Please help Which is better 2020 iMac for daw or Logic Pro recording

[dbright1]

2020 imac​

• 3.7GHz 10-Core Core i9 processor
• 128GB memory
• 1.0TB Solid-State Drive
• AMD Radeon Pro 5700 with 8GB VRAM
• Supports macOS 10.15.6 Catalina* and later including the latest macOS 15.x Sequoia
• or

Refurbished: iMac 27-inch (Retina 5K) 3.6GHZ 10-Core i9 (2020) MXWU2LL/A-BTO 128 GB RAM & 4 TB PCIe SSD 5120 x 2880 Apple Wireless Keyboard-Mouse Mac OS (Certified Good, 1 Yr Warranty)

• Color: Silver
• CPU Type: Intel Core i9 10th Gen
• CPU Name: 3.6GHz
• GPU/VGA Type: AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT
• Memory Capacity: 128GB DDR4
• SSD: 4 TB
• Option: With Monitor

 

[Nermal]

3.7GHz 10-Core Core i9 processor

Where are you seeing this? As far as I'm aware, Apple never sold a 2020 with this CPU configuration (there was a 3.6 GHz i9 and a 3.8 GHz i7, but I don't think there was a 3.7 GHz anything).

 

[dbright1]

Thanks ! Well that's what I thought as well, doesn't sound right, https://eshop.macsales.com OWC then go to Mac sales etc.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Both are towards "too old" now. It's basically OVER for Intel Macs. Support will rapidly drop off and some question if they will even get the very next macOS update, well under a year from now.

The general timeline for Macs is about 7 years. We're a month from being 5 years into that 7 years. Caveat Emptor!

Logic will likely get a bunch of new A.I. features in upcoming updates and those very likely will not (be permitted to) work with Intel Macs. You'll likely feel left behind very soon with either choice.

I suggest separates. Since you are after added power, maybe the new Mac Mini Pro with a nice third-party monitor. Or maybe an M3 MAX MBpro to eventually connect to a bigger third party monitor. If you can stall this purchase for a few months, wait for the new Mini to appear in the Rerfurb store... or seek the approx. same discount in the Edu store.

Load up the RAM as Logic will perform better with plenty of RAM.

I'd also suggest you pursue an ultra-wide monitor vs. the iMac/ASD-type squarish monitor. The added width will be very useful for audio track editing. I put the money that could have gone towards an ASD on the Dell 40" 5K2K ultra wide and could never step back to squarish monitor options. I do both video and audio editing and all that extra width is VERY useful.

But if your attraction to these old iMacs is driven by budget, maybe get a Mac Mini Pro now with a cheap 4K monitor and save up for a better monitor to replace it as soon as you can.

 

[dbright1]

Both are towards "too old" now. It's basically OVER for Intel Macs. Support will rapidly drop off and some question if they will even get the very next macOS update, well under a year from now.

The general timeline for Macs is about 7 years. We're a month from being 5 years into that 7 years. Caveat Emptor!

I suggest separates. Since you are after added power, maybe the new Mac Mini Pro with a nice third-party monitor. Or maybe an M3 MAX MBpro to eventually connect to a bigger third party monitor. If you can stall this purchase for a few months, wait for the new Mini to appear in the Rerfurb store... or seek the approx. same discount in the Edu store.

I'd also suggest you pursue an ultra-wide monitor vs. the iMac/ASD-type squarish monitor. The added width will be very useful for audio track editing. I put the money that could have gone towards an ASD on the Dell 40" 5K2K ultra wide and could never step back to squarish monitor options. I do both video and audio editing and all that extra width is VERY useful.

But if your attraction to these old iMacs is driven by budget, maybe get a Mac Mini Pro now with a cheap 4K monitor and save up for a better monitor to replace it as soon as you can.

Thanks so much for the advice!

 

[Fishrrman]

Take the money you would have spent on a 2020 iMac, and get a new m4pro Mini instead, with extra RAM and at least a 1tb SSD.

For a display, either get a 27" 4k (many out there at all price points), or if you have-to-have 5k, there are a few panels available other than the Apple Studio Display (which is overpriced for what you get).

 

[ADGrant]

Take the money you would have spent on a 2020 iMac, and get a new m4pro Mini instead, with extra RAM and at least a 1tb SSD.

For a display, either get a 27" 4k (many out there at all price points), or if you have-to-have 5k, there are a few panels available other than the Apple Studio Display (which is overpriced for what you get).

For a Mac I think 5k is essential. The ASD is overpriced but there aren't a lot of 5k alternatives and those alternatives do seem inferior(at least for build quality).

