Which iMac for musician

[EricB4President]

My budget is kind of low, but have stretched it as much as I could.

I am looking to run Logic Pro X to produce, record, mix and master records and will eventually graduate to using Photoshop and Adobe Premiere to edit videos.

I'm not keen on having the best display. I'd like to have the best process when producing and working on this iMac.

Will the 21.5 inch still do all I need it to? It can be configured to 16 GB of RAM, and can be configured to 2TB of Fusion Drive or 256 GB SSD if need be.

The 27 inch is fully loaded and it's upgrades are next level, but do I really need it? $1467 versus $2575

Mind you, this is my first ever Mac. And I'm not a professional yet, but I'm 22 and plan to be in the near future. Music's a priority, editing photos/videos is a luxury to me.

--
These are the two options I'm going with:

Refurbished 21.5-inch iMac 2.8GHz Quad-core Intel Core i5 $1467
VS.
Refurbished 27-inch iMac 3.3GHz Quad-core Intel Core i5 with Retina 5K display $2575

 

[enricoclaudio]

I just got a 27" iMac 5K mid-2017 with i5 3.5GHz, 8GB RAM (upgraded to 24GB with Crucial RAM), 575 Radeon GPU and 512GB SSD. I'm running Pro Tools 12.8.2 and Logic Pro X last update and everything runs fine. I'm using an Apogee Quartet audio interface and all my projects are stored in a 1TB Glyph Atom RAID SSD and as a second backup I have a G-Drive 4TB USB-C external drive. I do some light Adobe Photoshop CC as well and like I said everything runs just fine for me. This new iMac replaced a 27" iMac mid 2011 with internal 1TB SSD upgrade and everything used to run fine too so most likely the 21.5" iMac should be more than enough for your needs.

 

[rjsounds]

Until a few months ago I was still running my Logic Pro X sessions on my old 2010 21.5" iMac which was a duo core i3 and had 12GB RAM and did NOT have an SSD. It still held up fine even with relatively larger sessions and a decent number of plugins and effects.

My thought process has always been to go with the best that you can afford at the time, knowing that it's an investment and should last you many years to come. Personally, I'd go with the 27" for the extra all around power and bigger screen (so nice for working with large sessions / more plugins on screen without having to close them as often). Considering the computers are both over 2 years old already, you'd certainly be fine with either, but the more powerful 27" will likely get you a couple more comfortable years working on that machine before needing to upgrade.

Good luck!

 

[EricB4President]

Ended up buying the 21.5"

I believe I made the right move. If I can get a great 5 years out of it and run everything efficiently then that's a mission complete. Thank you both for your help!

 

[Trolle]

Any of the new Imacs should be sufficient for recording music. I have a 2012 I7 27 inch that is a workhorse for music, though I often run out of processing power (or maybe it's that hardrive) when playing VST's. If I upgraded to the current iMac, there should be zero processing/hard drive issues.