iMac 5K Retina and Mac Mini: Apple's new desktop has 7 times more pixels than a HD TV

Prices for the 27-inch iMac with 5K Retina display start at £1999

Apple has announced the latest version of its iMac desktop computer with what the company is calling the “world’s highest resolution display” – with seven times the amount of pixels found in a HD TV.

Although the aluminium case and stylings remains the same as on previous iMacs, the 27-inch display now has 5120 x 2880 pixels, a massive leap from the 2560 x 1440 resolution on previous models. And this is with keeping the display just 5mm thick.

With prices starting at £1999 the new Retina 5K iMac certainly isn’t the computer for everyone, but will be perfect for photography and video professionals who need to edit their work at a high resolution.

(At the same event Apple also unveiled two new iPads: the iPad mini 3 and iPad Air 2, the thinnest tablet currently available on the market)

The new iMac can be configured with either a 3.5 GHz i5 chip or a 4.0 GHz i7, with a choice of between 8GB and 32GB of RAM and a Radeon R9 graphics card. Again, these stats won’t mean much to the average user but someone (we’re looking at you “media professionals”) will make use of them.

Apple will also continue to offer the 21.5-inch and 27-inch non-Retina iMacs, with the new devices shipping with OS X Yosemite – the latest version of Apple’s desktop operating system available as a free download from the App Store. (Click here to read our review.)

Apple also announced an updated Mac Mini - the company's smallest and cheapest desktop computer - which has 50 per cent faster storage and three times faster wireless connections. Prices for the Mac Mini start at £399 for a 1.4GHz processor and 500GB of memory.

Although less than 15 per cent of Apple's revenue now comes from its line of Mac computers, the company says that it has seen an 18 per cent increase in sales year on year, presumably as iPhone and iPad owners decided to opt more fully into the Apple ecosystem.