24" iMac vs M1 Mac mini: not as easy as it seems…

there's been quite a bit of debate about these two guys i haven't actually weighed in i realized on the discussion imac with the m1 chip versus mac mini with the m1 chip it may be a case of the same exact thing in two different shapes but there's actually quite a bit to consider so to answer the outpouring of comments tweets and emails that i have received about this question in today's video we are going to talk about which you should buy an imac or a mac mini it's not as straightforward as it might seem [Music] whether you're working on a mac mini build or picking out an imac color you should make sure to keep your digital life protected with today's video sponsored total av total av is an award-winning antivirus and malware detection service with advanced protection from online hackers and scams as well as phishing attempts on websites and in pesky emails if you're like me then there's a good chance that your digital life is cross-platform i use a windows pc at home almost every day 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unnecessarily fired up defending or attacking both of these setups and frankly i don't understand why the thing that you have to realize about apple and i'm saying this right at the beginning of the video before i've even told you any of the pros and cons of either of these the thing about apple is that they never make a product that directly overlaps apple doesn't make two different products for the same category that's just not how it works so when they make a desktop they make a specific desktop that works in this category and they make a specific desktop that works in this category even though they have the same internals mostly there are very different use cases for these two products and today that's what we're going to talk about so i won't beat around the bush here the imac excels at being a convenient overall package whereas the mac mini excels at being versatile and adaptable that's basically all there is to it but that's not very good for boosting my engagement and watch time so i'm gonna tell you more but if that's all you needed to hear then leave a like down below don't forget to subscribe and thank you so much for watching i'm just kidding not about the subscribe part but there is actually quite a bit to talk about when you're making a decision between these two so if you are torn then hopefully you're in the right place so the thing that i keep seeing that really confuses me is people saying that the m1 imac is overpriced that's just utter nonsense okay it doesn't make sense for one it's the exact same starting price as the m1 macbook pro so it's literally no more expensive than a normal m1 machine and for two you get a lot with this package i mean you're not just paying for the m1 chip wrapped in a pretty shell you're also getting a four and a half k display a 1080p webcam with great image signal processor as well as fantastic microphones built-in speakers that sound really really good which also have spatial audio you're also getting a mouse and keyboard and you're getting all of this in a package that's thinner than a usb port and then people on twitter will counter oh but the mac mini is seven hundred dollars and it has the full fat m1 chip but the m1 imac doesn't even have the eight core gpu okay yeah but you know what else the mac mini doesn't have a screen and that's before we even talk about how that looks on your desk because if you want to set up an imac here's what you got to do you pull out the power cord you put the imac on a desk you plug it in and that's it that that's all you have to do if you wanted to set up the mac mini there's quite a bit more involved first you got to get your mac mini and plug that in then you got to get your monitor plug that in then plug the monitor into the mac mini then you got to put your mouse and your keyboard down so that you can actually type and use the thing and then put your speakers on the desk so you can actually listen to enjoyable audio and of course who could forget the panasonic gh5 for your video calls in a sennheiser mke 416 for audio okay maybe that last part is a bit of an exaggeration but the point is it's nowhere near as clean as this imac setup plus you get the accent colors that match the color of the imac so how about that but i hear you say the whole point of the mac mini is that you can customize it you can pair it with whatever monitor you want and to that i say yes you're absolutely correct what if i didn't want a 24 inch display it is a little small after all what if i didn't want white bezels some people really really passionately hate those well that's why the mac mini is there i've got it paired with a 27 inch display it's not 4k it's 2560x1440 but it's a bigger display than that i'll tell you that much and from my time using the m1 imac as my primary video editing device the biggest limitation that i had with it was the size of the display i've really gotten used to using my 27 inch imac pro before that i had a 2019 core i9 27 inch imac and before that i had a 2015 27 inch imac so i have really gotten used to these retina 5k 27 inch displays so going down to 24 is a bit of a it's a bit of a different experience and that's just the tip of the iceberg what if you want better speakers the imac speakers sound very good but they're not as good as a legit pair of high bass high fidelity speakers that you could put on your desk the mac mini lets you do that very easily what if you also really hate this which comes with the imac which means you're paying for it but with the mac mini you don't have to pay for it which means that you can add something else like a trackball a lot of people really like these trackballs but i will say if you do decide to do that and really kit out your mac mini it is very quickly going to be more expensive than the imac and i think it's worth keeping that in mind a lot of the people who have said that you can really customize the mac mini seem to be implying that you could do a whole lot more for the same amount but that's definitely not the case but one thing that can't be overstated enough is how compact and clean and tidy the imac is i mean even if you could match the package and even get a larger display for the same amount of money with the mac mini there is no way to get around the fact that you're gonna have a plug for the mini a plug for the monitor a plug for the speakers you're gonna have a wire connecting the speakers to the mini as well as the speakers to each other you're gonna have an hdmi cord or i guess you could probably get a thunderbolt monitor but either way you're gonna have a wire connecting the mac mini