Can I use my 27" 2010 iMac as my main monitor for M1 or M2 Mac Mini?

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Good morning to all,

I have a still well functioning 27" 2010 iMac running High Sierra that I inherited from my son that I've been using for the past few years. So far I've been very happy w/ it in spite of it "chugging" along since I don't do too much heavy lifting work in it (videos etc). For heavier work, I use a 2014 MBP Retina and use the iMac on Target mode. It seems that I need to start considering getting an M1 or M2 Mac Mini in the near future.

My question guys is, can I use my iMac as my main monitor in case I get a M1 or M2 Mac Mini? The reason behind it is more economics than anything else :)
 
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I do this using a Luna Display (https://astropad.com/product/lunadisplay/) The iMac is running High Sierra and I have the Luna secondary App set to launch at startup. When the Luna display is connected the keyboard and mouse that is connected to the iMac now controls my laptop.
Is the image quality razor sharp and how about lag.. does it feel as smooth as if you were using your IMAC as one bundle?

thanks
 
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I have not noticed any lag, I don't play games, so not sure how it will work for gaming. The display is just as sharp as it is natively on the iMac.

Another thing that is nice is that once the luna display is connected, I can use either the keyboard and trackpad on my MacBook Pro, or the keyboard and mouse on the iMac.
 
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Was more thinking of say streaming video, certain apps that you can have on a mac mini or imac that you then can't on an ipad like kodi.. You could use this for to cast across to ipad or even vice versa apps you can use on ipad but don't exist on mac app store..

So wondered if you'd streamed video across it?

As looks really good :)
 
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I never tried this before, but I just streamed a movie using Plex from my server and it streamed with no issues.
 
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Good morning to all,

I have a still well functioning 27" 2010 iMac running High Sierra that I inherited from my son that I've been using for the past few years. So far I've been very happy w/ it in spite of it "chugging" along since I don't do too much heavy lifting work in it (videos etc). For heavier work, I use a 2014 MBP Retina and use the iMac on Target mode. It seems that I need to start considering getting an M1 or M2 Mac Mini in the near future.

My question guys is, can I use my iMac as my main monitor in case I get a M1 or M2 Mac Mini? The reason behind it is more economics than anything else :)
Hi if the iMac is 24 and 27 inches, introduced in 2010, then it should have macOS High Sierra or earlier and must be connected using a mini-DisplayPort cable for target to work I believe with an m1 or m2
 
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Hi if the iMac is 24 and 27 inches, introduced in 2010, then it should have macOS High Sierra or earlier and must be connected using a mini-DisplayPort cable for target to work I believe with an m1 or m2

You may be able to do this with a usb-c to Mini Displayport cable, But I do not know if that will work.

According to Apple the Mac that you are using should be a 2019 or earlier which means Intel CPU's.

Here is the article from Apple https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204592
 
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At least one caveat if you decide to get an M2 silicon Mac (mini, or Mac book), DO NOT opt for the base 256 gigabyte storage. They are half as fast as any other 256 GB option Mac because with the M2 chip, they changed to using a single NAND chip, which means… well it’s like riding your bicycle using one pedal. The single SSD chip is half as fast compared to two running in tandem, much like two drives running in Raid 0. Adding external storage will do nothing to improve the performance of the internal. (It’s really the reason for the blistering speeds of Apple SSDs compared to anything you can add on.)

My results comparing an external 2-TB Samsung 990 Pro NVMe to the internal 2-TB SSD of my Studio.

ADM results50%.png
 
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