Which Refurbished Mac - Photo Editing

[Coejonlan]

I’m looking at getting a refurbished Mac directly from Apple. My budget is around $2,000 though could push this a couple of hundred higher.

The main reason for buying will be to edit photos in Lightroom. I’m hoping to keep for 4-5 years. Huge portability isn’t an issue to me as I have an iPad Pro for when I travel but decided against an IMac as I will want to be able to move around my apartment when working on it.

Its purely for leisure use and editing my photos so I think the 16” pro would be overkill and the same may apply to the 15.4”. But with RAM not being upgradable I’m tempted to get the 32GB which is only an option on the 15.4”. HDD size isn’t an issue as I’ve got external SSD’s for storage of my photos.

What would your recommendations be?

 

[monokakata]

Part of any answer is going to depend on what camera you're using and if you shoot RAW.

Example: I had a late 2014 i7 iMac, 32 gb RAM, SSD, etc and it did just fine on Nikon D810 RAW images, but when I got a D850 it became all but unusable. The slider lag in the Develop module was awful (2-3 seconds before anything happened).

I certainly wasn't going back to the D810, so I got an iMac Pro and it doesn't break a sweat.

Maybe you can find a way to test your candidate machines with your own images?

 

[Fishrrman]

You didn't tell us if you prefer a laptop, an iMac, or a Mac Mini.

If you need portability, get a MacBook Pro. You're not going to want to be "moving an iMac around" very often. Even moving a Mini is work.

Having said that, for an iMac for photo editing, YOU WANT the 27" model for the extra screen space.
Get one with 8gb RAM and add more yourself (this is easy to do with the 27" -- NOT SO with the 21").
GET AN SSD inside. 256gb or 512gb and use USB3 for "more storage" if you need it.

If you're interested in the Mini, I'd suggest the i7 model with 16gb of RAM.
I bought "Apple-refurbished" and am very happy with that route.

 

[Coejonlan]

Thanks both. I wasn’t sure on a laptop or desktop but think

I’m leaning more towards a laptop for portability. I spend all day at my desk at work and don’t really want to spend the evening in a similar position. I don’t think it would be coming with me when I travel.

 

[Fishrrman]

For portability and photo editing, I'd suggest the new 16" MBPro.
Base model will "do the job" easily.
Right now, there are good prices on these at amazon (as reported here on MacRumors a day or two ago).

 

[naerct]

Part of any answer is going to depend on what camera you're using and if you shoot RAW.

Example: I had a late 2014 i7 iMac, 32 gb RAM, SSD, etc and it did just fine on Nikon D810 RAW images, but when I got a D850 it became all but unusable. The slider lag in the Develop module was awful (2-3 seconds before anything happened).

I certainly wasn't going back to the D810, so I got an iMac Pro and it doesn't break a sweat.

Maybe you can find a way to test your candidate machines with your own images?

I have different data from my experience with client Macs as well as my own. One thing that most casual users don't realize, is that the specs listed above for his iMac are not the most important ones. The most important spec with an app like Lightroom Classic is the amount and speed of VRAM in your system. I have a client with a 2015 i7 iMac who also owns both a D610 and a D810. (a larger difference in file size) She ordered the video card with the max VRAM which was 4 GB at the time. I believe she also has 40B RAM, a 3TB Fusion drive which I separated into the 120GB SSD (boot)and the 3TB HDD (internal storage). She says that the difference between processing RAW with LR between the two cameras is almost unnoticeable. Starting with the 2017 models, you can get 8GB VRAM. I believe all the 27" iMacs come with extra video cards, not just the graphic display on the CPU. But this is a very important difference with the MBP. GPUs and VRAM are usually one to two generations faster than CPUs and RAM, but the built-in graphics card steals slower RAM from the CPU, reducing performance dramatically.
If portability is important, you can always get a larger screen for the MBP. All the MBPs with additional video cards are fine as graphic workstations for the last few years. I have also found that the Apple Store refurbished and used products are a decent source, and also MicroCenter as long as you are near a store as they are not available online. I just checked, and the iMac 2015 has 4GB and the 2017 and 2019 have up to 8GB VRAM. The primary advantage of the newest ones is the 6-core I-7 and the 8-core I-9 processors. Fast, but expensive upgrades.