2017 27" iMac - £1,500

[Coley2]

Hi guys,

Rarely post here but hoping you guys can help me out....

I'm looking to buy a 27" iMac - the most intensive things I'll be doing is photo editing in Lightroom/Photoshop. Will also have Windows 10 via Bootcamp or Parallels (TBC which).

There's an iMac going on Gumtree for £1,500 - specs are:

• Intel I5 Kaby Lake processor - 3.4 GHZ Turbo Boost 3.8GHZ
• RAM - 24GB (2x 4GB factory, 1x 16GB post)
• Radeon PRO 570, 4096GB memory
• 256GB SSD
• Magic Mouse and apple keyboard included

Was purchased in April this year and therefore is covered for repairs & service until April 2019.

The machine has barely been used (a little video editing) and comes in box. The seller is selling due to wanting a laptop for portability.

I know there's a potential refresh coming, even as early as September. But you never know how big the upgrades are so thought I'd snap at this while I have the chance.

What do you think?

EDIT: it's the mixed reviews of the 570 that have me a little nervous.

 

[294307]

The price is reasonable but I'll leave someone else to comment more on the 570 as I am not a photographer. I have the same machine as the one you are quoting with the only difference being the storage (1 TB Fusion Drive) and the memory (16 GB). I'm a software engineer and it's absolutely perfect for my needs – it's a very fast machine. I've had it for about a year now.

The AppleCare Protection Plan is good to have because you're buying a second-hand item, so you can't do much if something goes wrong. You're in the UK, so if you ever buy a new or refurbished Mac from Apple or another retailer in the future, remember that the AppleCare Protection Plan is, for the most part, a waste of money. Spend a few minutes to read this to understand why.

 

[stoswald]

The 570 is fine, I use Apples "Photos" and have no problems at all editing them, what it offers is good enough for me not to take out an Adobe Creative Licence.

 

[sublunar]

Arguably the 2018 upgrades will include 6 core Coffee Lake CPUs - the biggest upgrade for iMacs for years. An Apple refurb of that model would cost £1559 from Apple (so you'd be 16Gb of RAM short, worth approximately £130 more) making the used one approximately £200 cheaper but Apple offer a full 1 year warranty and you can extend that with optional AppleCare if you wish.

Any upgrade probably isn't going to concentrate on the GPU which will probably be rebadged as a 570X with little additional performance. It's possible that Apple could shut off the RAM access door if they offer an 8 core i9 option.

For Photoshop and Lightroom plus Bootcamp use you might want to reconsider only having 256Gb SSD on board - presumably you will have some sort of external storage for your photos and/or Windows partitions?

 

[294307]

No, please do not waste your money on the AppleCare Protection Plan if you are going to buy a refurbished iMac from Apple if all you need from it is the pleasure of having up to three years warranty. UK law provides you with up to six years warranty (up to five years in Scotland) and this applies to both new and refurbished goods sold to consumers by any retailer. When I last made a consumer law claim, all Apple asked me to do was to take my iMac to an Apple Authorised Service Provider so it could be inspected. Sure, that cost me a bit of time and fuel but as soon as the engineer confirmed the issue with Apple, my claim was accepted and a replacement was on its way. If you know your rights, most retailers will just do what you ask without causing trouble. Please save a few minutes to read about how consumer law works here so you can make an informed choice as to whether or not you need the AppleCare Protection Plan.

 

[oVerboost]

Have the 570 4GB graphics in my just purchased iMac 27" and it's great, photoshop is no issue even with the stock 8GB RAM (I've ordered more but not paying Apple's price).

Also great for casual gaming, video editing from what I've tested so far including 4k edits as well.

For the right price, I wouldn't worry too much about a new model coming soon, for what you want to use it for, that spec will be more than adequate and pretty future proof for many years to come.

 

[Coley2]

Hi guys - apologies if bumping this old thread is a faux par. I didn't get the iMac listed at the top of this thread.

However, I have the opportunity to purchase the following.

2017 27"
3.4GHz i5
8GB Ram
1TB SSD
Radeon 570

It's brand new and sealed in the box. Price is £1,600.

Two questions to those more knowledgable than me:

1. As this is going via eBay, am I right in thinking that Apple won't acknowledge the warranty as it's not a official approved reseller (despite it being sealed).
2. I'm hearing reports of significant performance implications on Lightroom and Photoshop due to the graphics card not being able to render the high volume of pixels on the 5K screen. Are these concerns legit? Obviously the 1TB SSD is a huge bonus on this iMac.

Thanks as always.

 

[tomscott1988]

I bought my father the same system but with the 2TB fusion and its fine, but I wouldnt want it personally.

You are correct lightroom isnt fast and it takes time to render on that display, depends what cameras your using. For example its ok with my 22mp 5DMKIII raw files but for my 6DMKII and 5DMKIV it takes 1-3 seconds to render at 100% and the sliders arent what I would call snappy. Editing a wedding for example can be frustrating but if your only editing one image at a time or small batches then it will be adequate.

I am a photographer and it performs almost the same as the 9 year old Mac pro in my sig. Its isnt fast but its sufficient that pretty much sums it up.

TBH I would give the base model a miss. The mid range it better but I would want a higher end machine. Although lightroom is better its still a pig and the 5k display is the Achilles heel in this respect. I would get the i7.

Apple has had plenty of good spec machines in the refurb recently.

5k i7 8gb 512 ssd £2289
5k i7 8gb 1TB ssd £2589

 

[sublunar]

Hi guys - apologies if bumping this old thread is a faux par. I didn't get the iMac listed at the top of this thread.

However, I have the opportunity to purchase the following.

2017 27"
3.4GHz i5
8GB Ram
1TB SSD
Radeon 570

It's brand new and sealed in the box. Price is £1,600.

Two questions to those more knowledgable than me:

1. As this is going via eBay, am I right in thinking that Apple won't acknowledge the warranty as it's not a official approved reseller (despite it being sealed).
2. I'm hearing reports of significant performance implications on Lightroom and Photoshop due to the graphics card not being able to render the high volume of pixels on the 5K screen. Are these concerns legit? Obviously the 1TB SSD is a huge bonus on this iMac.

Thanks as always.

1. Can't really say on the warranty issue. Someone else can comment there.

2. I don't think GPU is that strong of a factor where Photoshop and Lightroom is concerned unless you're trying to make do with the iGPU on the Mac mini for example. The 570 is comparatively weak as far as 5k iMac goes though. A lot of the complainants will be concerned with their perception of interface lag on a 5k screen.

The main issue you'll have is that Apple are well overdue an obvious upgrade to the iMac which should have brought 6 core Coffee Lake CPUs to the iMac. If Apple were indeed waiting for something specific with which to upgrade the iMac they could pull the trigger on the upgrade as soon as February 2019 or wait till WWDC in June and possibly do the Mac Pro 2019 at the same time. The iMac Pro shows just how the update could go.

By summer 2019 the full 9th generation 2019 Intel lineup - currently containing just the top of the range K models - might have been fully released but I'd have assumed that Apple were seeking economies of scale by using the same CPUs that are used in the 2018 Mac mini.