It looks like a 21.5" 4K iMac is coming

Is a 4K iMac coming?

There may soon be a lower cost way to edit 4K on a Mac.

We've no sooner written about what it's like having a 15" 4K display on a laptop than we spotted this article in TechCrunch about the likely appearance of a 21" iMac with full DCI 4K (4096 x 2160).

There's no official word yet but apparently buried in the latest Beta of the next version of OS X, El Capitan, there's mention of a new 21.5 inch iMac with more than four times the pixels and twice the linear resolution of its predecessor.

This will be great news for video enthusiasts and professionals. While the pricier 5K iMac remains a great system for video editing (not least because there's room for a full resolution 4K image and the GUI as well), it is relatively expensive. So the option of a true 4K system for significantly less will leave Apple with a hit on their hands.

Will there be an Apple external 4K display, asks Tech Crunch? It hardly matters. There's plenty of 4K displays out there by other manufacturers. It's hard to see why you'd want to pay the Apple premium with so many already available and reasonably priced monitors out there.

With the current 21.5 inch iMac starting at $1,099, according to TechCrunch, it's possible we may see the 4K model for only a little more than that, as the model was well overdue for an update anyway.