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Worth upgrading from Big Sur to Monterey for an Intel iMac?

M

mindquest

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 25, 2009
540
109
iMac 27" 2020
i9
64GB
Radeon Pro 5700 XT

Running Big Sur on my Intel iMac and wondering if it was worth it to upgrade to Monterey not that it is getting probable the last of its big updates? There are a couple features that entice me on Monterey but I want to know from everyone on Intel machines is it worth it.
 
SeenJeen said:
Yes, your machine has more than enough power for Monterey. I haven't had any major issues with Monterey whatsoever on my 2015 MBP.
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What doe you like about Monterey that in your mind made it worth upgrading?
 
Finally blocking out some time to potentially upgrade from BS to Monterey. Just wanted to see if any Intel Mac users have seen the internet connectivity or external monitor issues I am reading about on the forum.

And in general if it was worth upgrading?
 
I suggest "upgrading" to Monterey on an external drive, booting with that drive for a while and leaving the existing "as is." This is a completely safe way to see for yourself with your own hardware. If all seems fine to you after maybe a week or two, carbon copy clone, super duper or simply upgrade macOS on your internal. However, if you have some of the issues people report with Monterey, you can switch back to "normal" as easily as possible.

Else, I suggest super duper or carbon copy cloning the "as is" to an external drive BEFORE you "upgrade" so you have the easiest way to switch back again if Monterey disappoints you.

External drives large enough to hold whatever you have on your boot drive are dirt cheap. Save yourself the potential of many headaches by doing one or the other. Even if all is fine afterwards, you'll have some additional, portable storage to hold something.

Upgrade with no easy way back at your own risk. I would definitely NOT do it myself.
 
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HobeSoundDarryl said:
I suggest "upgrading" to Monterey on an external drive, booting with that drive for a while and leaving the existing "as is." This is a completely safe way to see for yourself with your own hardware. If all seems fine to you after maybe a week or two, carbon copy clone, super duper or simply upgrade macOS on your internal. However, if you have some of the issues people report with Monterey, you can switch back to "normal" as easily as possible.

Else, I suggest super duper or carbon copy cloning the "as is" to an external drive BEFORE you "upgrade" so you have the easiest way to switch back again if Monterey disappoints you.

External drives large enough to hold whatever you have on your boot drive are dirt cheap. Save yourself the potential of many headaches by doing one or the other. Even if all is fine afterwards, you'll have some additional, portable storage to hold something.

Upgrade with no easy way back at your own risk. I would definitely NOT do it myself.
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Thanks for the reply! Unfortunately I don’t have the technical chops or an external drive to take this option. But I appreciate the response.

Are you on an Intel Mac running Monterey? Curious of your experience?
 
I have dodged upgrading my Intel Macs to Monterey due to a variety of issues posted by many others. So I have 2 Intel Macs running macOS before Big Sur and one Mac Studio Ultra that came default with Monterey.

For me, the #1 issue with Monterey is the dreaded "unexpected ejections" of USB-connected enclosures. Some work fine, some don't. No easy way to tell which will remain connected and which won't. Others find that some hubs, some other types of USB hardware, etc is always hit or miss- some work, some don't.

I've done a ton of testing with my Studio to try to resolve the issue myself. After much effort, I conclude as much as I can without a way to definitively test it that Monterey has port bugs affecting both USB and Ethernet ports. I strongly believe that I could downgrade this Studio to a macOS BEFORE Big Sur, my own stuff not working well would return to working as they do when hooked to those Intel Macs.

In trying to resolve the problem, I've seen many posts by others who upgraded their Intel Macs to Big Sur or Monterey, crashed into these same issues and then some decided to downgrade back to their old version of macOS until Apple fixes this problem.

Thus, if I was you, I'd scratch up $50-$100 to buy an external, install Monterey on that one, boot into that one and see for yourself with your own stuff. If good, then you can much more confidently upgrade the internal macOS. If not, you can switch back to "old reliable" very easily.

Upgrading with no easy way back makes switching back- if you want to do so- very complicated. Save up the $50 or $100 and use it like insurance against this scenario. Else, maybe a friend can loan you a spare external for a few weeks so you can try before you commit.
 
In general, I find Monterey a bit sluggish on my 2020 iMac compared to the last point release of Big Sur. There's also a massive memory leak in Finder that never got fixed. Overall it's ok, but not really worth upgrading for the "features".

