M1 Mac mini long-term review | Would I buy it again? | Mark Ellis Reviews

i've rambled on endlessly about the m1 mac mini i've told you how amazing it is and where it fails but after six months of using it day in day out to run this business would i buy it again hello and welcome back to marketless reviews and thank you for subscribing if you have i'd also like to say a quick thank you to my latest patrons who are bsd junkie andrew craig and ben if you want to support this channel you're supporting it anyway by watching this video which is just the best thing ever but if you want to support it a bit more and get some additional content and get access to my awesome discord server just click the button in the description so why am i making another video about the m1 mac mini and more importantly why are you watching it it's for a few reasons really but there's two in particular that absolutely fascinate me the first one is the fact that the m1 mac mini i think is one of apple's most under the radar products you know your parents probably don't know what it is and it's this computer they make which really does sit behind the likes of the macbook pro the imac even the mac pro not many people know that the mac mini exists but the people that do know why it exists that's the key thing and i know how great it is and the awesome things you can do with it and since the m1 chip was put in there it's just got even better so it's always been this kind of under the radar cult product for apple and i love that i really like those sort of products the other thing that fascinates me about the m1 mac mini is that it's got a couple of massive i think show showstoppers which are a big issue for a great many people and they're they're a real real shame because they spoil what is an otherwise amazing amazing computer but anyway i've had mine now for six months and i think that's enough time to answer that perennial question which is if i could go back six months and if i knew back then what i know now about the m1 mac mini would i buy it again i thought i'd start this video just by quickly going through how i use my m1 mac mini i keep pointing over here because that's where it is it used to be sat on this desk in front of me that's not the case anymore i now have this m1 imac in front of me which is a superb computer i will leave a link above to the review i did of that but this is all about the m1 mac mini today and it is basically now because i have the imac which is now my everyday computing task mac the m1 mac mini fulfills the role of video editing and audio editing station and that's pretty much all it does i don't really do any other type of work on it i edit these videos and actually every video i've edited and published since january when i took delivery of the m1 mac mini has been produced on that computer as you can see it is still coupled with this huge 34 inch widescreen monitor which i absolutely love it's got an mx master 3 attached to it as well and a very very good iquinix f96 mechanical keyboard which i massively recommend i'll leave links to all those things in the description so you can check them out but it's just become this awesome little video editing station and more importantly that mac mini has replaced the 16-inch macbook pro that i had specked up quite highly back in 2019 i think when i first bought it the mac mini has just replaced that laptop completely that laptop has been sold it's gone and this computer does everything that laptop did at a third of the price and without all of the heat and the fan noise it's just unbelievable the only thing i've noticed recently which is definitely worth mentioning is the fact that i'm now filming this video and the last few videos actually on a sony fx3 unlike the camera i had before which was the sony a7s2 it produces 10-bit color footage and it's recorded in four to two i won't get into all the boring details because if you're not a video person they will be boring stuff is to say the footage i'm working with is a bit it's a bit better than the footage before it's got more detail and that and that kind of stuff now since i've switched to this camera the only thing i've noticed with the m1 mac mini in terms of performance is there it's slightly a little bit glitchier in final cut pro occasionally not very often but occasionally i will see a frame drop possibly where you get the basically final cut can't keep up with what you're doing and you it drops frames and you get a message telling you that it's dropped frames it's an indication really that the application is struggling to do everything at the same speed you are basically and occasionally it will just lag behind slightly if i put a cut somewhere it will actually put it somewhere else these things are quite rare but it's been enough to notice it above and beyond what was happening before with my old camera but regardless of any of that it still performs incredibly and when i just think how much i spent on that i mean it cost me i think about 1200 pounds in total in the uk and those little glitches aside it just storms through pretty much anything i throw at it so in terms of the things i love about the m1 mac mini the first thing is the price and it remains i think the most cost effective way to get into the mac os ecosystem