IMac or Studio?

[craig1912]

Currently have a Mac mini (1tb Fusion Drive, 16gb ram, late 2012) which is getting a little slow and can no longer be updated to latest operating system. It’s connected to a Dell U2515h monitor.
Was going to go with a iMac but also considering Mac Studio (512gb 32 ram). Both are similar price through refurb store and I can’t deceive wether to keep existing screen (it still seems OK despite getting on a bit) or get a shiny new iMac.
Mainly used with Capture One, but maybe moving back to Lightroom So any help appreciated.

[survivalist]

Best value would be a new iMac. Better performance and screen.

If I was buying a studio I’d be budgeting for a much better screen.

[tog]

I got a Studio last month and am very happy with it. Main use is Lightroom also. I kept my Dell 2415 monitors as I prefer having two screens and can't currently justify the expense of two new ones. They are of course not retina resolution screens, but they are what I'm used to and work just as well as they did before.

Only pain of the Studio is nowhere near as many ports as my much-upgraded 2010 Mac Pro tower that it replaced. I also really miss the four internal hard drive bays so have got a desktop DAS box next to the Studio. On the plus side it is much faster, almost silent, and my small office is no longer 35ºC all the time.

[Magnum 475]

The iMac is only available with the M1 chip. The entry-level studio has the M1 Max chip. Performance wise the studio is miles ahead of the iMac.

I’d be buying the Studio, then saving for the Studio display to add later

[steveatesh]

I went with the Mac Studio base model for use primarily with Capture One and Affinity when required (not often).

I coupled it with a Sandisk Extreme Pro 1tb extenal drive which I keep the whole photo library on, and edit from it. I can’t tell I am editing on an external drive.

The Studio has the M1Max chip so plenty of overhead for the future and plenty of ports for my use - 2 Time Machine HDD drives, camera connection at the front, tablet, scanner and room for USB stick as needed.

I went for the Studio Display as I wanted to stick with a 5k screen and I have no complaints at all.

The system is fast and editing is a breeze. Using the new C1 v23 for Smart Adjustments is so quick, for example I applied them to 160 images from a brand shoot and they were finished very quickly.

More expensive of course but for me worth the money.

[LunarOne]

tog said:

I got a Studio last month and am very happy with it. Main use is Lightroom also. I kept my Dell 2415 monitors as I prefer having two screens and can't currently justify the expense of two new ones. They are of course not retina resolution screens, but they are what I'm used to and work just as well as they did before.

Only pain of the Studio is nowhere near as many ports as my much-upgraded 2010 Mac Pro tower that it replaced. I also really miss the four internal hard drive bays so have got a desktop DAS box next to the Studio. On the plus side it is much faster, almost silent, and my small office is no longer 35ºC all the time.

Are you me from the future? My 2008 Mac Pro with all four drive bays full has decided that it no longer wants to play. It works fine for about 10 minutes, and then everything corrupts on the screen and the machine freezes up. I use two HP LP2575W monitors (which were seriously top-notch when they were new in 2010) and an now looking to buy a Mac Studio. Only I'm waiting for the M2 Ultra version. I'm so glad I bought an 8-bay NAS a few months ago and all my files are copied onto it so I haven't lost anything on the Mac.

[xeny]

LunarOne said:

Are you me from the future? My 2008 Mac Pro with all four drive bays full has decided that it no longer wants to play. It works fine for about 10 minutes, and then everything corrupts on the screen and the machine freezes up. .

Have you tried enabling SSH and then connecting from another machine on the network? Not impossible it is just the GPU that is failing.

[craig1912]

survivalist said:

Best value would be a new iMac. Better performance and screen.

If I was buying a studio I’d be budgeting for a much better screen.

Yep I think that’s the route for me. I don’t think the Studios undoubted extra performance will make much difference for basic photo editing and my budget(£1.8k max) won’t allow a new studio monitor.

[LunarOne]

xeny said:

LunarOne said:

Are you me from the future? My 2008 Mac Pro with all four drive bays full has decided that it no longer wants to play. It works fine for about 10 minutes, and then everything corrupts on the screen and the machine freezes up. .

Have you tried enabling SSH and then connecting from another machine on the network? Not impossible it is just the GPU that is failing.

Yes, I'm a UNIX consultant so use SSH constantly. The machine just stops responding. It could be a PSU, memory or a GPU problem locking up the entire system. But at 12+ years old, it's long overdue for an update and have been holding off. I see these pre-trashcan Mac Pros still seem to get strong money on eBay - no idea why. But if I'm going to replace it, I'd like to go with one which can run a modern OS. Mavericks is the last OS mine officially supports. I tried putting one of the newer Mac OS releases on with a hack, but the machine just became too slow to be usable.

For now I'm using a 2012 Lenovo T420 upgraded with 1TB SSD and 16GB RAM and it's very usable, especially since I have a docking station connected to my two monitors. Then I remote desktop into my less than a year-old work Thinkpad X12 Carbon. I need to have an Intel CPU for my work machine as I need to run Solaris and Linux VMs.

I wish they'd release that Mac Studio M2 now though rather than March or whenever!

[tog]

LunarOne said:

tog said:

I got a Studio last month and am very happy with it. Main use is Lightroom also. I kept my Dell 2415 monitors as I prefer having two screens and can't currently justify the expense of two new ones. They are of course not retina resolution screens, but they are what I'm used to and work just as well as they did before.

Only pain of the Studio is nowhere near as many ports as my much-upgraded 2010 Mac Pro tower that it replaced. I also really miss the four internal hard drive bays so have got a desktop DAS box next to the Studio. On the plus side it is much faster, almost silent, and my small office is no longer 35ºC all the time.

Are you me from the future? My 2008 Mac Pro with all four drive bays full has decided that it no longer wants to play. It works fine for about 10 minutes, and then everything corrupts on the screen and the machine freezes up. I use two HP LP2575W monitors (which were seriously top-notch when they were new in 2010) and an now looking to buy a Mac Studio. Only I'm waiting for the M2 Ultra version. I'm so glad I bought an 8-bay NAS a few months ago and all my files are copied onto it so I haven't lost anything on the Mac.

I might be! As well as the 2010 Mac Pro mentioned above, I also have its 2008 predecessor, which like yours has also recently started playing up. By some Google-fu and some trial and error I eventually diagnosed that one of the original 1GB FB-DIMMs had gone bad, and so it was not seeing any of the memory on that riser and was routinely crashing. This machine has been running for years just as an iTunes machine, and is about to be replaced by a used Mac mini when one the right price and spec next comes up on Ebay.