Apple Mac mini with M1 review | Laptop Mag
Our Verdict
With Apple's new M1 chip, the humble Mac mini takes a massive performance leap and transforms from an entry-level Mac to a powerhouse at an even more affordable price.
For
- Outstanding performance
- Great value
- Wi-Fi vi
- Energy efficiency
- No heating bug
Against
- Fewer ports than the predecessor
- Horrible speakers
- Long-term upgradability concerns
Laptop Mag Verdict
With Apple'south new M1 chip, the apprehensive Mac mini takes a massive performance leap and transforms from an entry-level Mac to a powerhouse at an even more affordable price.
Pros
- +
Outstanding operation
- +
Bully value
- +
Wi-Fi 6
- +
Free energy efficiency
- +
No heating issues
Cons
- -
Fewer ports than the predecessor
- -
Horrible speakers
- -
Long-term upgradability concerns
The Mac mini has always been Apple'due south nigh modest and consistent computer both in function and form. Since the PowerPC era, information technology has remained a single slab of metal that's reasonably specced to offering you a seamless and vanilla Mac experience at an accessible price -- away from the controversies and limelight shared by the company'due south Touchbar-equipped MacBooks and Pro desktop computers.
With its latest iteration, yet, the Mac mini is stepping into the spotlight. It's one of the three Mac models and the only Mac desktop beingness upgraded with Apple's showtime, in-house silicon. Apple tree'south new Arm-based M1 chip promises unprecedented performance gains for the Mac mini, which now starts at $700, which is $100 cheaper than its predecessors. And I'm glad to study the M1 Mac mini does evangelize -- in spades.
Here's what we think about the Mac mini after putting the base model (8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) through its paces for three weeks.
Blueprint and build
From the outside, you'd be hard-pressed to tell the new M1 Mac mini autonomously from its Intel counterpart — if it weren't for the lighter argent pigment job. Apple oddly returned to the classic color option instead of the matte black shade found on the 2022 model. Personally, I prefer the stealthy black option since it does a better job of hiding the Mac mini, which itself doesn't take a lot of space on your desk-bound.
Other than that, the Mac mini inherits the same clean and familiar aluminum unibody exterior with the Apple tree logo etched on the top center and a power condition light on the front. While this plainly and minimal pattern may appear outdated, it's ideal for a miniature auto like the Mac mini that'due south meant to function backside the scenes on your desk. Similar to previous generations, it has a protruded bottom that raises it ever so slightly for better ventilation.
Some other minor alteration Apple made is apparent equally soon as you have the new Mac mini out of its box: information technology's 0.3 pounds lighter. Equally teardowns revealed, that weight loss is the result of a more than closely packed SoC, which we'll get to in more detail subsequently.
Connectivity and ports
Ane of the areas where Apple tree cutting corners to bring downwards the cost is the port selection. Although all of the inputs are neatly clustered at the back on a black plastic strip, as they were before, the M1 Mac mini loses a handful of ports that were available on its two-year-old Intel sibling.
For starters, the new Mac mini has simply two Thunderbolt iii USB-C slots, compared to the Intel version'due south four. On top of that, information technology supports a maximum of two external screens -- the Intel Mac mini can handle iii -- and merely i of them can be hooked via Thunderbolt. It'south also not configurable to 10GB Ethernet, which ways network speeds will summit out at 1GBps. Other than that, you'll find a pair of USB-A ports, an HDMI input, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
For most buyers, these changes won't exist deal-breakers but they're still worth keeping in mind especially if y'all intend to use your Mac mini for the adjacent four or five years.
On the plus side, the M1 Mac mini'southward wireless connectivity is of the highest quality, courtesy of the latest Wi-Fi 6 technology. Bluetooth performance has been flawless as well and I was able to work with three Bluetooth-enabled devices (headphones, keyboard, and mouse) at the same time.