 

[Fishrrman]

"For a Mac I think 5k is essential"

Not for me.
4k is just fine.

I find a 27" 5k display to be difficult for my old eyes.
"Looks like 1440p" yields text (displayed at normal sizes) that's just too small for my taste.

I realize some screen "real estate" is lost at "looks like 1080p" (default for 4k), but for me, it's MUCH easier to see and read.

 

[ADGrant]

"For a Mac I think 5k is essential"

Not for me.
4k is just fine.

I find a 27" 5k display to be difficult for my old eyes.
"Looks like 1440p" yields text (displayed at normal sizes) that's just too small for my taste.

I realize some screen "real estate" is lost at "looks like 1080p" (default for 4k), but for me, it's MUCH easier to see and read.

I also have old eyes. I guess 4k is fine if you stick to retina mode and an integer pixel conversion. Makes for very large text on a 27" display though.

 

[dbright1]

Thanks all! I really appreciate the feedback, So, Went with Mac Mini M4 Pro 2TB SSD 14 CPU 20 GPU 16 Core N 64 GB. I have yet to pull the trigger on a monitor. Budget tight now, I prefer not to go over $ 800 but the recommendation's vary across the board, not gamer or vid person. Mainly Daw/Studio recording etc. any ideas? pros cons Not sure where to begin 4k 5 k Dell 3425 or ben Q t3 or ASD??

​

 

[ADGrant]

Thanks all! I really appreciate the feedback, So, Went with Mac Mini M4 Pro 2TB SSD 14 CPU 20 GPU 16 Core N 64 GB. I have yet to pull the trigger on a monitor. Budget tight now, I prefer not to go over $ 800 but the recommendation's vary across the board, not gamer or vid person. Mainly Daw/Studio recording etc. any ideas? pros cons Not sure where to begin 4k 5 k Dell 3425 or ben Q t3 or ASD??

​

Get a 27" 5k monitor. If the ASD is too expensive there are now a couple of alternatives.

 

[MajorFubar]

Thanks all! I really appreciate the feedback, So, Went with Mac Mini M4 Pro 2TB SSD 14 CPU 20 GPU 16 Core N 64 GB. I have yet to pull the trigger on a monitor. Budget tight now, I prefer not to go over $ 800 but the recommendation's vary across the board, not gamer or vid person. Mainly Daw/Studio recording etc. any ideas? pros cons Not sure where to begin 4k 5 k Dell 3425 or ben Q t3 or ASD??

​

Depends how deep your pockets are. I'm a musician and home producer like you: the only thing my monitor has to do for me is work and produce an image that i'm happy to stare at for several hours at a time. So I just went down to a local retailer and spend £300 on a 4K monitor whose image I liked the look of. That was it. No scientific testing. I went, "oh that one looks to have a nice picture", and that was it. ASD or anything even close to that price would have been complete overkill and would have improved my music production by the sum total of zero.

 

[theluggage]

Mainly Daw/Studio recording etc. any ideas? pros cons Not sure where to begin 4k 5 k Dell 3425 or ben Q t3 or ASD??

I'd go for a 27" 4k - or maybe a 32" 4k if you want to push the display back to leave room for a (music) keyboard/controller. You pay a huge premium for 5k for a marginal increase in quality. You'll still get huge "screen estate" and if you want to work in scaled mode to get more space, the scaling really shouldn't be an issue in a DAW.

The Studio Display is nice - but expensive and you're paying for fancy speakers, which you won't be able to use if you have an external audio interface. Those sort of highly-processed pseudo-surround speakers can't do the job of proper monitor speakers, anyway.

Can't give a personal recommendation since I don't have one, but I'd check this out:

RD280U｜28” 4K+ BenQ Programming Monitor with Backlight

BenQ RD280U promote programming productivity with backlight, Fine-coated panel, and advanced coding modes, delivering crystal-clear fonts for improved code differentiation in both light and dark themes adaptable to diverse development work environments. Accessible at a touch of the dedicated...

www.benq.eu

...OK you're not coding but the 3:2 format gives you the same horizontal space as a 27" plus an inch or so extra vertical space which is good for lots of tracks or a top/bottom split screen. I've got Huawei Mateviews (which seem to be discontined & were unavailable in some regions, otherwise I'd recommend them) with the same resolution/ratio and it works well.

 

[ADGrant]

I'd go for a 27" 4k - or maybe a 32" 4k if you want to push the display back to leave room for a (music) keyboard/controller. You pay a huge premium for 5k for a marginal increase in quality. You'll still get huge "screen estate" and if you want to work in scaled mode to get more space, the scaling really shouldn't be an issue in a DAW.