if you're going to buy a brand new mac even adding a monitor keyboard mouse etc you're still not really going to get anywhere near the cost of a imac for example if you buy the base level mac mini if you get the 8 gig version it's just it's so affordable and it's just very very cost effective i even think the design is fairly timeless it doesn't really look like a computer it's a classic apple thing where they've designed this kind of desktop machine that doesn't look like any desktop computer you can think of from the past it's this kind of slab of aluminium it slots anywhere and it always looks good as well no frills it's typical apple really it's just some aluminium the apple logo on the top nothing really on the front apart from a little led that's a lot but i personally i quite like that but it's the power of that m1 chip that makes this mac mini this version of the mac mini such an amazing buy it's only got 16 gig of ram which just doesn't seem to matter and i know i mentioned those final cut glitches earlier but as i mentioned as well it's not something that stops me from getting work done it's just one of those slight annoyances occasionally most impressively i've never heard the fan come on the m1 mac mini at the moment is sandwiched between the desk on top of the mac mini itself it's got an agb tech hub which i use for the extra usb ports usb c ports i'll come on to that in a moment and above that i've got a stand that the monitor fits on and as you can see there's just virtually no gaps whatsoever so in terms of looking after it when it comes to keeping the the heat dissipation effective i'm not doing that at all i've pretty much left it sandwiched between lots of other things and just hoped it doesn't overheat and you know what it never overheats i've never had any kind of warning from it i've never heard the fan come on ever it just doesn't seem to which again indicates just how thermally efficient that m1 chip is and also how well it slots into that device and into that chassis clearly the mac mini is perfectly designed for the m1 chip so the m1 mac mini is without a doubt the most impressive headless and by that i mean without a monitor desktop computer i've ever owned it's the m1 chip it's the timeless design and it's the price it makes it a bit of a no-brainer for a lot of people but there are some problems so what don't i love about the m1 mac mini well i think there's two showstoppers which one of which or both of which potentially could prevent you from buying it the first one is the bluetooth issue now i talked about this several months ago when i first got it and i was experiencing issues connecting apple gear so things like you know the magic trackpad the magic keyboard and also third-party stuff like the mx master iii i was having trouble maintaining a consistent bluetooth connection between those devices and the m1 mac mini i looked into it and lo and behold loads of people were experiencing the same thing and also they were experiencing it with the previous generation intel mac mini as well there seems to be an inherent issue with bluetooth and that mac mini design now for some people this will make no difference to anything at all indeed i still have people that get in touch with me on the channel on my blog and say look i know you've had issues with bluetooth i haven't i'm using the same gear as you and it works flawlessly but by the same token and even to this day i still have people telling me that they're having horrendous problems with the bluetooth issues on the m1 mac mini it's a big deal it's a really big problem and if you experience it it makes the device virtually unusable so for instance with the mx master mouse which is a brilliant mouse by the way if i try and connect that via bluetooth to the m1 mac mini it's unusable it stutters across the screen it's just useless instead of using the bluetooth connection i used logitech's own little dongle thing they give you which it uses its own kind of wireless protocol to connect to the mouse that improved but it was still not great it still jittered a bit and it just wasn't great so i went hunting on the internet to see if there's any kind of solution for this and someone recommended that i attach the logitech bluetooth dongle to an extension usb cable and leave it dangling as far away from the mac mini as possible that worked but you shouldn't have to do that that's just a ridiculous stupid way around this and what bothers me about this is that it doesn't seem to just affect third-party hardware it seems to affect apple's own stuff as well so for example i cannot use my airpods pro on that mac mini reliably at all they're they'll drop connection they won't connect in the first place they do weird things it's just doesn't seem to work same thing with the airpods max there's something very strange going on and i'm fairly convinced it seems to affect bluetooth in the whole of this studio and this okay granted this is quite a small room and i have a lot of devices in here with bluetooth connections i'm sure that mac mini is affecting it because when it's turned off everything works perfectly when it's turned on occasionally the imac won't connect to my earpods properly bluetooth keyboard that i'm using may not maintain that consistent connection and