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When the time comes for me and I'm faced with the same decision, I will get and pay for the faster internal upgrade to 512 GB.
I know Apple is making a killing on me, but fighting them for spite and having to dick around with an external HD is not worth the savings.
Besides, after paying up for another 256 GB external and having to plug it in and move files from one drive to another... how much have you saved? Not worth it IMO.
I do have externals for other reasons and now that I'm doing more video shooting... man, do I need space. hahaha.
There comes a time where you have to stop swimming up river and just float, chill and enjoy life. All that money... can't take it with you.
 
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I had the same idea in 2014 with the first 5K iMac to save some money and go with 256GB SSD and a second external 1TB Thunderbolt drive. This was a pain in the ass because the 265GB SSD becomes too small with the time and I had to redirect user data to the external drive with symlinks. This gives big problems with Time Machine and I could not use the iMac without the external drive. The whole concept of the iMac gets disturbed in a way with an mostly ugly external drive hanging on the iMac.
So with my new 2017 5K iMac I took the plunge a choose the 1TB internal SSD option. With the 512HB SSD I still needed an external drive and the 1TB T5 is not that mich cheeper than the difference to the 1TB internal SSD....
 
A friend of mine bought an iMac in 2008 and is still using it, mostly for writing, web browsing, and email.
In the 9 years he's had it, he's used up about 80gb of the total storage space.

I suggested that when it's time for a new iMac (his is actually still doing very well, because I've "held him back" to Mountain Lion), he get one with the 256gb SSD ($100 more).
I think he'll do just fine with that for the -next- 9 years!
 
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I have the 512GB internal SSD. This is more than large enough for the OS and my apps but also gives me enough space for my Capture One catalog. The actual images are on an external SSD.
 
It's a simple math. Going from 512GB SSD to 1TB SSD cost you at Apple $400. An external USB-C 1TB SSD cost you around $350 (Samsung T5, Glyph Atom 1TB, G-Drive 1TB Mobile SSD or WD 1TB My Passport SSD). So going with 512GB SSD internal + 1TB SSD external will give you 1.5TB for $50 cheaper than going with 1TB SSD Internal from Apple. Just my 2 cents.
 
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