3 things to keep in mind before you spring for a Retina 5K iMac

Late last week, Apple unveiled a couple of new products: a new iPad Air, a new iPad Mini, and a new iMac with what the company is calling a “Retina 5K” display. Although that’s the biggest and shiniest of Apple’s new options, and although it looks awesome, I do want to offer a few words of caution before you run off and drop US$2,500 on a new desktop.

First off, let’s be clear: as far as displays go, the Retina 5K is objectively awesome. At a resolution of 5120×2880 across a 27-inch screen, the display boasts an impressive 14.9 million pixels. It’s so high-res that you can edit 4K video footage at full resolution and still have screen real estate left over for other windows in your editing program. This is the king of desktop displays right now, and given that the US$2,500 includes a decent computer, it even seems to be pretty reasonably priced (which, let’s be fair, is not Apple’s strong suit).

But before you rush out and buy one, a few important things to keep in mind:

1. The internet’s going to look kind of crappy.

While the Retina 5K screen has a massive resolution, it isn’t going to make the images you see on the web look any better than they do now. Very few websites have images large enough to take advantage of the Retina 5K’s massive resolution, and I wouldn’t expect many to add higher-res pictures because they eat up quite a lot of bandwidth.

Of course, having a 5K monitor isn’t going to make those pictures any worse than they are right now. But because you’ll be used to the ultra-sharp text and the high-res images you see on your desktop, in your photo albums, and more, they’re probably going to start looking worse to you. It’s a bit like the difference between standard and HD video resolutions: we all watched TV that wasn’t HD for decades and it looked fine. But now that everybody’s used to HD, some people have a tough time going back and looking at those old SD shows.

2. Your videos won’t look any better, either.

The Retina 5K screen will allow you view and edit videos in 4K! That’s great, but chances are you don’t have any of those. There are virtually zero consumer-grade cameras that shoot 4K video, and there’s also very little entertainment available in 4K. You’re going to have a hard time getting your favorite movies and shows in anything larger than 1080p.

Of course, that may change over the next five years as 4K TVs see price drops and become more popular. Many of today’s TV shows and movies are filmed in 4K, even if the final output consumers get is 1080p, so there’s the potential for a lot more 4K content to come on the market over the next few years if there’s demand for it. Still, you should know that right now, unless you’re a professional filmmaker with a pretty expensive camera, you’re probably not going to be seeing much 4K video on your new iMac.

3. Just because the display can handle it doesn’t mean the processor can.

If you are a professional photographer, animator, or video producer, keep in mind that the iMac’s amazing display doesn’t necessarily equate to amazing performance. Early hands-on reviews of the stock Retina 5K iMac say that it can get a little jerky when doing something simple like dragging around RAW photo files. So if you’re planning on doing something even more processor-intensive like, for example, rendering effects on 4K video, there may be better options. There are definitely more powerful workstations available on the market at cheaper prices, and while they may not come with such a gorgeous display, the time you save in faster renders might be worth it.