M2 vs M2 Pro Mac mini: Is the Pro worth $700 more?

in early 2023 Apple updated the Mac Mini from the M1 chip to the M2 Chip and also introduced the option for an M2 Pro chip let's take a look at what the similarities and differences are between the two chip options and C with a 700 price premium actually gets you the M2 and M2 pro versions of the Mac Mini are essentially the same product with different internals and indeed Apple calls it the Mac Mini 2023 Edition on its technical specification support page let's start by examining some areas that are similar the design of the M2 and M2 Pro Mac minis are identical being a silver colored aluminum square that hasn't really changed in over 12 years unfortunately the space Gray colored Mac Mini that Apple released in 2018 is no longer an option with the Apple silicon chips the M2 Pro Mac Mini however is slightly heavier than the M2 Mac Mini coming in at 2.8 pounds versus 2.6 pounds whenever there's a weight difference like this due to a more powerful chip it's usually because of a different cooling system to combat the additional heat that will be generated both the M2 and M2 Pro Mac Mini support the same communication standards namely Wi-Fi 6E Bluetooth 5.3 and gigabit Ethernet for both models you can upgrade the ethernet to 10 gigabit for 100 extra when it comes to audio both M2 and M2 Pro Mac minis have a built-in speaker and can output audio over a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack including support for high impedance headphones or over HDMI with multi-channel audio output I've not seen any reports of the audio quality is any different between the M2 and M2 Pro Models and I wouldn't expect it to be if anyone actually uses the Mac mini speakers for anything other than basic notifications or Diagnostics while your ears are probably more sturdy than mine in terms of connectors and expansion slots there are a similar set of ports as well starting from the left we have the power button power connector ethernet port Thunderbolt 4 ports an HDMI port two USB a ports and a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack this is also where we see our first major difference the M2 Mac Mini only has two Thunderbolt 4 ports while the M2 pro has four however there is another hidden difference which is related to the display support the HDMI port on the M2 Mac Mini is only HDMI 2.0 while the M2 Pro Mag mini has an HDMI 2.1 Port that means it can support higher resolutions and refresh rates and is critical if you want to use a display with only HDMI input such as a 4K 120hz TV indeed if we check the display support specs we can see that the M2 Mac Mini's HDMI port only supports up to 4K resolution at 60 hertz while the M2 Pro Mac Mini can support up to 8K resolution at 60 hertz or 4K resolution at 240Hz I've made several videos testing the limits of the HDMI 2.1 support on the M2 Pro chips so be sure to check those out later if you haven't already besides just the HDMI port the total number of displays supported is also different the M2 Mac Mini can support only up to two displays while the M2 Pro can do three the two displays on the M2 are limited to one at up to 6K resolution at 60hz over Thunderbolt while the second is either up to 5K at 60 hertz over the other Thunderbolt port or 4K at 60hz over the HDMI 2.0 port the M2 Pro Mac Mini has a few different configuration options but all of them can only use two of the four Thunderbolt ports for displays with three displays you can use two of them on Thunderbolt for up to 6K at 60hz but that limits your HDMI display to only 4K at 60hz which is the same as the HDMI 2.0 bandwidth on the non-pro M2 version if you only use two total displays then the Thunderbolt one is still up to 6K at 60 hertz but the HDMI display can go up to 4K at 144hz finally if you only use the HDMI port 4 display that's when it can reach 8K at 60hz or 4K at 240 hertz so what you need to be aware of is that connecting displays over Thunderbolt on the M2 Pro Mac Mini will actually limit how much bandwidth the HDMI 2.1 Port can output so do be careful and figure out what resolutions and refresh rates you plan to use and see if they'll work before you buy an M2 Pro now let's look at the most obvious difference between the M2 and M2 Pro Mac minis the chip unsurprisingly one has the M2 Chip while the other has the M2 Pro chip and there are three major differences between these two chips to pay attention to first the M2 Chip has an 8 core CPU with 4 performance and four efficiency cores the M2 Pro chip adds on two additional performance cores for a 10 core CPU with 6 performance and 4 efficiency cores so while it's 25 more CPU cores in total it's actually 33 percent more performance scores which are the higher power ones however geekbench shows about a 25 increase in multi-core performance in their benchmarks so as usual the actual benefit you'll get depends on what applications you're using for single core the benchmark scores are the same whether an M2 or M2 Pro second the M2 Chip comes with a 10 core GPU while the M2 Pro comes with a 16 core GPU which is 60 more coarse this doesn't mean that you'll get 60 more performance but it's more like an upper bound guideline you'll probably have