BUY The M2 Mac mini! (It's basically a $599 Mac Pro...)

in this box is something so extraordinary so revolutionary that you may not have had enough time to actually process how important this product actually is and I didn't have enough time to actually realize that until this thing landed on my desk because when I first heard of the announcement of the M2 Mac Mini I just had this initial thought of okay here is a new Mac Mini that they just swapped out the M1 for the M2 Chip in and they dropped it by a hundred dollars the old M1 Mac Mini was great this new M2 Mac Mini is going to be great it's kind of like a boring product okay let's move on but the more time that I've now had this Mac Mini uh the more time that it's been sitting here The more I've been using it the more I've been looking at that price point the more it's made me realize how important this computer actually is and how exciting such a boring ring product turned out to be because this M2 Mac Mini looks exactly the same as the M1 Mac Mini in fact this is actually the M1 Mac Mini my M2 Mac mini is still hooked up to my desktop I didn't want to unplug it to bring it over here so I was like I'll just use the M1 Mac Mini as a prop because it looks exactly the same so you even get the same usba ports the same two Thunderbolt ports the same HDMI port the same ethernet port um the only thing that's really changed here from a feature set besides the M2 Chip is that the new uh M2 Mac Mini now gets Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 so you're getting better connectivity for the Wi-Fi if you have a Wi-Fi 6E router you're going to get faster uh Wireless speeds and then the Bluetooth 5.3 might actually be a good thing for the Mac Mini because on my old M1 Mac Mini here this one that's right here uh I had some Bluetooth dropouts occasionally so I'm hoping that with the enhanced Bluetooth tooth that's going to be a thing of the past and obviously we're going to have to spend a lot more time with the M2 Mac Mini because that didn't start popping up on my older Mac Mini until I started using it for like a month or so so uh but this this new M2 Mac Mini has those upgrades in it it doesn't even get like the newer HDMI 2.1 Port which the M2 Pro Mac Mini has that that can drive an 8K display uh so it doesn't even have that so that's basically all the new stuff besides the M2 Chip now there's a surprise with this M2 Chip it's kind of not a surprise like you should probably should have been expecting this um but the M2 Chip in this Mac Mini if you're getting the base model which is the version I got you're going to get slower SSD speeds than what you even got on the base model M1 Mac Mini but unlike the M2 MacBook Air where that was like a big controversy I don't think that same logic applies here to the mini the reason why that was such a big controversy on the M2 MacBook Air was because Apple did a complete redesign for that product and then charged 200 more for lesser specs this time around Apple has kept the same exact design and they actually dropped the price of this by a hundred dollars so it's now 599 dollars so when you consider that and you're like okay they dropped the price by you know a hundred dollars and the SSD speeds lower it's not really a big deal right it's like okay well this is still like an incredible value and honestly if you're like really looking at it um for the price point the SSD drive in this Mac is still incredibly fast like 1500 read and write speeds is not slow it's not like you have like a spinning hard drive disk and there's even much slower SSD speeds on the market I frequently work with external drives that only hit around 1 000 reader write speed so this is still not a slow SSD drive if someone's telling you not to buy it based on the disk speed drive itself I think they're being foolish because just based on this price point alone you're not going to find a better computer for 599 dollars so listen I don't want to do like a whole Benchmark video on this because I feel like I kind of already did that when I did the M2 MacBook Pro specs and started doing all the benchmarks for that listen the M2 Chip inside of this is going to perform very similarly to the M2 MacBook Pro that had an active cooling system this M2 Mac Mini does too it has a fan inside of it that I don't think there's any chance that this thing is going to Thermal throttle or heat up because it's such a big enclosure it's got a dedicated fan in there so really the M2 Chip is going to run at Peak Performance inside of the Mac Mini but there is one thing I do want to point out with a benchmark I want to use it as an example for this video and that is if you take a look at these geekbench scores this is a 599 Mac Mini and this is a and apple still sells this a 599 Mac Pro yeah the 599 computer right here is faster than that six thousand dollar Mac Pro and that is true it is faster in CPU performance than that machine and what that translates to the everyday user is that in the Mac lineup at least on Apple silicon we are at a point where these benchmarks these speed tests for the average everyday user they don't matter they don't matter the M2 Chip um if you're opening up an app it's going to open that up like almost instantly uh you're not going to run into a lot of uh just general slowdowns or any slowdowns really when you're just doing general computing if you're browsing the web in Safari or on Chrome uh if you're doing any sort of word processing if you're you know doing spreadsheets uh you know doing presentations in keynote or PowerPoint all the basic computer tests uh taking notes all that basic stuff right it doesn't matter on this machine don't think