iMac or iMac mini? £1500 budget

Well whatever you do don't cheap out on a standard HD. Fusion or all SSD.



Best option money wise is a 2012 Mac Mini(used or new), add in SSD and 16 GB of RAM. o=

Oh iMac all the way.

For £1,500 you could go with the 21.5-inch: 2.9GHz version and upgrade it to 1TB Fusion Drive.

You can do ram anytime in the future, as it's extremely easy to do and cheaper.

It might be worth spending a little extra to upgrade it bit more, but up to you.

Or you can go second hand and get a year or two past versions.

I have a maxed out 2011 iMac and it's still an amazing computer.

quickcalibre said:

Oh iMac all the way.

For £1,500 you could go with the 21.5-inch: 2.9GHz version and upgrade it to 1TB Fusion Drive.

You can do ram anytime in the future, as it's extremely easy to do and cheaper.

It might be worth spending a little extra to upgrade it bit more, but up to you.

Or you can go second hand and get a year or two past versions.

I have a maxed out 2011 iMac and it's still an amazing computer.

Click to expand...

Nope you can't upgrade the RAM on a 21.5" iMac. Although it's not soldered, taking apart the entire display just to get to the RAM slots isn't worth the trouble.

fathergll said:

Best option money wise is a 2012 Mac Mini(used or new), add in SSD and 16 GB of RAM. o=

Click to expand...

I agree. This is by far the most value for money if you already have a good screen.
The only downside to it is the GPU, which can be relevant for the work you are doing.

Do you think you will benefit from a dual screen? Most of the time I prefer a single screen setup, but for photography it has some benefits.

fathergll said:

Well whatever you do don't cheap out on a standard HD. Fusion or all SSD.



Best option money wise is a 2012 Mac Mini(used or new), add in SSD and 16 GB of RAM. o=

Click to expand...

I'm with this suggestion, sometimes I wish i had gone for a Mini and just added a Dell Monitor that I happen to have laying around + SSD and some ram.

you can go with current Mac mini with 3 ghz i7, 16 Gb RAM and 1T Fusion Drive at $1399

or i will sell you for 1500$ my imac 27" 4ghz i7, 16 gb RAm,, 512 SSD and R9 295x

i would guess that if you had access to a monitor, you could more mini than iMac for the same money.

Serban said:

you can go with current Mac mini with 3 ghz i7, 16 Gb RAM and 1T Fusion Drive at $1399

Click to expand...

Blah….$1400 for a fusion drive mini?

Refurb quad core i7 mini -$590
16 GB RAM - $130
1TB Samsung SSD - $400
Total - $1120

Abiyork said:

Many thanks for your responses.

Where would I pick up a new 2012 Mac mini?

I can see a refurb may be a possibility if I keep my eye open.

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That's what I mentioned in my first post Serben, but I'm being told there is more value for money with older versions or in an iMac which holds more value in any future sale etc

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Do you have an Amazon account? They might have some 2012 Mini's there.


My main issue with a new mini is they get expensive when you add in 16 GB ram and a fusion drive. At that point i'd rather shell out a little more for a refurb fusion 27" iMac. The iMac is a much better deal...you're getting a screen, desktop cpu, separate graphics card and the ability to load it up with 32 GB RAM. Mini's are good deals if you can configure them loaded for under a $1,000 which you can't do with the 2014 models.

Others disagree, but I'm not a fan of buying a dual core for photo stuff, since Adobe products can make effective use of more cores. The mini seems rather expensive for what you get. Here's a good comparison of geekbench speed vs the quad 2012 minis; bear in mind you need something that makes use of those cores but I bet you do:

http://www.primatelabs.com/blog/2014/10/estimating-mac-mini-performance/

I would consider a refurb MBP. There are a bunch in the UK Apple Store. For example, a 2.0 quad core retina 15" is £1189. And you can go faster; the 2.0 includes a 256 SSD; for £1700 you could get a 2.5 with better graphics AND a 512 SSD. These would be way faster mulitcore than the 2014 mini; see http://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks

You'd get a much better machine IMHO, it would still be relatively small and easy to use with your existing setup. A mini is sort of a headless laptop anyway.

yjchua95 said:

Nope you can't upgrade the RAM on a 21.5" iMac. Although it's not soldered, taking apart the entire display just to get to the RAM slots isn't worth the trouble.

Click to expand...

Oh darn, news to me.