Is the Mac Studio the right upgrade for an iMac 5K owner?

On the 8th March 2022, Apple announced a new form factor and name to their Mac portfolio at their Peak Performance Event, the Mac Studio. It also launched a new monitor to go with it - the Studio Display. What was also notable about the event was the lack of a new 27” iMac. When John Ternus (SVP - Hardware Engineering) said of the Apple Silicon transition at that same event “with just one more product to go - Mac Pro” - it cast doubt whether the bigger iMac would ever arrive. Apple discontinued the iMac 5K the same day. If you want a good round-up of the speculation as it stands in early 2022, I recommend this Rene Ritchie video.

My Mac journey started late in life after getting hooked on Apple’s gateway drug - the iPhone. Since then, every form factor of Mac has come and gone: Pros, iMacs, MacBooks and Minis. My current daily driver is a 2017 27” iMac. It was a specced out machine at the time, but is now falling behind the latest M1 based Mac’s performance. I have boosted it with an eGPU, but that adds its own complications. I have been ready for an upgrade for a while. My hope for the event was for an M1 Max powered iMac with a ProMotion HDR screen (like that on the latest MacBook Pros) but somewhere in the 27-32” size range.

I know what to expect in terms for performance because I have a 14” MacBook Pro (MBP) powered by the M1 Pro chip. I bought the laptop to accompany me on my travels. I went with the base model because, despite being somewhat over-specced for that mobile role, it was still a good value as a package. I was tempted to push the spec a lot further and use it to replace the iMac as well. The problem was what to use as a monitor. Even the 16” version would have felt a bit cramped after the iMac. Trying to get something that could match the specs of the MacBook screens in a larger size proved impossible without doubling the investment. I could lower the bar a little, but then I wouldn’t get the future proofing I look for. That has been the secret of the iMac for years. You get a really good computer for only slightly more than the high quality screen that sits in front of it.

So let's go back to the event and make an assumption that the two Studio products launched are the replacement for the 27” iMac. I am going to steer round all the link-bait headlines and just look at how it impacts me in two specific scenarios.

For my business, our editing machine is a 2019 MacBook Pro 15” with a Vega 20. Alex, the editor, favours an ultra-widescreen monitor for his editing timelines, using the laptop screen for emails etc. We have an M1 Mac mini as backup. The Mac Studio is a great fit in this scenario. It would replace the laptop as the primary Mac and we would save £1,000 over an equivalent MBP. Even the base model would be a big productivity boost with the kind of footage we now shoot. The existing MBP 15” would become the backup edit machine. It would continue to be used as now for non-edit apps using MacOS Monterey’s new Universal Control feature to swap between the Studio and the MBP.

For my personal use, I have the iMac. The 5K iMac cannot be used as a stand-alone monitor (not in the traditional sense, but let me come back to that). This means I would need to buy a new monitor or dig out an old one. The obvious choice is the new Studio Display. That would put me at a starting budget of around £4,000 for the base model. That’s similar to what my maxed out iMac cost back in 2017. If Apple’s claims are true, I should see about 3.5x performance increase in my key application - Final Cut Pro. The Studio Display doesn’t really move the game on for me though. It is only a refinement of the screen I have been using for the last 5 years on the iMac. I can save the cash and use my old Eizo monitor. However, that is really a step back at only 1440p. It’s a bit like buying a Porsche and then putting on those old tyres from the back of your garage! I’ve looked at other monitor options from Dell, Asus, LG and others, but nothing quite ticks all the boxes yet.

So, in summary, I am going to wait a bit longer to see if the demise of the “pro” iMac is true or imagined. I have found a secret weapon to help bolster my patience. Earlier in this post I mentioned you cannot use the iMac 5K as a monitor. When Apple launched the first 5K iMac’s, the graphics cards inside couldn’t cope. Apple added a special chip to fix this, but it meant no Target Display Mode like older iMacs. Universal Control works well, but is only a kind of wireless KVM switch - it can’t turn the iMac into a screen for the MacBook Pro 14”.

Triple monitor set-up using Luna Display - layout very much work-in-progress!

A company called Astropad makes a tiny cerise dongle called Luna that plugs into a USB port. I am running Luna Display software on the MBP and Luna Secondary on the iMac. This makes the iMac behave like an extended display for the MBP 14”. Currently, I am trialing a three screen set-up with the Eizo, iMac and MBP 14”. The only downside with the Luna is that the refresh rate is a bit slow on the iMac at 5K - only 45Hz. This is especially noticeable after the ProMotion 120Hz on the MBP. Time will tell if I find that an issue when editing. It will also give me a chance to do a gentle transition to Apple Silicon. I will still have the iMac as a fallback if any software or plug-in decides not to play nicely with the new chips.