Any of the processors in any of the new iMacs will be fine for video or audio editing.

At their WWDC, in June, 2017, Apple announced and released new iMac computers, designed to meet the needs of professionals.

However, if you are on a budget, how do you determine where to spend your money This article is designed to help you make more informed choices when you dont have a lot of money to spend.

NOTE: I have not purchased any of these systems.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY If money is no object, buy the top of the line iMac.

It will work great and youll have bragging rights over all the other systems.

But, if money IS an object, then you need to make trade-offs, balancing the performance you need with the money you have.

However, you dont need to spend a fortune to get a system today that can meet your editing needs for the next several years.

ALSO: Here are two other configuration articles you may find useful: Configure an iMac Pro for video editing Configure a MacBook Pro for video editing YES, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE IMAC PRO Holy smokes What a system.

YES, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MAC PRO Given the latest iMac releases, there are very, very few reasons to purchase a Mac Pro right now; especially given its price.

Keep in mind, however, that Apple has already announced they are working on a new, top-of-the-line Mac Pro which will ship sometime in 2019.

Given what Apple has announced for the iMac Pro, however, that upcoming Mac Pro will need to be a true screamer to compete.

Im looking forward to seeing what Apple creates but, as I mentioned earlier, I still need to pay my bills today.

And that leads us directly to the latest updates to the iMac.

WHAT SIZE SCREEN Both Final Cut Pro X and Premiere interfaces work best on larger screens.

This is not to say they work poorly on smaller screens, but both of these display a LOT of elements on screen.

Plus, all the new 27 iMacs now share the same 5K Retina Display.

Ive discovered, that while seeing a 5K image is nice, the on-screen text is often very hard to read.

So Ive lowered the screen resolution using System Preferences to make the text larger.

I prefer to easily read the text to seeing every pixel in my image.

However, if the purpose of the new system is video compression, you dont need the bigger screen size.

In which case, you can save money and improve performance with a 21 system.

While this wont help when transcoding into ProRes, hardware-acceleration will significantly speed compressing files for the web.

WHAT SPEED CPU UPDATE Intels latest 8th-gen and 9th-gen Core processors, including up to a 3.2GHz six-core 8th-gen Core i7 with Turbo Boost up to 4.6GHz for the 21.5-inch 4K iMac and up to a 3.6GHz eight-core 9th-gen Core i9 with Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz for the 27-inch 5K iMac.

While CPU speed is important, it is not critical for video editing; remember, iMacs that were current as recently as last month, were easily able to edit almost all forms of SD, HD, and 4K media.

Mac Specs For Video Editing