Work from Home: Apple iMac 5K, and What to Get With It
Buyer’s guide pages at B&H: Work-from-home overview page | Live streaming from home | Gaming | Home Life
Buyer’s guide pages at OWC: Work from home essentials
Working from home during COVID 19 for now and maybe a lot longer? Want a compact yet expandable machine with a gorgeous display?
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Apple iMac 5K: all-in-one with gorgeous display
See also my Mac wishlist. To avoid throwing away money needlessly on stuff that won’t help you, consult with Lloyd if building a more expensive complex system.
Choose the Apple iMac 5K when you want a compact expandable machine good for 3+ years. Its expandability is less than a Mac Pro, but it few users will ever need more expansion than an iMac 5K provides. And it has a gorgeous display that comes with a free computer running macOS.
The Apple iMac 4K is suitable for when things have to be more compact and the smaller screen is OK—personally I want a 27" display as minimum size but it’s hard to beat the compact elegance of the 4K model.
Buy the iMac 5K with 8GB memory then add OWC memory to go to 32GB or 64GB or 128GB. You'll will probably want some additional ports, but not everyone does. Get a 1TB internal SSD, but 2TB is preferred over the long term—but you can always add more internally or externally, as shown below. Do NOT upgrade the GPU unless you have very demanding needs; upgrading it is largely a waste of money for most users. I’ve listed the next model up with 12 CPU cores for more demanding users, but that is overkill for many users.
Connecting a non-Thunderbolt display means you’ll want either the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock or the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dual DisplayPort Adapter (for the Mini DisplayPort). You might also want more USB-A ports.
Additional storage might be needed for large image files, video, etc. At least three backup drives should be used: one always connected for daily or twice-daily backups, and two for off-site storage, safely away from the computer.