Reviews of Apple’s new iMac Pro started going live on the internet yesterday. Visitors of this website will probably find photographer/filmmaker Vincet Laforet’s iMac Pro review the most useful. He speaks of performance improvements of 200 to 300 percent in comparison to the current generation iMac or 2015 MacBook Pro:
I found a very consistent set of results: a 2X to 3X boost in speed (relative to my current iMac and MacBook Pro 15”) a noticeable leap from most generational jumps that are generally ten times smaller.
Whether you’re editing 8K RED video, H.264 4K Drone footage, 6K 3D VR content or 50 Megapixel RAW stills – you can expect a 200-300% increase in performance in almost every industry leading software with the iMac Pro.
I’ve seldom seen a jump this dramatic before on any new generation of Macs – 20%-30% speed increases are the norm … NOT 200%-300% increases. That’s SIGNIFICANT. (Feel free to jump straight to the test results below if you have a short attention span or are a numbers person..)
He goes on to perform a wide range of test in a multitude of different apps. Comparing the performance between the 3 machines and sharing the results of each test. For photographers it is interesting to look at his Lightroom test:
I imported 788 still CR2 (RAW) Canon 5DsR 50 Megapixel images or 50.74GB of images and then…
I had LR build 1:1 Previews
iMac Pro – 25 minutes 26 seconds
iMac – 50 minutes 45 seconds
MacBookPro 15” – 46 minutes 40 seconds
I applied a look (color correction in the Develop module) and Exported 788 JPEG files at full resolution or 14.79 GB of JPEGs averaging 9 MB each
iMac Pro -31 Minutes
iMac – 1 hour 17 Minutes
MacBookPro 15” – 1 hour 4 minutes
I only use Lightroom for my personal photography, opting to stick with Photo Mechanic and Photoshop for all things work, but none the less those results are pretty incredible. Vincent test’s a wide range of app, everything from Final Cut Pro X to Red Cine-X so really do make sure to go check out his blog post and look at the full set of results.
If you need even more iMac Pro review goodness to pass the time this morning, then check out the video review from Marques Brownlee:
Me, I’m just going to go out and find a cash machine.