Mac M1 Studio vs 2020 iMac i9

[Eric Brody]

For my "serious" photographic work I am currently using an Intel iMac 2020 27" with an i9, 64GB RAM and 4TB SSD. It drives a calibrated NEC P271 monitor. It's a lovely computer but I've become spoiled by my laptop, an Apple M1 16" MacBook Pro with 64GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD. It is noticeably faster than my iMac in many operations.

I've thought of using the MacBook Pro for my photo work but I like the portability of the laptop which I use downstairs for all my other things. I'd rather not have to plug and unplug it every time I want to do photography.

I am trying to decide if I want to sell the iMac, which will likely become less valuable over time, and get a Mac Studio, or just keep the iMac until it's no longer viable. It is a first world problem, to be sure, but opinions would be appreciated.

[MDL_SD]

Just get a thunderbolt dock so that you only have to connect a single thunderbolt cable between the dock and the laptop and you can do all of your photography using your external monitor and any other devices that you need to connect via the dock (external drives, etc.). I use a 14" M1 max Macbook Pro in this way.

[mcbroomf]

I'd suggest that you try to put a value on the improvements you see between the 2 systems and see if it could move the dial from "nice to have" to "need".

For example my desktop has an aging i7 8*** processor with 64GB and is running Windows.  My MBP is the 14" version of yours used almost exclusively for travel.  It runs some PS actions pretty much instantly compared to the Windows machine, and a few things (mainly aligning 30 or more layers) it will do while PS on the Win machine just stalls.  However I plan to keep the Win desktop until MS stop support of Win10 (it's not upgradeable to Win 11) and by that time I hope to get a Mac Studio with an M2 or even M3 chip, or maybe a new Win machine if Intel and Windows can match performance by then.  The main reason for this decision is that while it's easy to measure the difference (in time) between these things I don't do them often enough to have a real impact.  The biggest time sink is having to move a multi layered .psb file from desktop to MBP and back, but ~ once/month I can live with.