Apple's New 24-inch iMac With M6: Specs, Price and Release Date

Apple announced a new 24-inch iMac with the M6 chip on October 27, 2026. Pre-orders opened on October 28, and the iMac arrives in stores on Friday, November 6. This guide collects the specs, prices and release details from Apple's announcement. All performance figures are Apple's own claims, and most compare against the M4 or M1 iMac rather than independent tests.

Price and release date (US)

Configuration	Price	Education
10-core CPU, 10-core GPU	$1,499	$1,449
12-core CPU, 12-core GPU	$1,699	$1,599

• Pre-orders: from October 28, 2026 on apple.com and in the Apple Store app, in 35 countries and regions including the US.
• Arrives: Friday, November 6, 2026, at Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Resellers.
• Apple Upgrade lease: from $28.99 per month for 36 months, excluding taxes and trade-in credit.

Key specs

• Chip: Apple M6 with up to a 12-core CPU and up to a 12-core GPU, each two cores more than before, plus a Neural Accelerator in each GPU core. Memory bandwidth is up to 170GB/s.
• Display: 24-inch 4.5K Retina display (23.5 inches measured diagonally) with 500 nits of brightness and P3 wide colour. A nano-texture display is an option on the 12-core models.
• Camera and audio: 12MP Center Stage camera with Desk View, a three-microphone array, and a speaker system with Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos support.
• Connectivity: up to four Thunderbolt 4 ports, support for up to two 6K external displays, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.
• Colours: blue, green, pink, yellow, purple, orange and silver.
• Software: ships with macOS 27.

10-core vs 12-core: what you get for $200 more

Based on Apple's announcement, the 12-core models add:

• The extra CPU and GPU cores.
• Touch ID as standard, which is optional on the 10-core model through the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and Numeric Keypad.
• 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet, available on 12-core models only.
• The nano-texture display option.
• Thunderbolt 4 on all four ports.

Apple's performance claims

These are Apple's numbers, tested in September and October 2026 against an M4 iMac with a 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 32GB of unified memory and a 2TB SSD, and against older machines:

• Up to 2x faster graphics than M4.
• Up to 5x faster on-device AI performance than M4, and up to 2x faster AI compute than the previous generation.
• Up to 2x higher ray-tracing gaming performance than M4.
• Up to 2.5x faster in Microsoft Excel than the M1 iMac, and 1.5x faster than M4.
• Up to 18x faster than the most popular Intel-based iMac.
• Up to 2x faster SSD read and write speeds than the previous generation.

Independent reviews have not been published yet, so wait for them if the speed claims matter to your decision.

Siri AI on the new iMac

Siri AI is in beta in macOS 27.2 and supports English, French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish. Apple says it is not available to users under 13 and that some server-side features have daily usage limits.

What Apple did not say

• The announcement does not list the memory or storage options for the new model, so check the configurator on Apple's store before you decide.
• Pricing outside the US will differ.

Who should consider it

This is our reading of the specs, not a hands-on verdict. The $1,499 model looks like the sensible choice for everyday work and family use. The $1,699 model suits people who want the nano-texture glass, faster wired networking or Touch ID built in. If you are replacing an Intel iMac, Apple's own comparison suggests the largest jump, but real-world gains will depend on your apps.