iMacs Good Bang for the Buck?

The boo birds came out early to Apple’s latest desktop catwalk, mostly citing—once again—high prices in one of the worst recessions on record. Everyone from analysts to even the Mac faithful expressed their dismay in chat rooms and comment sections.

All, save one.

Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner compared the new iMacs with comparable machines from Dell and Hewlett-Packard, and his finding flies in the face of conventional wisdom that Apple products are over-priced. He says the new iMacs match up favorably against Dell and HP’s All-in-One’s on a price-to-performance basis.

“Apple’s pricing has been perpetually misrepresented and misunderstood over the years,” Reiner says. “With a few notable exceptions, such as the MacBook Pro, Apple has typically offered more hardware for the money than competitors. The common misperception stems from the fact that Apple doesn’t compete in low-end product segments, which raised the average price of Apple computers above the industry average.”

Don’t believe him? He’s got the charts to prove it: