Refurb iMac advice please

[Matrix]

Afternoon


My wife does a lot of craft work using a very very old laptop which is about dead now .

She uses a cricut machine which runs it's own software app . She's toying with the idea buying a iMac refurb one to run this better on and for emails and a bit of bowering .

I'm not familiar with iMacs at all but she has looked at a couple but ones a quad core another a duel core is this still like the pc world where quad core runs a lot better?

Apple iMac Slim 21.5 Inch(2015)
1.60 GHz Intel Intel Core i5 processor
8GB LPDDR3 1866 MHz memory Intel HD Graphics 6000
256GB SSD
macOS Big Sur 11.1

And

Apple iMac Slim 21.5 Inch Quad Core i5 2.80 GHz (2015)
2.80 GHz Intel Core i5 processor
8GB LPDDR3 1866 MHz memory
Intel Iris Pro Graphics 6200
256GB Flash SSD
macOS Big Sur 11.1

Or something along those lines we've been looking at
Any advice would be most welcomed please

Thanks

 

[Matrix]

Apple are currently transitioning to their own CPUs. I wouldn’t even consider buying an Intel based one now.

Yeah my son has the M1 chip in his airbook . But she only needs it to run a few things nothing major hence looking at the intel based older ones

 

[Matrix]

The main reason I'd be looking solely to M1 is to ensure you were getting updates for longer.
How about looking at a used 8gb M1 Mini? Not sure what UK prices are, but here you can get them about £380 which seemed alright.

Thanks for your reply.

Problem is that would require a monitor and keyboard mouse etc and I've not found one to cheap to be honest . Not looking or wanting to spend to much on one as it's only needed for a few uses .

Thanks