The MacBook range has been one of the most ubiquitous business laptops around for a number of years now, beloved by everyone from executives to developers. Now Apple is seeking to re-assert its dominance in other areas of the enterprise, with an absolute monster of a machine that’s built to handle serious workloads.

Apple’s first unabashedly enterprise-grade machine since the Mac Pro, the iMac Pro has garnered some criticism from skeptics, largely over its pricetag, which starts at just under £5,000 and goes up to over £12,000 for the most powerful model.

Although it’s undeniably expensive, it’s also wildly powerful – it’s Apple’s most powerful machine to date, in fact. Combine that with Apple’s existing pedigree, and you’ve got a machine that will likely be seriously tempting to businesses looking for a proper workstation that doesn’t just look like a big, black monolith.

Apple iMac Pro review: Design

There are, of course, many things that has contributed to the iMac’s ubiquity in the business market, but one of the main reasons is that Apple has firmly and consistently nailed the design of its machines. You can get machines that have the same relative horsepower and display quality as an iMac (often for a cheaper price) but there really is no substitute for the aesthetic appeal of a bank of pristine iMacs.

Understandably, Apple hasn’t messed with its winning formula, and the iMac Pro is visually identical to the vanilla iMac. It’s got the same minimalist aluminium shell and the same clean lines. There are a few critical differences, though. For a start, the iMac Pro is the only member of the iMac family to come in Space Grey – which is the only colour it comes in.

It comes with Apple’s Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse 2 and an optional Magic Trackpad 2, all of which are also in Space Grey. Apple don’t sell the Space Grey versions individually either, so if you want to get your hands on these snazzy peripherals, an iMac Pro purchase is your only option.

As you may have gathered, we’re big fans of the iMac Pro’s aesthetic. It maintains the iMac’s classic, timeless charm with the Space Grey finish adding an air of businesslike sophistication to the whole affair.

This machine’s appeal isn’t just skin-deep, either. It’s perfectly-balanced, requiring the lightest touch to tilt the screen through its XX degrees of movement. It’s equally easy to rotate the machine, although the screen itself doesn’t rotate along the X axis.

On top of that, Apple has added a number of clever design features. In what we suspect will turn out to be a surprisingly useful feature for many businesses, the iMac Pro features support for VESA mounting – just detach the base, and you can attach it to a wall-mount or a third-party stand.

The only issue we have with the iMac Pro’s design is that it still lacks height adjustability, but it’s a minor gripe that pales into insignificance when the rest of the construction is this good.

Apple iMac Pro review: Display

Apple’s hardware is famous for its image quality, and the display quality of its latest iMac range is absolutely stunning. Unsurprisingly, the iMac Pro is every bit as capable as its stablemate in this regard, and the 27in screen is an absolute joy to behold.

It’s got a 5K resolution (which translates to 5,120 x 2,880 if you want to be specific) and supports the wide colour DCI-P3 gamut. It was effectively flawless in our display tests, covering 98.9% of the DCI-P3 gamut and producing gorgeous, accurate colours and sharp, crisp blacks with deep contrast. At 551cdm/2, the maximum brightness is actually slightly blinding – we had to turn it down to about 75% to reach a comfortable level.

The iMac Pro supports a wide range of colour profiles, and it’s ideally suited to design work and editing. This is unlikely to be a surprise to anyone who already owns a Mac from the last few years – Apple’s reputation for fantastic displays is well-earned, and the iMac Pro is a demonstration of why.

Apple iMac Pro review: Performance

Apple has brought out the big guns for the iMac Pro. It’s the company’s most powerful machine to date, and intended to handle pretty much anything a business can throw of it, short of heavy-duty server operations. With an 18-core Intel Xeon W processor, 128GB of DDR4 memory and AMD’s Radeon Pro Vega 64 graphics chip in the top-spec configuration, it’s fair to say that this machine is an absolute monster.

Of course, you’ll have to fork over a truly eye-watering amount if you want that much power – the most expensive configuration costs in excess of £12,000. Paying that much money for a desktop computer may sound like utter madness, but it’s important to put that number into perspective. A comparably-specced Windows workstation would cost at least £10,000 – and that’s without including the cost of a 21in 5K monitor.

