4K 21.5-Inch Retina iMac Confirmed? Features, Release Date & Rumors Here!

There are rumors that the Retina iMac will launch soon with a 4K 21.5-inch display. There are reportedly a number of upgrades that users can look forward to.

Mac Rumors reported that Apple recently released the sixth OS X 10.11 El Capitan beta, which hinted that a 4K 21.5-inch Retina iMac is indeed coming. The new OS had a few code lines discovered by French website Consomac which included three new files. Two of the files featured screen resolutions that suggested that 5K 27-inch iMacs were coming and another file that hinted on a 4096 x 2304 resolution. Similar to the second El Capitan beta, the code may be pointing to the 21.5-inch Retina iMac display with a 4K resolution.

There are new talks originating from Ming-Chi Kuo,a KGI Securities analyst, that the iMac series might go through some upgrades in the third quarter of 2015. Included in the possible improvements are greater color saturation due to new processors and the panel using an LED phosphor material known as KSF to improve color saturation. There are also rumors that Apple is developing a new external display. The current external display was launched in 2010 and an update was introduced a year later with a Thunderbolt connector. Despite, having a 27-inch display, the resolution was only 2560 x 1440.

9to5Mac previously cited during the release of the OS X El Capitan beta for developers in the end of June 2015 that the software upgrade also referred to a new Intel graphics chipset called Iris Pro 6200, which is a Broadwell-integrated graphics processor that would be a good fit for a 4K iMac. There were also references to four new AMD Radeon R9 processors in the previous beta, showing possible 4K iMac upgrade options or additional Mac models.

Tech Crunch revealed that the current 21.5-inch iMac features a 1920 x 1080 display. The better native resolution of 4096 x 2304 means that users can watch 4K video without the need to scale down. Video professionals will particularly benefit from the upgrade. The 21.5-inch iMac currently costs $1,099, so one with Retina display should be more expensive, but still cheaper than the 27-inch iMac. Possibly, the new model might retail at around $1,299. If it launches, the new model will be a great option between the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display and the 27-inch iMac with a 5K display. It is likely that the new product will also feature the new Thunderbolt 3.