Apple has announced the new M4 iMac and it looks like a substantial upgrade. One of its new features is its improved external display support. On 10-core iMac M4 models, external display support is impressive on paper. Here’s what the $1,499, $1,699, and $1,899 iMacs can do with external displays via Thunderbolt:
- Run up to two external displays, with each display at 6K/60Hz, or
- Run an external display at 8K/120Hz
The new iMac M4 supports some pretty heavy displays.
Foundry
This is a nice upgrade over the previous support for a single external display (up to 6K/60Hz) on the M1 and M3 iMacs and other Apple Macs. The funny thing is that while you can find third-party 8K displays, Apple doesn’t currently offer one. The current Apple Studio Display and Pro Display XDR have 5K and 6K display resolutions, respectively, and both displays have 60Hz refresh rates.
So, could this 8K/120Hz support for the iMac M4 be a sign that Apple is planning to release a new display? Considering the Pro Display XDR will be six years old in December, an update is due – 60Hz for a professional display is ridiculous, not to mention the Pro Display The Apple Studio Display was released two years ago and probably won’t be updated; it would remain the “affordable” alternative to a new Pro Display XDR (if they call it that).
Apple is rumored to launch a new, redesigned Mac mini this week, offered as a base M-series model and a model with an M-series Pro chip. If the M4 can run an 8K/120Hz display, you can bet the M4 Pro can too and probably more. So the new version of the M4 Pro Mac mini seems like a good time to release a new 8K Pro Display XDR with a variable refresh rate of up to 120Hz. Will it happen? We will find out in the next two days.
