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It troubles me deeply to either recycle or give away this glorious 27" monitor of my 2020 iMac.
I have searched for an answer to this question, but can't seem to find a definitive 'yes' or 'no' :
Can anyone tell me if it would be possible to connect, in some way (any way!) this monitor with the latest Mac Mini?
Don't try to make it into something it is not. Sell it or give it away. IMO AIOs suck as a form factor for long term ownership, but that is just me. Some folks love them.
 
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We have about a half dozen Luna devices for our creative people to use our old iMacs as displays, and they work pretty well over ethernet. One issue we have is that it doesn't always play nice with our Cisco VPN, but since we have switched to Azure VPN, there haven't been anymore issues.
 
Precisely why I do not recommend iMacs, it's such a shame to watch that beautiful display go to the landfill because the computer it's married to is no longer useful. Although frankly I love the convenience of the iMac.
 
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It troubles me deeply to either recycle or give away this glorious 27" monitor of my 2020 iMac.

This is why I stopped buying iMacs. I hated either 1) throwing away a beautiful monitor when the computer aged out, or 2) having the computer stuck inside a dead display if the display crapped out. It was usually #1 that bit me in the ass and usually because of HDD/SSD space. I quit buying them and went with laptops or Mac minis plus external displays.

This is looking more and more like my best bet is to sell this iMac, which is in pristine condition, and buy the Mac Mini with the $1,600 Apple Studio Display. What's the easiest way to sell a used Mac?

If you live a big city, then Craigslist or FB Marketplace work well. Pricing is tricky, but I use eBay completed/sold listings as a guide then look at the local market for similar machines. The trick is to take great pictures and take the time to write a good description. I tend to price my stuff lower than others but then negotiate less. It will take some patience but if you're in a big enough metropolitan area then it will sell if you price it right. Or you could try eBay (I've done this safely) or Swappa (no experience.).

I also look at Apple's trade-in values to set a lower limit i.e. if I'm going to sell it, why would I let it go for less than trade? Unfortunately Intel trades are pretty much at zero these days, so this only really works for machines less than 3-years old.

To be honest, I got a 27" 4K for my Mac mini (begrudgingly - I wanted a 5K monitor but was denied by my work), and it's been way better than I thought it would be. I came from a 4K 21.5" iMac, so I was really bummed to go down in pixel density.

I scale it to 2560x1440 (same viewable area as the 5K 27") and I can't notice any fuzziness on text until I'm right up close to the monitor.

If it were a personal purchase, I'd absolutely not buy the Studio Display - not worth it, IMO.

I got one similar to this LG from Amazon.

I respectfully disagree with this advice.

Coming from an iMac, OP will want an integrated experience with good speakers, color accuracy, and ease of use. I bought an Apple Studio Display (buy once, cry once) after testing many 27-32" 4K options. Either the color wasn't right, or there were compatibility issues (flickering, randomly turning on in sleep mode), or the sound was terrible, or the font rendering was off, or I couldn't adjust the brightness/volume from the keyboard, etc. The ASD has only one downside, and that's the price. Other than that, it's the best display I've owned. I picked up a second one used for $1,000 and couldn't be happier. If you're patient, you can get them for $1,299 during sale periods.
 
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How bad would the latency be on your own network if you just remote into the new Mini from the M1 iMac? I remote into a windows machine on my network and it's pretty darn snappy on the M1 iMac. Obviously if you game it's not going to be good but doing video editing or using AI natively on the windows machine works fine. Not a long term solution but I might do until I find out what monitor I want if it works.

I agree Apple should just allow us to plug into the TB port and use it as a monitor. for an eco conscious company this would be seen as a good thing not to waste a good monitor.
 
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There’s an in-depth guide on how to convert a 5K iMac to a monitor. It looks extremely complicated though and may not be worth it.
I just did something similar. I was initially concerned that it would be a difficult mod. But for me it was pretty simple. The link below even has links to the tools you'll need to do the work. It took me a few hours. But it absolutely works and I'm left with a 27-inch 5k Retina display for about $200.


This link was also very helpful


I just made the move to an m4 Mac mini from my late 2014 iMac 5k Retina display. So rather than scrap the iMac ( doesn't offer any trade-in on that model), I kept it out of the junk yard. It really is a great monitor.
 
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