Apple’s new iMac with the M6 chip is now in buyers’ hands, and the headline number Apple is pushing is not about speed for spreadsheets. It is AI: Apple says the machine runs on-device AI prompt processing up to five times faster than the M4 iMac it replaces, thanks to a new Dual 16-core Neural Engine and GPU cores that each carry their own Neural Accelerators.
Apple announced the 24-inch all-in-one on October 27, opened pre-orders the next day and began deliveries on Friday, November 6. Prices start at $1,499 in the US for the 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU model, and $1,699 for the 12-core version. Education pricing trims those to $1,449 and $1,599.
Apple’s own comparison chart tells the upgrade story most clearly for older owners. Against the M1 iMac, Apple claims up to 2.5 times faster performance in Excel, 3.3 times faster graphics in photo editing and 12 times faster on-device AI prompt processing. Against the most popular Intel iMac, it claims up to 18 times faster performance. Those are Apple’s lab figures, and outside testing will vary.
The specs Apple listed
The M6 brings up to a 12-core CPU and a 12-core GPU, two more cores each than the top M4 iMac. Apple claims the CPU delivers “the world’s fastest single-threaded CPU performance,” a figure based on its own October 2026 testing. Memory bandwidth reaches up to 170GB/s, which matters for running large language models locally.
- Display: the same 24-inch 4.5K Retina panel at 500 nits, with an optional nano-texture finish on 12-core models.
- Wireless: Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, up from Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 two generations ago.
- Wired: up to four Thunderbolt 4 ports and 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet on the 12-core model, which Apple says is up to 2.5 times faster than the previous wired option.
- Storage: SSD reads and writes up to twice as fast as the M4 model.
- Camera and audio: a 12MP Center Stage camera with Desk View, six speakers with Dolby Atmos support, and three microphones.
- Colors: blue, green, pink, yellow, purple, orange and silver.
Shelly Goldberg, Apple’s vice president of Hardware Engineering, called it “the world’s best all-in-one” and said “today it raises the bar yet again.” The machine ships with macOS 27 and Siri AI, Apple’s rebuilt assistant, which Apple says is in beta in macOS 27.2 and is not available in the EU on some of its other platforms.
How the M6 iMac fits the five-year timeline
This is the fourth chip in the same shell. The thin, colorful 24-inch design arrived with the M1 in May 2021, the first major iMac redesign since 2012. The M3 followed in late 2023, the M4 in late 2024, and the M6 now skips straight past a standard M5 iMac. Across all four, the display resolution of 4480 by 2520, the 500-nit brightness and the fixed-height stand have not changed.
The weight has barely moved either. The 12-core M6 model weighs 9.79 pounds, the same as the four-port M4. Where the numbers have shifted is the carbon count: the two-port M6 model is listed at 326 kg of CO2-equivalent over its life, down from 481 kg for the first two-port M1 model, a drop of about 32 percent (481 minus 326 is 155, and 155 divided by 481 is 0.32).
Apple has been busy elsewhere in its lineup this month. We covered the closure of the Apple Support Community forum on November 20 and the new Sign Language button on Apple TV. For the M6 iMac, US buyers can lease the base model through Apple Upgrade from $28.99 a month over 36 months.
Further reading
Image: Jelican9, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.