With this much firepower on display, you’d hope that the iMac Pro would be capable of some seriously impressive feats, and Apple’s workhorse certainly doesn’t disappoint. We tested the standard (and least powerful) configuration, which comes with 3.2GHz octocore Intel Xeon W-2140B processor, an 8GB Radeon Pro Vega 56 GPU and 32GB of RAM.

Even though this is the iMac Pro’s entry-level configuration, it easily blew last year’s bottom-tier 5K iMac out of the water in our benchmarks, racking up an overall score of 283 – well over double the regular iMac’s score of 109. It’s worth noting that these improvements are almost entirely centred around multi-core operations. The iMac Pro scored similarly to the 5K iMac in our single-core image editing tests, but it was more than twice as efficient at video editing, and multitasking was around three times faster.

Graphics performance is good as well. On Unigine’s heaven benchmark – a reasonably demanding test of graphical horsepower – the iMac Pro managed to achieve 48fps at a 2,560 x 1,440 resolution and medium detail. Although this is only marginally better than the 5K iMac’s result from last year, it’s nonetheless impressive. It even managed a smooth 35fps on the ultra quality setting. We should also point out that at no point during our testing did we notice any loud cooling fans, and machine felt cool to the touch throughout the duration. It’s one cool cucumber.

This machine is intended to be used for enterprise workloads like rendering, 3D modelling and CAD applications as well as creative tasks, however. Thankfully, it can capably hold its own here; in our workstation tests, it managed to keep pace with full-blown workstation PCs such as the Scan 3XS WI4000, PC Specialist Apollo X02 and Chillblast Fusion Render OC Lite – all of which are hulking beasts compared to the iMac Pro.

Storage is lightning-quick, too, with the 1TB PCIe SSD delivering measured read speeds of 2.4GB/sec and write speeds of 3GB/sec – well over twice the speed of the 2017 iMac’s Fusion Drive. In fact, compared to the latter’s 130MB/sec write speed, the iMac Pro is over 2,000% faster.

All of which is to say that this is an almost frighteningly powerful machine. It’s not as quick as the beefiest Windows workstations on the market, but it’s far and away the most capable piece of hardware that Apple has ever produced – and this is just the entry-level configuration. From 3D rendering to extreme multi-tasking and demanding media editing work, there’s not much that this sleek all-in-one won’t be able to handle – including virtual reality hardware and apps.

Apple iMac Pro review: Ports and features

Apple may have abandoned the idea of versatile connectivity options for its MacBook range, but it certainly hasn’t given up on it with its desktop devices. The iMac Pro is sporting a robust suite of port options, including 10Gb Ethernet, an SDXC card reader, four USB 3.0 ports and no less than four Thunderbolt 3 inputs. These allow you to connect not only two external 5K monitors, but also an external GPU, letting you bolster your iMac Pro with addition graphics processing power.

Apple iMac Pro review: Verdict

The iMac Pro is one seriously heavyweight contender. It’s fitted with some of the most powerful components ever to grace an Apple machine, and it puts them to great use. The display is as gorgeous as you’d expect and the whole thing runs like a dream.

Let’s address the elephant in the room, though. Yes, it’s expensive, but as we mentioned earlier, it’s actually not that much more expensive than Windows machines in the same category. Admittedly, you will be paying a noticeable markup compared to similarly-equipped rivals, but remember that for your initial entry price, you’ll also be getting a truly spectacular 27in 5K display, and the whole package is wrapped up in by far the most sleek and attractive chassis of any enterprise workstation.

If the iMac Pro is Apple’s attempt to reclaim the business market, then we have to say that it’s putting up one hell of a fight. This machine takes all the raw grunt you’d expect from a heavy-duty enterprise PC and crams it into Apple’s signature all-in-one design in a way that virtually defies comprehension.

It may not be the most powerful – and it’s certainly not cheap – but as far as we’re concerned, the iMac Pro represents the pinnacle of business-grade workstation design. Go on, why not treat yourself?