 5K resolution and a solid 220 PPI density. This year, Apple pushed out its new mini LED-type Studio Display XDR, a professional monitor that actually included a full A19 Pro inside, the processor first built for the iPhone 17 Pro. That monitor didn’t include any Mac-like capabilities, and that seemed like a missed opportunity.
Last year, we noted rumors that Apple was planning to stick a high-end M5 Max chip inside a larger all-in-one computer. This version of the all-in-one would supposedly include a larger screen than the regular 24-inch models. Inevitably, this “Pro”-level iMac would be built for creatives or designers who need a high-resolution, color-accurate display and the processing power to run demanding rendering tasks.
You can already tell that his kind of iMac could be excessively expensive. After recent price hikes, the M4 iMac now starts at $1,500. A base 14-inch M5 Max MacBook Pro costs $4,100, and that’s with the less-powerful 32-core GPU instead of the 40-core variant. A 27-inch iMac with all the fixings could easily demand well over $5,000, making it one of Apple’s most-expensive items stacked on its shelves, especially since the company recently killed its ultra-pricey Mac Pro desktop.
If Apple is planning for an OLED iMac, it may not arrive before the end of this year. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reiterated Sunday that Apple was planning to launch a new iMac this year, likely in October. However, the Mac maker may already have an OLED MacBook Pro laptop in store for that date, and Apple’s all-in-one may be a more basic refresh, perhaps with an updated M6 chip.