about performance if it's going to get the job done no matter what it's gonna get the job done we are beyond that point and this is an entry level computer we are beyond that point uh what you really need to ask yourself is do you do anything that goes beyond the basic uh do you to Video Edit do you do any development do you code do you um do any you know photography editing and that's where maybe you'll start to Value more speed and more power with this base level model it can kind of do a lot of those things it can definitely Video Edit I don't know about 3D modeling I have no experience with that it can definitely Video Edit though and really this represents to me one of the best values uh if you are a creative if you are doing something that does require that processing power which used to be a pretty big kind of hurdle to overcome I remember when I first started doing uh YouTube videos on this channel I went out and bought a 2013 21-inch iMac and I'm gonna be honest with you like there was times where that computer was so slow at doing things uh I would just kind of have to like walk away from it and let it like process or or load something and I just wish that this option I paid thirteen hundred dollars for that iMac for a really slow experience I wish there was something like this M2 Mac Mini when I first started it would have made my life so much easier starting out I would have had to face so much less hurdles creatively that I could have just focused on my work I could have just left the technical hurdles behind and just really focus on the stuff that I wanted to make so even with the slower 256 gigabyte Drive even with just eight gigabytes of Base memory I was able to edit the video you're watching now I'm recording this in the future and I I did the Full Video Edit on this machine with very minor slowdowns very little hiccups now could I get my job done on this eight gigabyte machine yes would it be more pleasant to work with 16 gigabytes of memory or more storage space on the hard drive of course it would be and that's why I make the recommendation that you gotta spec this out based on your budget my recommendation to you if you're any sort of creative profession would be to spec this out to 16 gigabytes of memory my advice to you would be to get a hard drive that's bigger than 256 gigabytes especially if you're not working with external drives because those are going to fill up really quickly and that's kind of the thing right like you can spec this out to be a very competent creative machine you can go up to 24 gigabytes of memory you can get a two terabyte hard drive in here but if you're watching this video and going my budget doesn't allow that let's just say that you're going my budget doesn't allow that maybe you walk into the Apple Store you only got six hundred dollars to spend hey maybe you're a student you only got 500 to spend and you just came back from watching this video and you said you know what Greg said if you can get 16 gigabytes of memory get it if you can get a 512 gigabyte hard drive get it but you just can't it doesn't matter this at 5.99 is going to be the best possible computer you can buy am I making the advice that creative professionals get these higher end specs yes but it doesn't matter if you can't get it because this is still the best option you're not going to walk in to buy like a desktop PC and then expect like similar performance you're not going to walk in and buy like an older uh Intel like mac that has like 16 gigabytes of memory and expect better performance it's not gonna happen I I don't think it's gonna happen at least maybe you could prove me wrong but this at 599 is really the best possible value in all of desktop Computing and that's what makes this thing so great it just enables all of that creativity and you really kind of don't have to worry about it if you can't afford those higher end tiers because this is gonna still be the best possible option now are there things I don't like about the Mac Mac Mini experience yes and this is coming from like a privilege area that I was pretty used to the Mac Studio so when I first went to set this up and it was telling me okay you got to plug in your keyboard and your trackpad well instinctively on my Mac Studio I would just plug that into the front USBC Port well the smack mini doesn't have a front usb-c Port so I had to reach in the back and use up one of the very limited uh two Thunderbolt ports to plug my keyboard and mouse into this and then uh other things like when I went to go import footage into this well I had to use some sort of dongle or adapter there was no SD card slot on the front so there are things I would change with this Mac Mini design that I think would make it a better computer that I think wouldn't be too expensive for Apple to add like ports on the front like they did with the Mac Studio that was actually a really good move but if you're asking me is there a better value in Computing out there right now that's going to be the best performance possible at the cheapest price point possible it doesn't exist this is it this is it and this is just really such an amazing computer it's better than a six thousand dollar Mac Pro and that's kind of insane to think about so yes the M2 mag mini is in fact insane and it's just a really good computer I cannot recommend it highly enough this is it's a great computer if if you can make this work for you you don't need to be portable if you work at a desktop just buy it

Channel: GregsGadgets

Views: 96,351

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Id: PXHxY2i9w9Y

Length: 11min 48sec (708 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 25 2023