The M6 iMac adds cores, Wi-Fi 7 and much faster storage at $1,499, but M4 owners and anyone with a spare monitor have cheaper paths.
Apple's iMac with M6 is a speed upgrade in a familiar shell. It starts at $1,499 in the US, £1,499 in the UK and $2,099 CAD in Canada, and it went on sale November 6.
Compared with the M4 iMac, you get two extra CPU and GPU cores, much faster graphics and storage, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. The design, the 24-inch screen, the camera and the colors are all unchanged, and the stand still doesn't raise or lower.
If you want one box with everything included, the 12-core $1,699 model is the one to pick for extra ports and a second external display.
The iMac M6 vs M4 question comes down to this: Apple put a chip two generations newer inside a body that hasn’t changed since 2021. The M6 iMac starts at $1,499, has two more CPU cores and two more GPU cores than its predecessor, and roughly doubles SSD speed, yet from across the room you couldn’t tell the two apart.
That matters if you’re shopping right now, because the older M4 iMac is still around at retailers and refurbished, and a Mac mini plus a monitor is a real rival. Below is what actually changed, what you pay in the US, UK and Canada, and who should buy, upgrade or walk away.
The difference is almost entirely inside. Apple skipped the M5 for the iMac, so the jump is from M4 straight to M6, and the core counts rise on both models.
Apple’s own claims are bold. It says the M6 runs Microsoft Excel up to 1.5x faster than the M4 iMac, doubles graphics performance in Affinity, doubles ray-traced gaming performance and processes local AI prompts in LM Studio up to five times faster. Those are best-case numbers from Apple’s chosen tests, so independent results matter more.
Independent benchmarks show a solid but smaller CPU gain than the marketing suggests. One review measured Geekbench 6 CPU scores about 20 percent above the M4 model, while another round of testing found single-core results roughly 25 percent higher and multi-core about 36 percent higher.
Graphics and storage are where the new model pulls away. The same Geekbench testing put GPU performance at more than double the previous iMac, and SSD speeds also more than doubled. That storage jump is a bigger deal than it sounds on a machine that starts with only 16GB of memory, because the system leans on the drive when memory runs short.
Gaming is still modest. Cyberpunk 2077 ran at about 50 fps at 1080p on default settings in one review, and 1080p was the practical ceiling for smooth play in other big games too. Local AI is similar: the M6 is quicker, but with memory capped at 32GB, larger models struggle.
Nearly everything you see and touch carries over. Reviewers describe the M6 iMac as physically identical to the M4 model: same dimensions, same colors, same screen.
The screen size is the sore point. One review argues 24 inches now feels cramped when 27- and 32-inch monitors are common, especially as the faster chip makes the iMac more tempting for creative work.
The iMac M6 costs $1,499 for the 10-core model and $1,699 for the 12-core model in the US. In the UK the starting price is £1,499, and in Canada it’s $2,099 CAD for the 10-core version and $2,299 CAD for the 12-core one.
Whether that’s a price rise depends on what you compare it with. The M4 iMac launched in 2024 at $1,299, so against that original sticker the M6 costs $200 more. But Apple raised the M4 model’s price earlier this year, and the M6 matches where the M4 ended up, which is why some reviewers call the price unchanged. In Canada, the $2,099 CAD start equals the M4 price after Apple’s June increase there.
Education pricing helps a little. Students and teachers pay $1,449 or $1,599 in the US, and $2,029 CAD or $2,159 CAD in Canada.
Upgrades add up fast. In Canada, moving to 24GB of memory adds $300 CAD, and the same goes for 512GB of storage. In the US, one review’s recommended setup, the 12-core model with 24GB, comes to just under nineteen hundred dollars.
Your current computer decides this more than the new one does.
If you already have a monitor, or don’t mind buying one, the Mac mini is the strongest rival. A Mac mini with the same M6 chip and 24GB of memory costs just under eleven hundred dollars, which leaves about eight hundred dollars for a bigger, brighter, height-adjustable display compared with a similarly specced iMac.
A discounted or refurbished M4 iMac is the other option. For everyday family use it does the same jobs, keeps getting macOS updates and looks identical. Just check that any deal beats the M6’s $1,499 by a meaningful amount, since you give up Wi-Fi 7, the faster drive and two cores.
The iMac still wins on simplicity. You get a screen, speakers, camera, keyboard and mouse in one box with one cable, and reviewers still rate it the best all-in-one around.
Only if you need faster graphics, storage or local AI. For everyday tasks, M4 owners won’t notice enough difference to justify buying again.
No. It keeps the same 24-inch 4.5K Retina display as the M4 model, with nano-texture glass offered on the 12-core version.
Preorders opened October 28, and it reached customers and stores on November 6.
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