to dig for benchmarks of certain apps or games that you care about to see how performance scales with core count for these Apple silicon chips third the M2 Chip doesn't have any upgrade options while the M2 Pro chip can be upgraded from the 1016 base model to a 1219 configuration for 300 dollars that means 12 CPU cores 8 performance and 4 efficiency and 19 GPU cores is it worth the upgrade well you are getting 20 more CPU cores and 18.75 more GPU cores geekbench shows a multi-core performance Improvement of about 17 percent coming from the base M2 pro model price of 12.99 a 300 increase is 23 percent so from a value perspective it's not quite worth it unless you know you need the additional performance I'd skip it a similarity worth pointing out is that both M2 and M2 Pro chips have the media engine which supports Hardware accelerated video encoding and decoding in the previous M1 generation of chips the non-pro M1 did not have the full media engine which was an additional reason to upgrade to the pro version however in the M2 generation both M2 and M2 Pro chips have the media engine another difference that is worth pointing out though not worth much consideration is that memory bandwidth in the M2 Chip is 100 gigabytes per second while in the M2 prochip it's double the speed at 200 gigabytes per second there's not really much Point worrying about this as it's just an inherent feature of the M2 Pro chip instead we should look at real world performance to see how the chips do which may be more affected by CPU GPU or the amount of unified memory after all it's not like we can choose to buy an M2 Chip with 200 gigabytes per second of memory bandwidth or an M2 Pro with 100 gigabytes per second the base model M2 Mac Mini comes with 8 gigabytes of memory and can be upgraded to 16 gigabytes for 200 extra or 24 gigabytes for another 200 extra that means you pay 200 per 8 gigabytes of memory upgrade the M2 Pro Mac Mini comes with 16 gigabytes of memory already and you can pay 400 to upgrade to 32 gigabytes that memory cost is actually the same at 200 per 8 gigabytes in case you haven't realized paying 200 for eight gigabytes of memory is extremely expensive yes memory is one of the most useful upgrades if you don't have enough of it but it's also one of the most worthless upgrades if you do so you'll want to be careful and not get more than you need if you aren't sure how much you actually need I generally recommend buying the base model from a store with a good return policy and trying it out yourself if you find that it doesn't meet your needs then return it and go for something more expensive Apple themselves have great return policies if not a bit short at 14 days in the United States while other stores like Costco can give you up to 90 days the only upgrade I haven't mentioned yet is storage the M2 Mac Mini base model comes with 256 gigabytes of SSD storage while the M2 Pro comes with 512 gigabytes for the M2 model you can upgrade to 512 gigabytes one terabyte or two terabytes the cost of the upgrade seems to be the same at each level at first glance but remember that you're upgrading from 256 gigabytes not zero that means you're actually paying 200 for an extra 256 gigabytes at the first level which is actually 800 per terabyte upgrading to one terabyte means that you're paying 533 dollars per terabyte and the two terabyte option costs 457 dollars per terabyte if you thought unified memory was expensive these storage upgrades are quite ridiculous the M2 Pro Mac Mini is slightly better when it comes to pricing of storage from the base 512 gigabytes you can upgrade to one two four or eight terabytes again since we start from half a terabyte the storage upgrade costs per terabyte at each level are actually four hundred dollars four hundred dollars 343 dollars and 320 dollars even the first level upgrade here costs less per terabyte than the M2 Mac Mini but it's still really expensive especially since four terabyte SSD drives can be had for less than 250 dollars nowadays of course Drive speeds will be different but you should seriously consider whether you need a ton of storage at the super fast speeds of the internal ssds or if you just need storage I personally use a Nas or network attached storage to keep all my files so every computer and device can access them that also means I only need enough storage in each computer for the applications and temporary working files external drives can also work if you keep a computer on all the time as a file server and the efficient Mac Mini is a great candidate for that when it comes to drive speeds there is one more thing to be aware of the internal storage in both the M2 and M2 Pro Mac minis have varying speeds depending on the capacity essentially the smaller capacity drives use fewer storage chips which results in lower read and write speeds the 256 gigabyte Drive found in the base M2 Mac Mini only has one set of storage chips which results in about 1500 megabytes per second transfer speeds the 512 gigabyte Drive which is an upgrade option on the M2 and also the base for the M2 Pro Mac Mini has two storage chips so the speed is double at around 3000 megabytes per second going up to one terabyte doubles the speed again to