How does the iMac 2023 M3 compare to the M1 iMac?

7.4

Overall Score: 7.4/10

Professional:8.4/10

Consumer:6.4/10

📖 Read TLDR Review to learn more →

Watch This Product

Get an alert when the price drops or it comes back in stock.

Ask Agent About This Product

The M3 iMac (released October 2023) is the direct successor to the M1 iMac (released April 2021). The chassis is identical, the colors are essentially the same, and the screen has not changed. The differences are almost entirely under the hood — and they are real, even if they are not the kind of "wow, what a redesign" leap some buyers were hoping for.

What is identical:

• 24-inch 4.5K Retina display (4480 × 2520, 218 ppi)
• Same anodized aluminum chassis, chin, and seven color options
• Same 1080p FaceTime HD camera
• Same six-speaker sound system with Spatial Audio
• Same Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse, and color-matched braided power cable in the box
• Same port layout (2 ports on entry, 4 ports on higher tier)

What actually changed with M3:

• Chip generation — M1 (5nm, first-gen Apple Silicon) → M3 (3nm, third-gen). The M3 uses TSMC's N3B process, which is a real density and efficiency improvement.
• CPU performance — Roughly 30% faster single-core and 35% faster multi-core in real-world Geekbench 6 testing. Day-to-day responsiveness is noticeably snappier, especially when launching apps and switching between heavy tabs.
• GPU performance — The M3's GPU adds hardware-accelerated ray tracing, hardware mesh shading, and Dynamic Caching (which lets the GPU allocate just the memory each task needs, instead of reserving worst-case amounts). Real-world graphics performance is roughly 1.5x to 2x the M1 in GPU-bound tasks like Blender renders, Final Cut Pro effects, and 3D games.
• Media engines — M3 adds AV1 hardware decode, which the M1 lacks. If you watch a lot of YouTube, Netflix 4K, or other AV1 streams, M3 will handle them with much lower CPU usage and longer effective video playback.
• Wi-Fi 6E — M3 adds 6 GHz band support; M1 was Wi-Fi 6 (5 GHz max). Real-world this only matters if you have a Wi-Fi 6E router and are within range to use the 6 GHz band.
• Bluetooth 5.3 — up from Bluetooth 5.0 on M1
• Memory ceiling — M1 iMac topped out at 16GB. M3 iMac goes up to 24GB. Useful for Logic Pro sample libraries, large Lightroom catalogs, and serious multitasking.

What did NOT change that arguably should have:

• Still a 1080p webcam in 2023
• Still no Face ID; Touch ID is only on the higher-tier Magic Keyboard
• Still the same chin / bezel design
• Still locked at one external display

Should an M1 iMac owner upgrade?

For most people, no. The M1 iMac is still very capable, and the year-over-year jump is incremental. The upgrade makes sense if you specifically need the extra GPU horsepower, you bumped into the M1's 16GB memory ceiling, or your M1 is due for replacement anyway. For anyone coming from an Intel iMac or a non-Apple machine, the M3 is the obvious pick.