The Studio Display is nice - but expensive and you're paying for fancy speakers, which you won't be able to use if you have an external audio interface. Those sort of highly-processed pseudo-surround speakers can't do the job of proper monitor speakers, anyway.

There are other 5k options for half the price of the Studio Display. Still more expensive than 4k but the difference in quality is not marginal. 4k is a ok for a smaller screen (say 24") but for a 27" you are either going to need incredibly good eyesight to read the tiny text, put up with very large text with 2x scrolling or use fractional scrolling which uses the GPU to scale the image of your desktop to match the resolution of the display. The result is text that is not as sharp and your GPU is going to need to work harder (fortunately Apple Silicon Macs do have power efficient GPUs).

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Again, for Logic purposes, think ultra-wide so you can see plenty of track length on screen without having to scroll. For both Logic/GB and FCPX/iMovie, extra screen width is very useful. The 38 inch is not too far over your target budget. The 34 inch will tally right at your budget.

Neither is 5K but Apple can work on resolutions other than 5K just fine. To prove that to yourself right now, hook your Mac mini to your TV via HDMI to see it on your (presumed) 4K TV or perhaps 1080p TV screen to see a poor cut of how it would look on either of those NOT-5K screens on a monitor (where pixels would be packed in much tighter than typical TV screen sizes).

If the Apple crowd convinces you 5K is a must, there are about 5 panels now that directly compete with ASD (all cost less than ASD) but none of those- including ASD- are ultra-wides. One is very new from ASUS that MSRPs at less than half of ASD's pricing which puts it right at your stated budget.

Well over your budget is a 5K2K 40" ultra-wide that I chose myself for my Silicon Mac and LOVE it. If you want that extended width to more easily work with Logic tracks with less scrolling, you might want to buy that on free financing payments to cover the extra over time. I have perfect 20:20 vision and arrived at it from an iMac 27" which is basically the SAME screen that is in ASD. It looks the same to me, EXCEPT there is much more screen width in which to work. I do a lot of "tracks" work and could never go back to a squarish screen like ASD now... even if Apple or Asus, etc offered one for a $1.

 

[theluggage]

There are other 5k options for half the price of the Studio Display. Still more expensive than 4k but the difference in quality is not marginal.

Well, there's only a couple. Last I looked, the Samsung had some rather lukewarm reviews (for the price) the Benq wasn't available, priced or properly reviewed yet, the ASUS certainly looks credible but is still twice the price of a fairly decent 27" 4k display - let alone a more basic 4k which would be more than adequate for the OP who said that they are primarily using it for music production (which doesn't really need P3 gamut or HDR/HFR...). For the price of 5k you could get a dual 4k 27" setup - so one screen for your tracks/timelines, the other for mixers - or whatever suits your workflow. Then there are the possibilities of 3:2 or ultra-wide displays (same PPI as 4k) which going 5120x2880 rules out.

For years I used a cheap & nasty 4k (it was £400 in 2017 when that was silly cheap for 4k - sort of thing you could get for under £200 now) first on a Hackintosh and later as a second screen for a 5k iMac. The "cheap & nasty" bit showed up in the poor colour reproduction (& awful case & stand) but the screen was very, very usable for non-graphics work either in 2:1 mode (pixel perfect but slightly large UI) or scaled mode (giving the same UI scale as the iMac).

Yes, the display in scaled mode looked very slightly "soft" alongside the 5k iMac but - in my experience - once you stoped looking for differences and just started using it, that was rapidly forgotten & it was certainly perfectly good for DAW work.

Of course 5k is better than 4k - not denying it - although YMMV (or, rather, your eyesight may vary) whether the UI size on 5k@27" really is "just right" or actually a bit small & fiddly. However, I think the disadvantages of 4k are widely overstated especially if you're not using them promarily for fine graphics work - as is the issue of the large UI in 2:1 mode (depends on what apps you use, whether you work full-screen/dock hidden or not).

If price is no object, by all means buy a Studio Display. The Pro XDR or another 32" 6k would be even better - or maybe go the whole hog for 8k (why not pay the price of a small car for something you're gonna be spending far more time using than you do driving your car?)

However - if you don't have bottomless pockets - given the price difference and the possibility of all the extra affordances of a dual-display setup, ultra-wide or 3:2 screen - 4k is a pretty good compromise. Heck, even if you don't like it & save up for a 5km anyway, you've only spent a few hundred bucks for something that will still be very useful as a second screen.