Witch should I choose imac 27 mid 2011 or late 2012

[kelly135]

hi, the 2012 version is tinner but i don't know if it's possible to add a ssd as an additionnal hard drive easily however there is 3.0 usb port witch great and it is said to be 25% faster than the 2011 version but what I am affraid is that if it's fai lthe 2011 versio nis easier to fix or i am just paranoid ?

thanks

 

[jharvey71884]

I would go with the 2012 because of the USB 3.0 port. Not only is it much faster, you can boot from SSD external drive on that one compared to the 2011. That is what I'm doing with my 2013. Made a world of difference.

 

[varian55zx]

Tough choice because really, both are just so old.

I'd say go with the '12

 

[weckart]

I would go with the 2012 because of the USB 3.0 port. Not only is it much faster, you can boot from SSD external drive on that one compared to the 2011. That is what I'm doing with my 2013. Made a world of difference.

You can boot from external SSD on both. Both have 2 Thunderbolt ports. My 2011 boots externally as the internal HD is noisy and slow. Thanks to a good SSD offer on Black Friday, I shall be replacing it with an internal SSD. Not so easy with the 2012 model.

On the other hand, the pre-skinny iMacs are susceptible to screen yellowing if you don't keep your heat build up in check.

[EDIT] Got the SSD today and the swap over took about 30 minutes, most of which was fighting the magnets around the screen when putting the display screws back in. Now I have a quieter and quicker iMac.

 

[pmouritz]

Besides from the already pointed out hardware advantages of the 2012, I think that the slimmer design is also very noticeable and makes it worth going for the 2012! However, it also depends on your usage as well as the hardware in the two models you are looking at.

I bought an Imac 27" Late 2013 last week with i5 3.4 GHz quad core and 775m 2 GB graphics over a Late 2012 with i5 3.2 GHz and 675MX 1 GB graphics because I wanted a graphic card being able to pull some games Additionally, the Late 2013 offers a PCIe port on the logic board which I may experiment with an M2 SSD at some point.