My only complaint is the placement of the audio jack. The Mac mini, as you may know, doesn't have a microphone. I regularly plug in a wired pair of earphones while working from domicile because I find them the almost reliable for video and voice calls. Unfortunately, as the audio port is situated on the dorsum, I have to run the earphones' wire to the rear, which can often create desk-bound clutter. So even though I similar the Mac mini's minimalistic look, I exercise wish Apple had fitted the audio jack and perhaps an extra USB port on the front end.
Speakers
The speakers are the second major compromise Apple made to bring down the price. There's no way around it: the Mac mini'southward built-in speakers are tiny, shallow, and downright embarrassing for a 2022 computer. Even for coincidental YouTube playback, I institute myself casting the output to my Google Home instead of using the built-in speakers. If you often play music on your estimator's speakers, you'll have to invest in an external pair.
Hardware
Most of the new Mac mini's upgrades are on the within. The cornerstone of this refresh is Apple's new M1 chip, which is based on the same compages that powers an iPhone or iPad. That might sound like a step-down but the M1 SoC is annihilation merely.
For starters, the M1 processor houses an eight-core CPU (even on the base model) with 4 performance cores and iv configured for efficiency. It'southward paired with an eight-core integrated GPU and, unlike the MacBook Air, the Mac mini can fire all eight of those cores if needed. There's also a 16-core Neural Engine dedicated to machine learning tasks.
The signs of a starting time-gen release are first clear when you scroll down to the memory section. You only have two options for now: 8GB and 16GB (the 2022 Mini tin be outfitted with 64GB), equally Apple tree looks to test the waters before offering more powerful specs with the M1 chip. The born SSD is configurable upward to 2TB.
Another first-gen downside: the new Mac mini doesn't support external GPUs. Therefore, down the line, if your workflow demands more graphical horsepower, you'll be out of luck.
A cardinal highlight of the M1 SoC is how Apple tree has engineered the memory. Its "unified memory" structure places a single pool of RAM on the same substrate as the CPU and GPU. In layman's terms, this means that the CPU and GPU accept faster access to the memory which potentially will lead to meliorate performance. In addition, the M1 chip can dynamically adjust memory portions for individual components. So for instance, if you are playing a game, the Mac mini tin channel the memory betwixt the CPU and GPU as needed --- as opposed to pre-assigning a specific portion of the RAM to each.
That'due south a lot of jargon merely the bottom line is that Apple fabricated a range of intelligent tweaks that enable more efficient processing to make sure you become the most out of the M1 scrap depending on what you are doing.
But because the RAM is now soldered on the SoC, you can't upgrade it yourself which raises serious long-term concerns. Therefore, if yous expect your work can easily hit the M1 Mac mini's performance ceiling in a few years, you probably should await elsewhere or at least invest in the top-end model.
Software
The new Mac mini has a dissimilar kind of processor that has more in common with your iPhone than its Intel counterpart. For nigh of the experience, you'll experience right at home if you're a Mac user just there are 2 fundamental changes: the Mac mini can now run iOS apps and any traditional, not-optimized Intel software goes through a transition layer before loading.
Called Rosetta 2, that transition layer is clever enough to automatically translate apps engineered for Intel chips for your M1-powered machine. You won't fifty-fifty notice information technology'southward there except for the offset time yous attempt to install an Intel-optimized app. Still, to striking the Mac mini's meridian-tier performance levels, y'all'll demand apps that are updated for the M1 chip, and thankfully, most of the leading ones like Google Chrome and Adobe Photoshop are already on board.
Apple besides allows you to pick between M1 and Intel versions of an app and then you can decide for yourself which ane works best for you. This comes in handy especially for apps that were just recently updated for the M1 chip. For case, the early M1 build of Google Chrome had a fatal image processing bug. And then I simply downloaded and used its Intel version instead.
