Skip to content

Comparing colors on the 2014 and 2019 iMacs

I knew my new iMac had the wide color gamut (P3) display, but until I used it side-by-side with my old iMac, I didn't realize just how different things would look. In my comparison test of the two iMacs, there are a couple of photos of onscreen images—one set with the default iMac color profile, the next with the Adobe RGB (1998) color profile—the differences are quite obvious, especially on the default profiles.

Here's one last image, with a comparison slider, so you can more easily see how the colors change. (Thanks to Kirk McElhearn for the source photo.)

What you're looking at are two iPhone photos (taken in a dark room, within seconds of each other, with the machines next to one another, with the screens set to the same brightness and using the Adobe RGB 1998 color profile). The only editing I did was to correct the perspective and adjust each photo so they could be (as closely as I could make them) perfectly overlaid on one another.

Drag the slider to the right to see more of the 2014 iMac photo; dragging left reveals more of the 2019 iMac's photo.

I find this entire wide color gamut thing fascinating (as a non-color-professional). I found a few articles that may prove interesting if you're similarly interested:

If I were a color professional, I would probably find these differences infuriating—or at least requiring more work on my part. But as I'm not, I can just enjoy the richer colors of my new iMac's display.