A little over two years ago, Apple began migrating from Intel CPUs to its own chips, starting something of a performance-per-watt revolution. Their own SoCs also ensured that you could pack even more power into even smaller hardware and suddenly not only the laptops but also the Mac mini were more powerful than ever. With the M2, the new generation of chips has been presented since the WWDC and is now also available as a Pro and Max version. In the course of this, the Mac mini also received the M2 and M2 Pro and I was able to test the version with the M2 Pro for a while.
If you are interested in the device and have bought it, you will receive a small box containing only the Mac mini, a power cable (not covered in fabric), Apple stickers and some paperwork. Externally, nothing has changed with the Mini for many years: it’s still the same old square basic shape made of aluminum and some plastic. Apple could come up with something. You could, for example, make the good piece smaller, because the innards have more than enough space there. It could also be a little more port selection on the front. Apple could provide at least one USB-C port and/or a USB-A port. Instead, you will only find a power LED there.
There are a lot of connections on the back made of plastic. There the company from Cupertino placed the power button on the corner. Next to it is a power connection, the 10 Gbit network port, four Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI 2.1 port, two USB-A ports and a headphone jack. The variant I have has the M2 Pro with a 12-core CPU and a 19-core GPU, with 16 GB of RAM (unified – i.e. used by CPU and GPU) and 1 TB SSD in the stomach. That should be enough for several years, unless you’re blasting multiple 8K streams with filters and effects in Final Cut Pro day after day. However, the version here would also like to be paid for, direct from Apple that would be 2,124 euros.
You get a lot for it in the Windows segment. The entry-level model with the M2 (without the Pro), 8 GB of RAM and a 256 GB SSD costs 699 euros. That’s affordable. But you have to consider that with a view to the future, you should definitely take the upgrade to 16 GB RAM with you, which alone costs 230 euros and doesn’t make the whole thing look that attractive anymore – classic Apple pricing.
But let’s stay with the little guy here, because the form factor coupled with the performance is certainly an argument for many people not to reach for the large tower. And in its category, the Mini certainly cuts a fine figure against the majority of the NUCs. Attention: When choosing the Mini, you should also make sure that the 256 GB version comes with a slower SSD. Here you will only be able to fall back on more speed with the 512 GB version. The average Joe will probably not notice too much of it. However, it becomes noticeable if you deal with large files a lot.
The Mac mini is connected quickly. With HDMI 2.1 you can run an 8K monitor or a 4K monitor at 240 Hz. Or you have a maximum of three monitors with 4K and 60 Hz in use. Since you also have enough TB4 connections available and today’s screens have their own ports, you might get by without an additional hub. As already described above, the headphone connection could easily have been moved to the front with other connections or an SD card reader. The Mac Studio is a bit ahead of the Mini in this respect.
What about the performance of the Mac mini? In everyday life you will quickly find that the little guy cleans up everything that is thrown at him. The fan is, so to speak, non-existent. Even under load, the mini computer remains silent and is almost inaudible. It’s worth mentioning that while Apple has a few titles to play with, like No Man’s sky” or “Resident Evil Village” mentioned, but the box is still not for gaming. You already have so many GPU cores with you, but due to the focus on metal, the list of titles is still severely limited. So it’s nice that GeForce Now exists (here is my test of the 4080 tier).
For the fans of the synthetic benchmarks, I’ll leave you with a few numbers here:
cinebench
Geekbench
3D mark
Black Disk Speed Test
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Resolution 6016 x 3384 – Ultra High – Unplayable
Resolution 3840 x 2160 – Ultra High – 20 FPS goes like this
2560 x 1440 – Ultra High – 37 FPS playable
There are some excellent numbers (apart from “Tomb Raider”), but you’re not really putting down a lot of money either. However, if you invest it, you get an incredibly powerful little computer plastered onto your desk, which should give you years of reliable service. It is better to invest a little more in the beginning and have a computer for years that will reliably complete all tasks and will receive software updates just as reliably. In addition, he does most of the work quietly and doesn’t make much noise about more difficult tasks.
If, on top of that, you are still in the Apple cosmos when it comes to more demanding things, you can benefit from even more optimizations in photo processing, audio technology or video editing. If you only want to do a little office, internet, social media and arcade/lightweight gaming with the thing, you should rather look around for the M2 option. Or even better: Look for offers for the Mini with the M1 chip. You will certainly be able to hit one or the other bargain even in the better configuration and still have a decent amount of performance at hand, which should easily suffice for a bit of image processing or video editing.
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