Apple imac Pro

Formerly the most underpowered computer in Apple’s arsenal, the imac has evolved into something of a monster. But who is this new Pro actually for?

This desktop is more powerful than Putin

In computing, terms like ‘pro’ are thrown around like confetti. Shove a dedicated graphics card and a slightly fancier screen on your machine and – hey presto – you’ve got something you can charge another grand for.

While milking extra cash out of people with an inflated sense of self-importance hardly counts as the con of the century, it does make the proclamations of Apple’s all-new souped-up imac hard to trust on face value. With prices for this beast starting at an eye-watering £4899 – and the setup we’re testing here adding up to well over nine thousand big ones – it’s easier than ever to raise an eyebrow at this particular Pro. But to call it overpriced would be harsh: this machine is an absolute beast, with a spec sheet that’s equivalent to Elon Musk’s CV.

Even the so-called entry-level model in this series has enough power to run rings around Apple’s regular imacs, with an 8-core 3.2GHZ Xeon W, a Radeon Pro Vega 56, 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. Don’t know what any of that means? Let’s just say the imac Pro is a very capable computer. So much so that its talents are wasted on the likes of Photoshop, Garageband and the few games you’ll find for the Mac that are worth playing. You’ve got to spend your life buried in complex video, audio or 3D to get your money’s worth here.

So yes, the imac Pro seems as awesome as it is expensive, on paper at least; but that was before it stepped into Stuff HQ for a proper once-over. Here’s how it got on…