Any 21.5 inch iMac users out there?

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1

I am planning to buy an iMac now. But, I am confused whether to go for 21.5 inch or 27 inch retina.

My main purpose will be to design WordPress themes, coding, multitasking, cross browser testing and other normal work like browsing, watching movies etc. So, is 21.5 inch suffice for that? Need advice.

Softwares I am going to use: The Adobe Creative Suite, Code editors like Brackets, Sublime Text 2

I am thinking to buy an entry level imac with this config:

1.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor (Turbo Boost up to 2.7GHz) with 3MB shared L3 cache
8GB of 1600MHz LPDDR3
onboard memory 500GB(5400-rpm) hard drive
Intel HD Graphics 5000

Please advice! :slight_smile:

2

Hello. I’m using the exact same iMac. It works perfectly for me. I have dual-booted it with Windows and the overall performance is amazing. Most of time I have 5-6 apps running (Chrome with 4 tabs, Mailbox, Photoshop, Textastic, Spotify, FileZilla and sometimes Xcode as well) and it doesn’t lag at all since I have around half of RAM left.

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3

Hi CrystalEdgeStudio,

That’s great. I won’t be dual booting as I already have an HP Pavillion powered by Windows 10. :smile:

So, I think this iMac is perfect for me. Is there any chance to upgrade in future if we need?

4

Buy 27" and does not think about any alternatives! 21.5" is regular display that you can find for any PC. 27" is super size for anything (coding, designing, playing games in Bootcamp, etc). If you can spend more money I highly recommends you to buy any model with SSD instead of HDD. It work 10-30 times faster in everything. Even 128GB SSD much better than 500 GB HDD (actually you does not need so much). You can always add USB3/Thunderbolt HDD to have more space for storage.

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5

Hi dedalx.

I am totally new to Mac ecosystem. So, was thinking to buy an entry level iMac.

Once, I get pro with it, I will buy the higher versions with some awesome hardware. What do you think?

This iMacs will be at my home office :slight_smile:

6

Screen size is MOST important thing here (bigger size does not mean that your iMac be more laggy, this related only to playing games in Windows). You will not get all benefits from iMac (in comparison with regular PC) if you will have small regular screen. iMac cost a lot (any model), so better to add small money but get better screen size at the start. You can live with speed reduce related to HDD, small amount of RAM, low speed processor (running less applications, change applications to more fast, etc). But you can’t optimize or change your screen size and resolution.
Also I can say that retina on iMac 27" is not important (if you can find model without it that will be cheaper). iMac have so big screen size and resolution that you will not see a lot of change from retina (this related to 27’ iMac, not to macbook or ipad where you really see big difference).

7

We agree, we’ve just bought a refurbished 27", cheaper than a new 21", and it’s a bomb in any aspect :smile:

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8

hi buddy go for 27, this rocks! visual comfort is absolutely not a luxury when u spend so many hours working on a computer … the bigger screen u have and the more likely u are able to handle having many windows and so on and we all know that we have a lot …

9

for sure this is !

10

it depends on the kind of user that u are , if u are the kind of guy who needs to change all the time, who is craving for following the latest evolutions or not and if u have means financially to do … as for me i would opt for 27 and keep until i kill it with work … but we all are different nd no one knows better what kind of user u are …

11

Adding to this, the new OS X version (El Capitan) launching soon will include split view which will be super helpful to work on 27" screen. :smile:

12

Tempting features :smiley:

13

Might be releasing September 9, may be wait a week?

14

Sure I will and get the 27 inch model. :slight_smile:

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