to the display that it's connected to and it you're just gonna have a lot more wires that need to be managed or they have to just get left there and look really ugly that is not something that you have to worry about with the imac but on the other hand the imac only has two ports so if you're like me and you need something like an external storage drive which i have for my video editing it used up half the ports right away and if you did want to add additional speakers instead of the internal ones the headphone jack is on the side which means that it looks really ugly when you plug in another pair of speakers the mac mini doesn't have that problem because all of the ports are on the back of the device and you can even put it underneath your desk because it you know it doesn't need to be there if you don't want it there and you also get a lot more ports you get two usb a you get hdmi you get ethernet without having to pay extra for it like you do on the imac it's it's a very very versatile situation although for reasons unbeknownst to me neither of these have an sd card slot why i don't get it the old mac mini head sd card slot why does the i don't get it i can't even form a complete sentence here because it just falls apart based on my dumbfoundedness at the lack of sd card slot on either of these two devices what the heck oh wakey wakey there is one other thing that's worth talking about when you're comparing the base mac mini to the base imac we have to take into account the fact that they are slightly different implementations of the m1 chip the imac has the 7 core gpu and a single fan design the mac mini has the full fat m1 with the 8 core gpu and also a single fan but it's a better fan so it does perform a good amount better not maybe not a good amount but a noticeable amount better in something like cinebench you can see that this higher bend processor is able to hold its clock speeds for longer because it scores pretty noticeably better and also in graphics based tasks you can definitely see the difference of that extra gpu core so for example in tomb raider well you get an extra 2fps it's not exactly playable but it illustrates the difference pretty well similarly in blender in both the classroom and bmw render you can see the mac mini does outperform the imac and it's also worth noting that there is a new apple silicon optimized version of blender that's coming out for both of these that should make them proportionately faster so even though yeah the imac is a little bit slower in pretty much every way that's not to say that it's a slouch so if you couldn't tell already this video has been essentially a back and forth of the pros and cons and the reason that i structured it like that is because almost every single attribute of both of these products has a direct counterpoint in the other one so if you really like the display being built in you've got the imac but if you don't like this display you've got the mac mini if you like having a lot of expandability you've got the mac mini but if you don't want a ton of wires you've got the imac it's a perfect yin and yang situation here they fit together perfectly in apple's lineup and i think it's really amusing to see people being so heated in their comparison when really what they're looking at are two almost polar opposite yet complementary products i have an example of this that is so perfect that i literally couldn't even script it if i tried to i put out two polls asking basically the same question which is better an m1 imac or an m1 mac mini on twitter with 1 385 votes as of this recording 58 of you guys said the imac and 42 percent said the mac mini on youtube which did get more votes 2900 as of the time of this filming 42 percent said the m1 imac and 58 said the m1 mac mini you guys they are completely perfectly inverted that is crazy now granted there were some slight differences in the wording there i meant for them to be pretty much the same but i didn't copy and paste so you could make the argument that wording had some effect there's also a different sample size but how crazy is it that they were exactly to the percentage inverted results i think that's a really great illustration of how complementary and how similar yet different these two devices are and there's a lot more points than what i could just come up with off the top of my head here's someone who said mac mini makes more sense to me because i like to resell computers frequently but if i needed a monitor i'd skip to the end and buy the imac so if you already have a really good monitor like i don't know some people have a pro display xdr that they use with a mac mini you could have the monitor and just swap out the mac mini every couple of years to upgrade it i mean you could build a whole mac mini setup that would granted be more expensive than this imac but then you'd be ready to go when the apple silicon mac pro comes out and you're saying oh time to get my hands on these 40 cores and you would just swap it out without having to also get rid of your keyboard and mouse and display and speakers and camera and microphone and on the other side here's someone that says the m1 imac already has everything included and you'd be hard-pressed to buy all of the same quality individual components that are included at the same price again it's a really good point the imac doesn't just have everything included but everything that is included matches and goes together and is really really top-notch quality so to answer the question which of these is better you can't ask me you have to ask you because it's really your preferences which determine which of these are better suited that is if you're looking for a desktop if you're shopping for a macbook well then you probably just watched this video because you thought it would be interesting and hopefully it was if what matters most to you is versatility then the mac mini is a really great option but if you're looking for a convenient overall package that is super clean and minimal the imac is phenomenal and that's basically what i said at the start of the video so maybe you didn't need to watch it this whole time oh my god well if you stuck around i hope it was enjoyable and if it was make sure to like comment and subscribe and with that i will see you guys in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Luke Miani

Views: 309,837

Keywords: imac, Mac mini, m1 imac, m1 Mac mini, m1, m1 comparison, iMac vs Mac mini, iMac 24 inch, 2021 imac, new imac, Mac mini vs imac, comparison, review, m1 review, m1 vs m1, m1 iMac vs m1 Mac mini, linus tech tips imac

Id: gLUUlAU85Wc

Length: 15min 29sec (929 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 19 2021