I need an affordable upgrade......

[Snapple123]

I own a 2015 21.5 inch iMac. I do love the 21.5 size --
Mac OS Catalina
2.8 ghz Quad core Intel core i5
8 GB Ram / I TB SATA HD

First off, I think I made a mistake upgrading to Catalina, because now my machine runs very slow.
I needed to do the upgrade to Make Office 2022 work.

I may Time machine it to go back to El Capitan.....

Right now, shelling out $1249.00 for a new iMac is not an option.

Amazon is offering this:

Apple iMac 21.5 inches Retina 4K i5-8500 8 256GB SSD Radeon Pro 560X Silver MHK33LL (Renewed)​

for $700.00, but I don't think I will get much of a performance boost. Perhaps I need to think about the Mac mini, though that would not allow me to sell my old model because I would need all of the peripherals.

Advice/Suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[russell_314]

I own a 2015 21.5 inch iMac. I do love the 21.5 size --
Mac OS Catalina
2.8 ghz Quad core Intel core i5
8 GB Ram / I TB SATA HD

First off, I think I made a mistake upgrading to Catalina, because now my machine runs very slow.
I needed to do the upgrade to Make Office 2022 work.

I may Time machine it to go back to El Capitan.....

Right now, shelling out $1249.00 for a new iMac is not an option.

Amazon is offering this:

Apple iMac 21.5 inches Retina 4K i5-8500 8 256GB SSD Radeon Pro 560X Silver MHK33LL (Renewed)​

for $700.00, but I don't think I will get much of a performance boost. Perhaps I need to think about the Mac mini, though that would not allow me to sell my old model because I would need all of the peripherals.

Advice/Suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

I would be careful about used Macs on Amazon and eBay. Some are legit but others are outdated machines that are overpriced. According to the model number that should be a 2019 model but it's suspicious they left it out of the description. It's a bit dated

I would say if you're on a barebones budget an Apple refurbished base model M1 mini (From the refurbished apple store) is the way to go. If you want an iMac look at the price of an Apple refurbished M1 iMac but maybe that's out of your budget. Also be sure that whatever software you use works on Apple Silicon. MS Office worked on mine so you should be fine there.

 

[Snapple123]

Sounds like any version of the Intel i5 chip is going to be obsolete.......

 

[quarx]

Is the SATA drive in your Mac user-replacable? If yes, you should try to replace it with a decent SSD. You will be surprised how fast your iMac can be.

P.S.: This post was written on a 2009 MacBook Pro 5,3, still running Big Sur* smoothly on a Samsung 860 EVO 1TB SSD.

*=via Open Core Legacy Patcher

 

[theorist9]

Yeah, don't buy used iMacs on AZ or Ebay, they're way overpriced (esp. after you add tax & [for Ebay] shipping), plus you can't inspect them in person. I'd recommend buying local using Craig's List.

As an example, in my area, I found this: 2019, top of the line (for a small iMac) i7 processor, decent RAM, and an SSD instead of one the problematic Fusion Drives. Plus it's best offer, suggesting the market value is ~$600:

If you want to get a sense of its CPU performance relative to yours, the single-core Geekbench scores are a reasonable metric. But these scores don't account for the SSD, which will make a big difference.

Mac Benchmarks - Geekbench

Having said that, it sounds like the ideal thing for you would be a used 24" M1 iMac, which would blow both of the above out of the water in performance, if you could find one at the right price.

I found this one on Craig's List for $900, which means the market price is probably ~$800:

 

[saudor]

Sounds like any version of the Intel i5 chip is going to be obsolete.......

Your Mac doesnt have a SSD - that's why it's so slow. Im surprised it even ran OK in El capitan. 10.8/10.9 from 2012 was the last OS that could run reasonably well on a HDD. Even my old 2010 macbook with a SSD could boot Mojave in about 15 seconds.

Changing it out would be an absolutely massive upgrade - although it's a bit more involved on the 21" imacs.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

The reason why the iMac is running slow:
It has a platter-based hard drive inside.

There's nothing you can do that will make this HDD "faster". It's just a slow drive to begin with.

There's a cheap and EASY way to make the iMac run much faster:
Buy (or put together) a USB3 SSD,
then...
Make it your boot drive (i.e., boot "externally" from the SSD).

You can buy a "ready-to-go" SSD (such as the Samsung t7)
or...
Buy a "bare" SSD and an enclosure, put them together, and "build it yourself".

I'd suggest a bare "nvme" blade drive, 1tb in size. Crucial and Sandisk would be my choices.
Then, pick out a USB3.1 gen2 enclosure to go with it.

REASON WHY I suggest USB3.1 gen2:
Because someday you're going to get a faster Mac. USB3.1 gen2 is 2x as fast as "regular" USB3. But it's also BACKWARD COMPATIBLE with the iMac you have now.
So it will run fine now, and run faster later on.

When you have your SSD, open disk utility.
Go to the view menu and choose "show all devices" (VERY IMPORTANT).
Erase it to APFS, GUID partition format.

Now, download SuperDuper (it's FREE to download and use for this purpose).
Use SD to "clone" your internal drive to the SSD. It will be an exact copy of the internal drive.
When done, go to the startup disk preference pane and set the SSD to be the new boot drive.
Then, reboot.

Everything will look the same, but run faster, because you're now booting and running from the external SSD.

Just leave the internal drive to be "a backup" if you need it. But use the SSD for all your work.

Do this, and you will come back here and tell us:
"I didn't think it could run this fast!"...

 

[Macky-Mac]

The suggestion of buying and booting from an external SSD is the most affordable way to go. It's also easy to set up.

You'll be amazed at how much faster your iMac performs