The iMac goes Retina: Apple's new Retina 5K screen has 7x more pixels than an HDTV

Who needs 4K when you’ve got a 5K screen?

Apple today announced a new version of the iMac with a “Retina Display,” its marketing term for screens that are so sharp you can’t see individual pixels.

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The new iMac’s 27-inch screen features a ridiculously high 5120-by-2880 screen, which Apple is calling the “Retina 5K” display. It will sell for $2,499, starting with a 4 GHz Core i7 processor and a powerful Radeon R9 graphics card.

Apple says the new iMac features the highest resolution display currently on the market, packing in 14.7 million pixels or around seven times as much as your 1080p HDTV.

All of those extra pixels means the new iMac should be ideal for viewing and editing 4K video files. Given that many 4K displays around cost upwards of $2,000, not including the price you’d have to pay for powerful hardware, the new Retina iMac could be a huge deal for video producers.

This is the first big iMac revamp since Apple debuted its ultrathin iMac models in 2012, which featured screens that were just 5 mm thick. Apple is still keeping those last iMac models around, which include a 21.5-inch model with a 1920-by-1080 screen and a 27-inch model with a 2560 by 1440  display.