if you've been waiting to get your hands
on a retina iMac smaller than 27 inches
your wait is finally over
on Tuesday morning Apple announced that
their IMAX would now come in colossal
and ginormous sizes with colossal being
21.5 inches I guess but we want to see
what else has changed so we're gonna
tear it down
[Music]
hi I'm going to learn with iFixit and
today we're tearing down Apple's
brand-new 21.5 inch iMac with retina 4k
display not much has changed on the
outside of this updated iMac and the
size and weight are the same as the
previous version this iMac still
measures in at 45 centimeters high fifty
two point eight centimeters wide has a
stand depth of seventeen point five
centimeters and a weight of five point
six eight kilograms getting into our
iMac was a breeze with the help of our
iMac service wedge and our iMac opening
tool while the iMac service wedge holds
the display in place we use the opening
tool to cut away the adhesive holding
the display on this 21.5 inch retina 4k
display has a resolution of 4096 by
2,304 and it looks like it's been
manufactured by LG on the back of the
display we find a shiny metal cover that
when removed revealed some of the
secrets of the new Retina display on the
board we find a Texas Instruments
programmable LCD bias a synchronous
step-down Swift converter and a parade
technologies LCD timing controller among
other chips with the display out of the
way we took a look around for something
new inside the new iMac hard drive old
fan nope still the same speakers also
the same it seems that if we want to see
something new we're gonna have to take a
look at the logic board before we got to
the logic board we noticed that Apple
has returned to their habit of not
including their SSD connector on IMAX
that don't ship with flash storage or
fusion drive this puts to rest any
dreams you might have of upgrading your
iMac with an SSD at a later point on the
logic board we found the Intel Core i5
3.1 gigahertz processor that has the
Intel iris pro graphics 6200 integrated
and eight gigabytes of Samsung made
lpddr3 SDRAM if you'd like to see the
full list of chips we've identified head
over to ifixit.com
and check out the full teardown
we've come to the end of our teardown
which means it's time to talk
repairability
and I fix it it's our mission to teach
people how to repair everything so we
give every gadget we tear down a repair
ability score between one and ten ten
being the easiest to repair and one
being the most difficult the 21.5 inch
iMac with retina 4k display got a 1 out
of 10 and here's why
cutting the tape to open the iMac isn't
too hard with the right tools but it
must then be replaced to complete any
repair the RAM is still soldered to the
logic board so you're stuck with what
you bought the fusion drive connector is
missing from the logic board killing all
hope of storage hacking the CPU is
soldered to the logic board and cannot
be replaced or upgraded and finally the
glass and the Retina display are fused
together increasing the cost of
replacement and that's our teardown to
check out the complete teardown
including tons of beautiful high-quality
images head on over to ifixit.com
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