Buying Advice - SSD vs Fusion Drive

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I am about to buy a new iMac and I have narrowed it down to two options.

B&H has the low end 27 inch with a 1 TB fusion drive for 1599 (and no tax). I would prefer a 256 GB SSD, but if I go with that it bumps the price to $1879. I can also order the SSD version from Apple for 1869 plus tax, and there I would get free Beats headphones for the education promotion and that price includes the magic trackpad (I want this) and numeric keyboard, which would cost more from B&H.

So essentially the choice is between $1599 fusion drive model or $2047 (including tax) SSD model with magic trackpad, numeric keyboard, and beats headphones (which Apple says are worth $300 so I suppose I could sell them).

Any thoughts? For the same price I would jump on the SSD immediately, but for $400 more it's a tougher choice. How much slower is the fusion drive than an SSD? I'm particularly worried about the 1 TB fusion drive which I know only has a tiny amount of flash storage. Also, on my old macbook, the hard drive started slowing down considerably after a few years. Would that also happen with the fusion drive? I'm hoping this computer will last me for a while.

Thanks!
 

chscag

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Welcome to our forums.

You may be better off with the 1TB Fusion drive. Here's why: A 256 GB in an iMac is going to fill up fast and likely too small. I wouldn't even consider an SSD for an iMac unless it was at least 512 GB. And that's going to cost more $$.

Also something you need to know about B&H... I have ordered from them several times and their service is fantastic. However, B&H has a no return policy that you need to read before you buy anything that expensive from them. With Apple you have a 2 week no questions asked return policy.
 
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Ok thanks for the replies. I looked at the refurbs but I think the B&H deal beats any of them after tax.

I guess I'm leaning more toward the fusion drive then. I'm just concerned about its longevity. My macbook before I upgraded to an SSD was painfully slow after a few years and as soon as I put the SSD in it was like a brand new computer. If the same happens with the iMac I'm kind of stuck since it's much harder to replace. I guess the fusion drive is better, but reading some other posts it seems like it performs closer to an HDD than an SSD. And I can always add an external HDD if storage space really becomes an issue so I think the 256 wouldn't be too constraining. If I just put the OS and apps on the SSD and add a cheap external drive, how would that compare to the fusion?
 

chscag

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Nothing is as fast as an internal drive. I suppose you could always go with a TB external drive for speed, but if you're going to spend the money on that, you may as well go for a larger SSD for the iMac. You're going to spend around $2K anyway, another $200 or $300 for a machine that's going to be around for while should be worth it. Also, don't forget about buying Apple Care +. A must nowadays. ;)
 
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Nothing is as fast as an internal drive. I suppose you could always go with a TB external drive for speed, but if you're going to spend the money on that, you may as well go for a larger SSD for the iMac. You're going to spend around $2K anyway, another $200 or $300 for a machine that's going to be around for while should be worth it. Also, don't forget about buying Apple Care +. A must nowadays. ;)

Except these extra $200 keep adding up! My original plan was the 21.5 inch for $1500 and now I'm thinking about $2200 haha
 

Rod


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Actually Rod it does support Fusion Drives, just does not at this stage change the formatting to the new option. It is estimated OS X.13.3 will do that.

And imho bit useless buying the 1TB Fusion drive as it comes with a 24GB Flash PCI-e storage. That is not sufficient to hold the operating system. Go with an SSD.
 
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Please note that fusion drives are not compatible with the new Apple File System.
 

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Please note that fusion drives are not compatible with the new Apple File System.

As of this moment; but will be in the future - as Harry pointed out in post #8.

Apple apparently discovered a fault/incompatibility, call it what you will, with APFS and Fusion Drives.

In the beta versions of macOS High Sierra, Fusion Drives were converted to APFS and it was in the testing phase that problems arose and those in the beta programme were advised to erase and reinstall from BU.

So APFS will not be offered to those with Fusion Drives when macOS High Sierra is launched this weekend, but will be in the future.

Ian
 

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