Gadgetory

so this is the iMac Pro it's Apple's first true Pro desktop workstation in years and it's pretty damn good so I made my first impressions video of the new iMac Pro using somewhere what I'd call like a mid tier iMac pros the 10 core the total price ran around 10 grand for that machine the a Mac Pro starts at about 5,000 bucks on launch day though I did order what would be the highest end available iMac pro spec config with the intention of making it my full daily driver I'm gonna give it a shot and replace the Mac Pro so that's what this is turns out to be the 18 core Xeon CPU 128 gigs of ram the 16 gig Vegas 64 and a 4 terabyte SSD and all that runs around 13,000 bucks and I have actually really liked it so a couple months ago I was wondering if I Mac Pro was a trap I was thinking I would try it and it would just be my interim machine until that fully modular and new Mac Pro comes out maybe this year and that may still be true but after using this I can really say that I can highly recommend iMac pro maybe not this 18 core one but this is one my favorite and new Apple products in a really long time so of course anyone considering buying one will want to know why should I get an iMac Pro over a regular high-end iMac you know you can get a maxed out 5k iMac with a core i7 64 gigs of ram all of that for about 5 grand so why pay more for this so this is everything that's different about this deceivingly different beast the iMac pro so the outside dimensions are exactly the same as a normal iMac which means same 5k display but also same big bezels and same huge chin and same non adjustable stand so you know part of the reason I was looking forward to the new Mac Pro is because I've never really been a huge fan of the way the iMac looks I'd rather use my own monitor I actually prefer dual monitors and a matte finish but that's not to say this 5k display here is bad in fact it's excellent it's one of the best and it always has been but here's what is new number one the space gray obviously I think it's hot I would love an even more like matte black undertone but I know we're not getting that so for now I can't appreciate the space gray paint the space grey keyboard the black buttons the trackpad the black lightning cable black Apple stickers even all the stuff that you can only get with an iMac pro it doesn't save the Magic Mouse from dumb design but you know at least now it's better-looking so number two the built-in speakers of the iMac Pro are actually significantly louder and fuller and better than a regular iMac now you may or may not care about that if you're a pro user you probably don't use the built-in speakers obviously don't I use an audio device to my external speakers and I also have this little Satechi little hub here that plugs and gets my ports around the front and goes right into the speaker but if you do use the built-in speakers that's a nice bonus and speaking of ports of course number three is those ports so the iMac Pro has a 20-18 workstation suite of high performance IO has four full-size USB 3.0 ports four Thunderbolt 3 USB C ports an SD card reader a headphone jack and tend to give an Ethernet which is pretty huge for networking professionals right there I'm currently using most of these ports on mine so for my external storage the Pegasus the audio device the red mag reader things like that but I have a couple left over so I haven't found that I need more ports but if I added another 5k monitor which you can do that would fill my Thunderbolt 3 ports but so far I'm alright now again it is an all-in-one but technically it's an all-in-one desktop and for any desktop I gotta say I usually want the port's to be pretty easily within reach so that's yet another reason why I'd prefer a Mac Pro but I'll link to this little Satechi hope I got right below that like button if you want more info on it and I'll also link the 12 South Stand I have mine on as well I've talked about them before in my setup tour video but there's that so number four is the built-in webcam so it's now rocking this 1080p FaceTime camera which you know this is also better than a normal iMac but it's not that great I mean we still have these incredible cameras these 4k optically stabilized cameras in this little device here but in this entire bezel of this whole iMac purim looking at this is the best they could fit apparently not a big deal so number five is the vents and the cooling this is pretty minor but I Mac Pro is dead silent even with a heavy edit going on in Final Cut Pro or a massive amount of multitasking it seems like apples pretty into keeping the fan speed low on this thing I've heard it speed up maybe twice ever while using it and both of those times is word during rendering and final cut so the slot at the bottom is air intake and the vents at the top near the stand or where the hot air is blowing out some people have definitely mentioned that it seems like the angle of the IMAX stand would take the hot air output and bounce it back into the cool air vent but I've never found that the fan spins fast enough to move the hot air out that fast so it just kind of hot air just kind of Rises and the cold air intake takes in whatever is at your desk level and that brings us to number six the one that really matters the internals like I mentioned this is a maxed out iMac Pro here so this is the 18 cores E&W workstation chip the 128 gigs of air correcting memory 16 gigabytes of memory on that Vegas 64 GPU and the 4 terabyte SSD workstation grade parts and also something that doesn't get talked about as much is the t2 chip which is new to the iMac pro but that integrates a bunch of the smaller formerly discrete controllers into one