about 6000 megabytes per second which is starting to reach the limit even higher capacities won't be substantially faster after one terabyte but should you care about these transfer speeds well it depends on two things one if you plan to do some intensive workloads where it will actually make a difference and two how much unified memory you get you see one of the ways low disk transfer speeds can cause slowdowns is when the available memory Runs Out causing the system to use a swap file on the SSD to switch things in and out of memory this is the reason that many advise getting 16 gigabytes of memory over 8 gigabytes in general and for most people however I don't think these transfer speeds should be a primary consideration instead the amount of storage you need should decide how big a drive you get if you're really concerned about these speed differences I'd suggest looking up some comparisons others have done for your productivity applications to see what the impact will be if any combined with my earlier advice on getting just enough for storage to run your applications and temporary working files I'd say both 256 gigabyte and 512 gigabyte base models are fine although 512 gigabytes is the sweet spot for me some applications and games if you're into those can be rather large these days and 256 gigs can be limiting remember the Mac OS itself will take up some space and upgrading to new versions can also require a hefty amount of free space when Mac OS Big Sur came out it required anywhere from 35 to 45 gigabytes of available storage to upgrade for example however if you don't use much storage then 256 gigabytes if you decide to get the M2 Mac Mini can do just fine and of course if you know you need the additional storage for your workload which usually means working with lots of media assets then you'll have to deal with paying Apple's upgrade prices so is the higher price of the M2 Pro worth it over the M2 the base model price difference is 700 but that includes the 200 upgrade to 16 gigabytes of unified memory as well as the 200 upgrade to 512 gigabytes of storage that means the actual price difference between the M2 and M2 Pro chips is only three hundred dollars that 300 gets you the following two more CPU performance cores which is 25 more coarse six more GPU cores which is 60 more support for up to three displays versus two support for HDMI 2.1 and two additional Thunderbolt 4 ports so what it boils down to is whether you one want 16 gigabytes of memory and 512 gigabytes of storage two need the extra 25 CPU and up to 60 GPU performance three plan to use three displays or four need HDMI 2.1 to support a high resolution and high refresh rate display like a TV the reasons of needing three displays or HDMI 2.1 are deal breakers for the non-pro M2 version and will force you to get the M2 Pro indeed the HDMI 2.1 support is the primary reason I chose to get the M2 promac mini since I use an lgc1 TV as my monitor but the reasons related to Performance memory and storage are less set in stone and will depend heavily on your use case if you just want to use the computer for basic productivity tasks and media consumption the M2 will serve you well even if you want to edit videos the M2 having the media engine just like the M2 Pro makes it very capable the 599 dollar price without upgrades makes it an amazing value for a small and Powerful computer if you're a power user and willing to pay extra to have a machine that is more pleasant to use with more Headroom and performance memory and storage than the base model 1299 M2 Pro Mac mini is still a relatively good value despite it basically forcing you to pay for the memory and storage upgrades that's because of everything else that extra 300 gets you however piecemeal upgrades are quite expensive and other than the 10 gigabit Ethernet for those who have a network that can make use of it I would recommend trying not to purchase upgrades unless you have a professional workload that really requires it if you're spending money to make more money then that's a good investment otherwise stick with the base model CPU and memory options whether it's the M2 or M2 Pro and go external or network storage for your data and as always if you still aren't sure which one to get I recommend buying the cheaper one at a place with a good return policy and trying it out yourself first to see if it meets your needs you could end up saving a ton of money this has been a comparison of the M2 and M2 Pro Mac mini computers if it was useful to you please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to see more Tech comparisons thanks for watching and have a great day

Channel: Mute PC

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Keywords: m2 pro mac mini, m2 mac mini, mac mini, m2 pro mac mini review, mac mini m2, mac mini m2 pro, mac mini m2 vs m2 pro, m2 vs m2 pro, m2 vs m2 pro mac mini, m2 mac, mac mini m2 pro review, m2 mac mini review, mac mini m2 review, mac mini hdmi, mac mini hdmi 2.1, apple m2, apple m2 mac mini, apple m2 pro, mac mini comparison, mac mini m2 and m2 pro, mac mini buying guide, mac mini m2 buying guide

Id: 0gy5wKdGdF4

Length: 14min 44sec (884 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 10 2023