late 2013 21.5 iMac

Just wanted to ask what OS i should trying running on this, has 8gb of ram, 1tb, and a intel quad core.

i tried Monteray and it was unusably slow, so i tried Big Sur and thats not much better. Should i go even lower or am i missing something.

I planned on just keeping this on my workbench in the garage so i can have access to youtube videos when im working on stuff, maybe my email, iMessage, but thats about it. and being an all in one it doesn't take up much space. But even with Big Sur its so slow i can barley get web pages to load.

Thanks for any tips or insight!

Author: @tomohulk