like the cameras image processor encrypted storage etc and with the performance I feel like I've actually noticed a major difference in the way it feels both in heavy everyday projects and in the day-to-day which is not something I thought I would now you can look at benchmarks and obviously the 18 core Xeon and all the high-end specs are going to destroy a regular i7 and all of those and obviously I perform a little bit something like a custom built PC but just in the way I've been using it and it's kind of like the eye test I've noticed it feels faster which is awesome a lot of the most intensive work I do in the studio of course is video editing and that's actually pretty GPU heavy which matters more in Final Cut Pro I Mac Pro flies through this stuff like an iMac or even my trashcan Mac Pro never quite could and of course every I my craft ride has had Vegas 64 so that's important but cutting through and playing back a K read code at 12 to 1 or even 8 to 1 compression on the timeline would cripple a MacBook Pro it would just kind of chug along with a lot of dropped frames on any old Mac Pro but it plays through almost like pro res on this iMac Pro this is in the better performance mode obviously but I can add effects colors layer stuff on top and it plays it back smoothly after maybe a split second of buffering which is awesome it makes video editing feel a lot better it feels easier in a weird way so from top to bottom performance has been great you know the bottom just being swapping around the UI and just web browsing in Safari and Chrome all the way up to the most demanding work my Mac Pro has absolutely been worth it for what I've put it through so we actually have this kind of a unscientific scale for measuring render times and videos out of Final Cut Pro we measure it in how many games of rocket league we can play before it's done exporting so finishing an 8k raw project transcoding and down to 4k on the trashcan Mac Pro for example would you know you hit the render button and then you head over to the ps4 boot it up fire up rocket league and we get in two to three full games of rocket league before you turn around and it's done rendering and we can upload we got the ten core I mic Pro in here and it was the same thing you'd hit render and then you go over and fire up the ps4 get to rocket League and we get like one full game but by the middle of the second game you turn around and this thing is done already the 18 core iMac pro this literally happened we hit render and then we went over the ps4 and booted it up and there was like a little software update for rocket League so we fired that up and before that even finished before what you think got to start playing this was done exporting the video but even when it all goes normally everything boots and you fire up rocket League will get in maybe one game before we turn around and it's done and ready to upload damn that is immensely satisfying because now you you actually know that only the most major most intense projects will actually take a long time to render and more normal videos that are just a couple minutes long won't take forever so if it isn't already clear by now I really like the new iMac Pro a lot more than I thought I would I am fully aware that yes you can build a PC with a bit more for a bit less you can customize a tower infinitely more of course as a matter of fact I still plan on moving on to a fully modular desktop Mac Pro when it eventually does come out but now that I'm Mac Pro exists as a product and I've used it I can comfortably recommend it to what I would consider graphics professionals and Final Cut editors alike it's the elegant clean super-powerful Space Gray all-in-one it's it's the iMac I always wanted at the end of the day this is my new full-time daily use and editing machine for everything for now obviously I'm willing to deal with the bigger bezels and the non upgradable display and the totally sealed internals because the performance is that good and at the end of the day that's what I'm paying for if you are a Final Cut Pro Editor as a professional this is worth it 100% no-brainer if you're a pro using some other suite of apps like maybe the Adobe suite or something else consider if you can get away with doing all the things you do now on a regular high-end iMac or not so if you're an Adobe like the premier suite or after effects maybe not this would definitely benefit or if you're in like Maya or Maxthon again you'll benefit a lot here but if you're in motion or maybe something else maybe not but my last piece of advice if if you're considering buying an iMac Pro and you're trying to think about where to save money where you should upgrade because it's not an upgradeable machine I would say go with the 10 core if you can only upgrade one thing that seems to be the sweet spot in terms of cores versus clock speed obviously it's not appealing to be stuck with the same amount of RAM forever like you are with an iMac Pro but I think the 64 gigs of the base model is actually enough for a lot of people and then of course if you can find the room to upgrade one more thing I would highly suggest the GPU upgrading to the Vegas 64 that's where a lot of the big improvements with performance with Final Cut Pro and just with moving around the OS and general swiping back and forth between spaces that's all been improved with that so all that being said I Mac Pro turns out to actually be a pretty good buy especially if you're in the category as I described all that also being said modular Mac Pro this has me a lot more excited for that either way that's been it let me know what you think thanks for watching talk to you guys in the next one peace