It looks good, but feels subtle—until you turn back to a non-Retina Mac display and are confronted with the brutal reality of a low-DPI screen. “How did we live like this?,” you’ll cry out to no one. Is a Retina display absolutely necessary in life? There are very few people who need this many pixels—designers and photographers come to mind. But, then, you could argue that about high-resolution displays on any device: We got along fine without them, and they’re not necessary, but life is sure nicer now that we’ve got them.

Exactly. Once you’ve seen a Retina display, there’s no way you’re going back.

This is the promise of the 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K Display: It’s one of the fastest Macs ever attached to the best Mac display ever. Yes, it’s an iMac, meaning you can’t attach a newer, faster computer to this thing in two or three years. But I have a feeling that these iMacs will have the processor power, and the staying power, to make the aging process much less painful.

Excellent review.