Zero issues with internet connectivity and external monitor.

No unexpected external drive disconnections, but I do see external drives randomly waking up during sleep sometimes.
 
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I have a love hate relationship with 12.x very similar to the one I had with 10.15.x. On my M1, its nearly perfect, on my 2013 iMac its acceptable for the hardware, on my 2015 MBP its sluggish, on my 2017 MBP its fine booting from an external NVMe but booting from the internal gets sluggish. If 11.x is working for you I would stick with it or just skip to 13.x.
 
HobeSoundDarryl said:
I suggest "upgrading" to Monterey on an external drive, booting with that drive for a while and leaving the existing "as is." This is a completely safe way to see for yourself with your own hardware. If all seems fine to you after maybe a week or two, carbon copy clone, super duper or simply upgrade macOS on your internal. However, if you have some of the issues people report with Monterey, you can switch back to "normal" as easily as possible.

Else, I suggest super duper or carbon copy cloning the "as is" to an external drive BEFORE you "upgrade" so you have the easiest way to switch back again if Monterey disappoints you.

External drives large enough to hold whatever you have on your boot drive are dirt cheap. Save yourself the potential of many headaches by doing one or the other. Even if all is fine afterwards, you'll have some additional, portable storage to hold something.

Upgrade with no easy way back at your own risk. I would definitely NOT do it myself.
Click to expand...
Do you know of a good video or article showing how to load an external drive and boot into Monterey? Thanks for taking the time to provide a detailed reply!
 
Jack Neill said:
I have a love hate relationship with 12.x very similar to the one I had with 10.15.x. On my M1, its nearly perfect, on my 2013 iMac its acceptable for the hardware, on my 2015 MBP its sluggish, on my 2017 MBP its fine booting from an external NVMe but booting from the internal gets sluggish. If 11.x is working for you I would stick with it or just skip to 13.x.
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Curious why you think 13.x might be a better option. I haven’t done much research on it so not quite up to speed. Thanks!
 
mindquest said:
Curious why you think 13.x might be a better option. I haven’t done much research on it so not quite up to speed. Thanks!
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I have found it slightly snappier in most areas compared to 12.6 on my 14,3. it's the only machine I have tested it on. 12.6 is fairly comparable for me in terms of performance on all the other machines I have ran both. I think 12.6 would work fine on you iMac as well.
 
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I have noticed that the latest releases since Mojave have not slowed anything down. They appear to have better performance on some systems. I was able to run Catalina fine on an old 2011 Air, but decided to stay with the less complicated High Sierra setup on that backup machine.
 
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If my 2018 Mac mini with an i3 and 8GB RAM can run it, you’ll knock it out of the park. I see no reason not to at least try it!
 
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mindquest said:
Do you know of a good video or article showing how to load an external drive and boot into Monterey? Thanks for taking the time to provide a detailed reply!
Click to expand...

Step by step for installing Monterey on an external drive

About halfway down this page: how to boot macOS on an external drive

Another way to go is to use free Superduper app to duplicate your existing internal drive to the external, then upgrade the internal to Monterey. If you don't like Monterey, you then duplicate the external back to the internal to switch it back again.

With this option you can still boot into either the internal or external as described in the second link above. So you still try the Monterey upgrade with your own stuff but with an easy way back if you don't like Monterey.
 
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HobeSoundDarryl said:
Step by step for installing Monterey on an external drive

About halfway down this page: how to boot macOS on an external drive

Another way to go is to use free Superduper app to duplicate your existing internal drive to the external, then upgrade the internal to Monterey. If you don't like Monterey, you then duplicate the external back to the internal to switch it back again.

With this option you can still boot into either the internal or external as described in the second link above. So you still try the Monterey upgrade with your own stuff but with an easy way back if you don't like Monterey.
Click to expand...
Thanks for this! Will try to make this happen to know what issues to expect. Thinking about it more my two main concerns are secondary monitor support and speed.
 
Don't do it. You'll thank me later.

There are few features on macOS Monterey that would make it a worthwhile upgrade for people already on Big Sur. If you really need Live Text, do it on an iPhone or get Prizmo or similar OCR software.

You'll experience a general slowdown, especially if you have tons of tabs open on your browser.

Don't upgrade for the sake of upgrading. You're just inviting anguish.
 
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