the most frustrating thing is it is like i said earlier it seems to be an intermittent thing it doesn't seem to be a consistent problem some people with similar setups to mine have no issues whereas others who have similar setups as mine or different setups entirely have horrendous problems so i genuinely don't know if you'll experience the same issues it might have something to do with the room that i'm in the house i'm i mean at the moment interference from other stuff who knows all i know is that the bluetooth issues on the m1 mac mini they're there they're 100 happening and it spoils an awesome computer the second show stopper again not for everyone but for several people will be the lack of ports and i know you can add more ports to the m1 mac mini but by default apple gives you two usb a and two usbc and obviously you also get the hdmi for your monitor and ethernet for your hub if that's the way that you connect to the internet but it's the usb side of things that's frustrating you also don't get an sd card slot i know we haven't had one of those in the mac mini for quite a while but i'd quite like it i'm sure lots of other creators would as well but for me it's the lack of usb ports that is more annoying really the fact that there's only two and like i mentioned earlier because of the bluetooth problem i have to use one of those for the logitech dongle for the mouse i'm left with one usb port it's just not enough you know i have multiple things i need to connect to that i have a usb dac webcam i have a backup drive as well that's usba i also have a compact flash dongle that i need to plug in every now and again to get images off my camera it's just a pain in the backside and as i mentioned earlier you can fix this by adding a traditional hub or if you use one of these stand hubs which are fantastic actually i'll leave a link above to my comparison between the agp tech hub and the satechi version of that but service to say it's a great way of maximizing number of reports on your m1 mac mini but for someone like me who likes something just to come out of the box and have as much connectivity on it as possible it's just annoying it's more expense it's more mess it's more cable and the annoying thing with this showstopper if we can call it that is the fact that apple is so tight-lipped about why there aren't many ports on the m1 mac mini it's the same thing on the m1 macbook pro you only get two ports on it and the theory is that the m1 chip at the moment cannot sustain any more than that it can't offer you any more connectivity that's fine if that's the case but because apple is so annoyingly tight-lipped about this stuff we just have to assume that's the case it's just annoying so would i buy the m1 mac mini again after six months yeah i really would i think the fact that i've lived with those two showstoppers for six months and although they annoy me immensely i think that speaks volumes about how good that m1 mac mini is i'd imagine it's a little bit like that annoying little brother who really irritates you at times but with whom you have the best laugh in your back garden playing football even if he occasionally hand balls and chops you down with a two-footed tackle for no reason whatsoever you have the best time with him that mac mini outperforms pretty much every other device i have in the studio constantly it never sweats it slots easily onto that desk it works relentlessly if like me you can look past those show stoppers they may not even affect you but if you can look past them it's such a good buy so the answer is yes i would 100 buy that again i just hope that the next version of it has those issues fixed i hope we get more ports i hope the bluetooth thing is sorted out and i hope they maintain the pricing i think the pricing for the m1 mac mini is just it's crowning glory really for what you get for your money and in terms of the next version of it i don't think we'll see anything until 2022 at the earliest apple is unfortunately not great at keeping the mac mini updated maybe that'll be different now they're using their own chips who knows but that does mean that it's still a great buy now and it will be for the rest of this year so if you're on the fence about buying the m1 mac mini trust me you cannot get a more affordable capable mac than that computer now if the m1 mac mini isn't quite for you and you're looking for something a bit more portable keep watching for a link to a video i think you'll find very interesting where i compare the m1 macbook air against the ipad pro but until next time thank you as always for watching i'll catch you in the next video

Channel: Mark Ellis Reviews

Views: 90,700

Rating: 4.8923535 out of 5

Keywords: Mark Ellis Reviews, Mark Ellis, m1 mac mini review, m1 mac mini, m1 mac mini video editing, mac mini m1, m1 mac mini long term review, mac mini, apple m1 mac mini, m1 mac mini 2020, mac mini m1 review, should you buy the m1 mac mini, m1 mac mini 8gb ram, m1 mac mini work from home, m1 mac, should i buy the 8gb or the 16gb m1 mac mini, m1 mac mini unboxing, m1 mac mini 16gb ram, gaming on m1 mac mini, m1 mac mini 2021, m1 mac mini vs macbook air, m1 mac mini performance

Id: 1qFH5nNMYcI

Length: 13min 29sec (809 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 20 2021