Education Computer Labs - Replacing 27" iMac

[taugust_ric]

I know this specifically isn't a Jamf Pro question, but I know many of my colleagues on this board are involved with managing computer labs in K-12 and Higher Ed...

The 27" iMac was our "go-to" model for our multimedia, design, and photo labs.  After two years of no lab purchases thanks to the pandemic, we're attempting to catch up on refresh and Apple has now discontinued the 27" iMac, though it looks like it's still sale in the Education Institutional Purchase Apple Store.  However, this model is now 2 years old, and, I'm concerned about maximum life out of these systems - we literally run them here until they break or run out of macOS support.

So my question out to Jamf Nation is for those that are also 27" iMacs in labs, what are your purchasing decisions going to be for this year, if you have funding?  My predicament:

• Mac Studio + 27" Studio Display is out of budget scope per units (~$3500 w/AppleCare EDU Pricing)
• 2020 27" iMac still for sale two years old, not customizable on Apple's site (we usually increase RAM)
• 2021 24" iMac is smaller screen (faculty might complain), and only ships with 16GB RAM, but performance would most likely be improved.
• Mac Studio + Third Party 27" 4K display (Dell), there would be performance increase, but display would be downgrade from 27" 5K iMac, and still more expensive per unit (~$2500) than 27" iMac.
• M1 Mac mini + 27" Studio Display slightly more budget wise, but Mac mini in an open lab is a security risk for theft, and same concern over RAM issues.

If funding were not an issue, we would go with the base model Mac Studio + 27" Studio Display, but unfortunately, I'm restricted to a certain level (as many are in EDU).  Some informal polling of faculty who tech in the labs has also not produced any usable solution, as they are pretty much unhappy with most of the choices I've provided.  The workload for these is almost exclusively Adobe Creative Cloud applications.  One lab also does Maya and ZBrush.

If I were to go with my gut right now - we're going to order 24" iMacs.  Even with less RAM, they are going to be faster than the 2017" iMacs that are out there now, even though they will have slightly less RAM (24 GB vs 16 GB), and I think the students and faculty would be grateful for the performance boots vs the screen size reduction.

Anyway, thanks for letting me think out loud here, and I appreciate providing any thoughts on what you are doing at your school to replace the 27" iMac.  All feedback welcome!

[PaulHazelden · Accepted solution]

We elected to go for Mac Mini's with 28inch Benq 4k displays. We put a mount on the back of the display to hold the Mini, and bought Y leads for connecting power. All works well in general apart from...

Had a horrible flicker on screen, not all the time but some of the time. I think we now have a solution for that, but it requires the User to make some settings themselves.

Photography department say "The displays we have are not good enough, sharpness or colour, they say they are not a 4k display." I am not so sure they are actually running in 4k, the default setting in the Mac is 1k. The one I am using is looking pretty crisp and clear.

If you plug in a second display the refresh rate is a max of half of the main one, so our main ones are set to 60Hz, and second ones get 30Hz.

Other than that they are good.
Mini's we have all have 16Gb RAM and 1TB HD. They run all of the Adobe stuff no problems, and not had any issues with zBrush or Maya either.
Your biggest issue will be Keyboards and Mouses. Apple will send you wireless ones. That is a part of our choice of the Mini - we could buy wired ones and not pay extra for the wireless stuff that we dont need.
Hope this helps

[PaulHazelden · Accepted solution]

We elected to go for Mac Mini's with 28inch Benq 4k displays. We put a mount on the back of the display to hold the Mini, and bought Y leads for connecting power. All works well in general apart from...

Had a horrible flicker on screen, not all the time but some of the time. I think we now have a solution for that, but it requires the User to make some settings themselves.

Photography department say "The displays we have are not good enough, sharpness or colour, they say they are not a 4k display." I am not so sure they are actually running in 4k, the default setting in the Mac is 1k. The one I am using is looking pretty crisp and clear.

If you plug in a second display the refresh rate is a max of half of the main one, so our main ones are set to 60Hz, and second ones get 30Hz.

Other than that they are good.
Mini's we have all have 16Gb RAM and 1TB HD. They run all of the Adobe stuff no problems, and not had any issues with zBrush or Maya either.
Your biggest issue will be Keyboards and Mouses. Apple will send you wireless ones. That is a part of our choice of the Mini - we could buy wired ones and not pay extra for the wireless stuff that we dont need.
Hope this helps

[Zara_ · Accepted solution]

We will be replacing one of our multimedia labs using late 2015 iMacs (17,1) with new Mac Studios and buying non-Apple monitors due to budget constraints. We are looking at this monitor but I'm worried our multimedia faculty will not be happy with the proposed display solution as it isn't 5k nor is it a retina display.

We will be ordering two Mac Studios and the above-referenced monitors for two of our graphics artists in our marketing office to get a feel for how the Mac Studios work with the chosen monitor. My fingers are crossed that this monitor will work for their needs and for our students/multimedia faculty.

[taugust_ric]

Thanks for the feedback.  I had to make a final recommendation for budgeting purposes, but it's not set in stone just yet.  I decided to go with 24" iMacs with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD's.  Those seems to have hit the most checkmarks, despite the smaller display size.  I would love to hear anyone else's thoughts on this, just for the sake of curiosity.

[Zara_]

We have a graphics lab with 18 24" iMacs with the same specs as you listed and so far they've been solid. Space has been an issue and staring next fall, our graphics students will be required to supply a 1TB external drive for their course work for the program. We give them cloud storage but they aren't always good about using it.