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I currently have a Late 2015 Retina 4k 3.1Ghz Quad Core i5 iMac, with 1TB of storage and looking to replace with the newer model, as seems quite slow.
What dictates the speed as looking at M4 10core and assume its the increased neural engine that dictates speed not storage.
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
iMac 21.5″, macOS 12.7
For starters, use the "Help me choose" questionnaire at > Mac - Which Mac is best for me? - Apple
1) The current M4 iMac's and Mac mini's will run circles around your old HDD based 2015 21.5" iMac.
2) If your current iMac's 1T drive is over half full, then you should purchase a new iMac or Mac mini with 1T of storage.
Here is what I suggest.
In addition, you may be an ideal candidate for a Mac Mini rather than another iMac. You can currently buy far more computer than the iMac line offers for less money. If you are a typical user:
Then you will have a LOT of options available to you.
Welcome!
Experience and thousands of posts here say what made your 2015 slow is the storage if you did not up-order to a Fusion drive or factory SSD at the time of purchase. The base mech hard drive in 2012-2019 21.5-inch models could do data transfers no faster than ~80 MB/sec when new. The previous 21.5-inch 2011 iMacs' base drive is demonstrably about 30% FASTER than HDD storage in 21.5-inch iMacs made over the next eight years. Minimalist design dictate that the thin-case iMac 21.5 models have laptop-class HDDs running at half the SATA drive bus speed of the computer's logic board.
All current iMacs have solid-date storage on the system chip, typically with data transfer scores over 3200 MB/sec.
The MacTracker database (free in the Mac App Store) has benchmark test results for many Mac models. This is your 2015 model compared to the current M4 iMac:
Re the 10-core issue: note that the increase in overall benchmark performance between the 8- and 10-core models is just under 7 percent. I have no way to tell the effect of a small increase on your computing requirements. If you have pro apps that you know will benefit from the higher core count, by all mean go for that option after making informed decisions; contact the App developer for their recommendation.
My preference in a tight money situation is usually to opt for additional storage; like RAM, internal storage cannot be increased once the computer goes on the assembly line. Following massive changes in Mac memory management in 2013, most Macs do surprisingly well with minimum RAM.
Even SSDs can slow if they get too full, so I like big storage (and I cannot lie). The are several open discussions here this week where users let a Mac'sSSD get over 90% full and the performance slowed dramatically.
I have the Mac Mini M4 10-Core CPU, 10-Core GPU, 16GB Unified Memory and 1TB SSD Storage. It's blazingly fast and was around $400 less than a comparatively configured 24" iMac.
If your budget permits you can up the RAM to 24GB.
The monitor may be critical depending on what your workflow is. Since the Mini has only one, rather tinny speaker you may want to get a 4K monitor with speakers or external B/T speakers. I don't listen to music on my Mini often and when I do I use my AirPods Pro. Give great sound. I got an LG 32" monitor with speakers for under $350. You can get 27" 4K monitors w/o speakers for $150 to $435 depending on brand. 5K 27" monitors are nearly 3x the cost of 4K.
Just some food for thought.
Have you tried to determine why your current Mac is having performance problems. If you'd like to download and run the free versions of Etrecheck and DriveDX and post the results via the Additional Text button:
Upgrading late 2015 iMac with slow performance
