What tier iMac should I get?

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    If you are getting the M1, you should get the one that's $200 more. The cheapest one has reduced thermals and has shown to not have as good performance. Also, with the M1 you cannot dual boot, you will have to use Parallels. I have a 16GB with 1TB storage MacBook Air. Highly recommend and that's handled all my needs very well

    @Madea#19666 So are you interested in buying a M1 24 inch or the 27 inch Intel one? The only thing I can tell you is the M1 model that's $200 more has better thermals. That's the only actual advice since there's no other options besides RAM and storage

    The middle and top tier M1 iMac are the same except for the storage size. I cannot recommend getting the lowest tier of any M1 product because it is impossible to upgrade the hardware if necessary, even for Apple-certified technicians.

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    @Telesphoreo#19671 So are you interested in buying a M1 24 inch or the 27 inch Intel one?

    I want the M1 one. The reason is because I don't want something to become quickly obsolete since Apple is switching over to their M1 chip (look at the transition between PowerPC and Intel) and I want to make sure that I can upgrade the software for at least a while.

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    @Tizz#19642 I recommend dual boot with Windows (is BootCamp still a thing?)

    Contrary to what some people have said, I actually prefer gaming on a Mac. I used to have a PC I used for gaming, but when I switched over to a Mac (same specs as the PC) I noticed a major difference, and there's an even bigger improvement with the M1 MacBook Pro that I just got.

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    @DragonSlayer2189#19641 Let me tell you from first hand expirence, you will want the 512 gb one,

    I was thinking of that, but as I mentioned to others, I do have several external hard drives (with more to come). My previous MacBook Pro was a 256 GB and it was three quarters full, and my plan is to split half of what I need on my new M1 MacBook Pro (like my homework and stuff) and the other half on my iMac (like gaming stuff). Ok, the main reason why I want a desktop is because of the aesthetic, but that's just me.

    @Madea#19716 the main reason why I suggest the larger storage one is because of boot camp being iffy, as it won’t work properly if you try to use boot camp on an external drive, and also boot camp requires a minimum of 60gbs and with the normal system files taking up about 40ish gbs, I would suggest the option with the most storage. Although if you don’t wish to use boot camp I would recommend the teir 2 one

    @DragonSlayer2189#19719 Boot Camp does not work with the M1. I would recommend getting 512GB of storage rather than 256GB if you intend on keeping it a long time. 256GB might work if you're 100% reliant on external drives but I prefer to use the speed of the internal drive to my advantage. I will usually offload large projects when I am done with them rather than work on an external drive all the time. Same with 16GB of RAM. As Steven said, nothing can be upgraded on M1 machines. At a minimum, just get the one with 4 USB C ports, you'll end up shooting yourself in the foot if you don't

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    @Madea#19714 I don't want something to become quickly obsolete

    Don't worry, Apple will find a way even with M1.

    But seriously yes, I think going with the M1 could be better if your goal is future-proofing and you aren't interested in backward compatibility.

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