We were expecting Apple this Tuesday, January 17 for the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M2 and M2 Pro chips, but the latter are also coming to the Mac mini, which is entitled to an update, while retaining the same design, but for a lower price.
Apple today unveiled the new Mac mini M2, with the M2 and M2 Pro chips. A more powerful sequel to the Mac mini M1 released at the end of 2020. Beyond a more powerful Mac, Apple’s main selling point is its selling price, with a computer that starts at 699 euros, to have a better value for money. It’s rather a good thing in the sense that the first version of this fixed computer was released at 799 euros. Especially since the economic context is tending towards a significant increase in the price of components and energy and consequently in the selling price of machines.
Even more power for the Mac mini
The interest of the machine always remains its concentrate of computing power in a compact format. Apple aims to offer with its new Mac mini “ accelerated performance, even more unified memory and advanced connectivity options “.
The M2 and M2 Pro chips have a CPU and GPU that scale from the various M1 chips. The manufacturer says it offers ” much higher memory bandwidth and a more powerful media engine “.
The Mac mini M2
The M2 chip has a CPU with eight cores (including four called ” high performance » and four said « energy efficient ”) as well as a 10-core GPU. The chip can go up to 24 GB of RAM and 100 GB / s of bandwidth. Also according to Apple, this would make Photoshop run 50% faster and video editing in Final Cut Pro more than 2.4 times faster than on the M1 version.
On the video stream side, the M2 chip makes it possible to “ Simultaneously play up to two streams of 8K ProRes 422 video at 30 fps, or up to 12 streams of 4K ProRes 422 video at 30 fps “.
The Mac mini M2 Pro
As for Apple’s high-end chip, available on this new Mac mini, it has a 12-core CPU (including eight called ” high performance » and four said « energy efficient ”) and a 19-core GPU. It offers up to 200 GB/s of bandwidth and 32 GB of RAM. Regarding the Neural Engine, Apple announces that it is ” 40% faster than that of M1 chip “. Also, with the M2 Pro chip, we “ can simultaneously play up to five streams of 8K ProRes 422 video at 30 fps, or up to 23 streams of 4K ProRes 422 video at 30 fps “.
From an overall performance perspective, the Mac mini M2 Pro is said to be up to 14 times faster than the Mac mini. with the fastest Intel processor » : in-game performance would be 15 times higher.
The other new features of the Mac mini M2
Among the novelties of this fixed computer, we note ” support for two displays on the M2 model, and up to three displays on the M2 Pro model. The latter supports an 8K display. On the connection side, it is different depending on the equipped chip, although on both models we find two USB-A ports, an HDMI port, a Gigabit Ethernet port (you can take an option to go up to 10 Gb / s ) as well as an audio jack. On the model with the M2, we are entitled to two Thunderbolt 4 ports and the model with the M2 Pro chip offers four Thunderbolt 4 ports.
The Mac mini M2 // Source: Apple
The Mac mini M2 Pro // Source: Apple
Finally, we are entitled to the arrival of Wi-Fi 6E, the latest wireless protocol standard: the manufacturer indicates a speed up to twice as fast as before. Also, we are entitled to Bluetooth 5.3. Note that the Mac mini M2 runs on macOS Ventura, the latest version of the Mac operating system.
Price and availability
Pre-orders are already open and the Mac mini M2 will be officially released this Tuesday, January 24. The Mac mini with the M2 chip will be sold from 699 euros, its M2 Pro version will be offered from 1,549 euros.
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