Mobile apps on a desktop computer similar the Mac mini, on the other hand, are a hit and miss. Apple made tweaks to replicate bear upon gestures with a mouse and keyboard, but I accept yet to meet whatsoever iOS app that I would observe useful on my reckoner. Offline Netflix access is i decent example but sadly, nearly iOS developers (including Netflix) have yet to update their offerings for macOS.
Apart from that, the latest macOS Big Sur update takes a lot of visual cues from iOS and features bloated UI elements that seem more suited for a touchscreen than a mouse and keyboard. It does have a few days to get used to and even after that, in that location's a chance that, like me, you may not detect the new look all that appealing.
Performance and benchmarks
I will cutting to the chase: with the new M1 chip, the Mac mini takes a giant performance leap and punches well to a higher place its weight as well equally its price segment. Whether it's juggling betwixt dozens of Chrome tabs or editing 4K videos, the new Mac mini keeps up without breaking a sweat.
In my iii weeks of testing, I besides failed to trigger the Mac mini'south fan and the motorcar barely got warm -- even when I edited a five-minute-long 4K clip using Adobe Premiere Pro while streaming 3 UltraHD YouTube videos in the background.
What'south more, the M1 Mac mini is the first reckoner that lets me scan the web faster than my Chromebook. Web pages on Google Chrome and Safari load in a snap and thanks to the M1 optimizations, they do so without hogging the retention.
In benchmarks too, the Mac mini scores past its Intel rivals and predecessors.
At 1706 points, the Mac mini 2022 comfortably topped the Geekbench 5 unmarried-core charts -- well in a higher place the 2022 Mac mini, 24-cadre Mac Pro, and the 10-core iMac Pro with Intel Xeon chips. Even when it came to multi-core, the M1 Mac mini held its basis and outperformed the 16-inch MacBook Pro that has an 8-core Intel Cadre i9 processor.
When I ran Geekbench'south test through Rosetta, the 2022 Mac mini did accept a performance hit but even so, it was quicker than the 2022 Mac mini.
The 256GB SSD also lives up to Apple tree's claim that it's twice every bit fast as before and the figures speak for themselves. In the Blackmagic test, the Mac mini was astonishingly quick and reached about 2400MBps write and 2700MBps read speeds, blowing past the manufacture average that hangs somewhere around 1300-1400Mbps.
On the Apple tree silicon-friendly edition of Handbrake, the M1 Mac mini transcoded a 4K to 1080p in about eight minutes, twice as quick every bit the competition average. That timeframe rose to almost 13 minutes when nosotros launched Handbrake through Rosetta.
In Cinebench's rendering tests, the Mac mini retained the tiptop spot on the single-core leaderboard (1509) -- bested simply by Intel's latest i7 chipset and came in at an impressive seventh in multi-core (7741).
I was also pleasantly surprised past the M1 Mac mini's gaming performance as it managed to produce a respectable 40fps frame rate at high settings on Counter-Strike Global Offensive and Fortnite. As long every bit y'all stick to casual titles similar Among Us, the Mac mini volition do yous but fine, but for anything beyond that, yous will have to utilise a organization with a discrete GPU. For a more in-depth analysis, drop past our dedicated gaming review of the M1 Mac mini.
The M1 Mac mini tin also save you energy. While it demands the same 150-watt ability supply as the Intel model, Anandtech institute that it's upwardly to lx% more energy efficient.
Should you lot buy it?
The M1 Mac mini is a powerhouse of a compact calculator that blows most of its competition (including the Intel Mac mini) out of the water and will work well for just nearly anyone -- whether you want to upgrade your home office or are looking to build a acme-of-the-line home theatre setup. At a starting price of $699, it offers an unrivaled value and will last you for years to come.
Although the absence of upgradability options (for memory and eGPU) won't impact well-nigh buyers, people who heavily rely on professional creative tools may want to wait for a few months. Apple is rumored to release more than advanced M1 configurations adjacent twelvemonth.
Source: https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/apple-mac-mini-with-m1
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