Mac recommendations for a friend

[PenguinMaster]

My friend currently has a 2012 MacBook Pro 13" that has treated him well. Surprisingly easy to upgrade and get to everything in it considering its an Apple product. He is looking to upgrade since his MacBook died after a family member spilled water all over it. Thankfully we were able to pull the drive and recover all of his files. He said he doesn't really need the mobility of a laptop anymore since he's not in college, and so he would rather have a desktop. We were thinking either the Mac mini or the iMac. His price point is $500 but we can push it to $700 for something like the 2017 4k iMac. We are definitely open to used and refurbished options as his budget (obviously) doesn't support the price of a new mac. He is a video editor and photographer and is used to the apple ecosystem and has advised me that he would not like to switch to windows.

 

My recommendations are:

 

>2015 i7 4k iMac 16GB RAM, and we could upgrade the HDD with an SSD (yes I know they are glued together with adhesive, but I am comfortable taking iMacs apart)

>2017 i5 4k iMac 16GB RAM, 256 GB SSD comes standard usually

>2018 Mac mini, probably would get the base model i3 or i5 with a 256GB SSD and upgrade the RAM

>2020 Mac mini M1 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD

 

What do you guys think? He thought the 27" iMac was too large for his needs so I stuck with the 4k ones instead of the 5k ones.

[Crunchy Dragon]

I would probably roll with either of the 2017 iMacs you listed. They are a bit of a pain to work with, but with some care and know-how it can definitely be done.

[jaslion]

5 minutes ago, PenguinMaster said:

My friend currently has a 2012 MacBook Pro 13" that has treated him well. Surprisingly easy to upgrade and get to everything in it considering its an Apple product. He is looking to upgrade since his MacBook died after a family member spilled water all over it. Thankfully we were able to pull the drive and recover all of his files. He said he doesn't really need the mobility of a laptop anymore since he's not in college, and so he would rather have a desktop. We were thinking either the Mac mini or the iMac. His price point is $500 but we can push it to $700 for something like the 2017 4k iMac. We are definitely open to used and refurbished options as his budget (obviously) doesn't support the price of a new mac. He is a video editor and photographer and is used to the apple ecosystem and has advised me that he would not like to switch to windows.

 

My recommendations are:

 

>2015 i7 4k iMac 16GB RAM, and we could upgrade the HDD with an SSD (yes I know they are glued together with adhesive, but I am comfortable taking iMacs apart)

>2017 i5 4k iMac 16GB RAM, 256 GB SSD comes standard usually

>2018 Mac mini, probably would get the base model i3 or i5 with a 256GB SSD and upgrade the RAM

>2020 Mac mini M1 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD

 

What do you guys think? He thought the 27" iMac was too large for his needs so I stuck with the 4k ones instead of the 5k ones.

Either the big imac but the mac mini m1 is also a really strong system. It is first gen stuff so I would steer away from that.