iMac 2013 21.5-inch review: The design of the new iMac didn’t change much, but under the hood, the upgrade to Haswell as boosted some of its features. According to Expert Reviews, the entire iMac range has been refreshed to accommodate the new Haswell CPU inside. One tech reviewer noted though that the Haswell upgrades was more focused on battery life increase.

A review by Arsetechnica remarked that Intel’s Haswell architecture increases performance relative to Ivy Bridge running at the same clock speed. However, the upgrade of the iMacs with the new processor is more concentrated on battery life improvements than performance improvements. Arsetechnica said that the benefit of the Haswell for desktop users are less readily evident.

TechRadar noted that there’s no doubt the new Intel integrated graphics are far more powerful than the HD Graphics 4000 built into the Ivy Bridge processors and the lack of a discrete GPU will not hold a Mac user from surfing, emailing and word processing. TechRadar recommends that for users with graphics-intensive applications, the higher-end iMacs is worth the extra bucks.

When TechRadar compared the entry-level 2013 21.5-inch iMac with its mid-201 version, it reveals the immense developments Apple’s all-in-one computer has received. The new iMac’s Xbench score is over 31% higher and the Cinebench score, when using multiple cores is almost 102% improved. In a test, the new iMac encoded a five-minute test video into iPod format a minute quicker.

The newer iMac was slower in ripping a new CD during the TechRadar test, but they noted that it’s only because they had to use an external USB SuperDrive, since the new Macs has no more optical drive.

Audio quality for the new iMac took a quality upturn in the new 2013 version, a key spec that has been improving each and every year.

The bottomline: The new Apple iMac has definitely received some improvement over the years and the Haswell is a performance upgrade over an Ivy Bridge or Sandy Bridge CPU. However, for most tasks, the user will not really notice the uptick in the processing speed of the 2013 version of the AIO. Nonetheless, it still is one of the best desktop units around that fuses both a beautiful built and speedy performance.