Mac mini (M2, 2023) One Month Later Review!

the new M2 Mac Mini might not look all that different but the most important changes aren't on the outside they're on the inside with apple giving us a Powerhouse desktop and a minimalist box that not only has fixed some problems I had with my previous M1 Mac Mini but has also shifted my expectations of what I expect out of a budget computer not only for the Mac lineup but for the entire PC industry however it's not all perfect and there's some things about this computer that I think need to be changed after one month of use now the Mac Mini design hasn't changed at all from its M1 predecessor and for that matter it hasn't changed much in the past 10 years for the most part that's fine the Mac Mini was introduced as a stripped down version of the Mac that took away the built-in screens or expandable hulking desktops the philosophy of this product has and remains a small clean box that can be placed in any setup and get you a computer running Mac OS at the cheapest possible price point the M2 Mac Mini Embraces this wholeheartedly and even stronger than mac minis from the past few years that's thanks to a nice price reduction of 100 bringing this down to just 599 and you would be forgiven for stopping the video right here and going okay here's a spec bump upgrade with 100 off the M1 Mac Mini I'm not gonna waste 10 minutes of my time watching Greg rattle off specs and junk well Mr Know It All Mr Smarty or Miss smarty You Don't Know Jack and you don't know Greg because this upgrade has fixed a lot of pain points that I had with the 2020 model that make it a much better computer go ahead and do a quick Google search of Mac mini Bluetooth issues and you'll find websites threads and complaints of this issue going back years and years complaining about spotty Bluetooth connections this affected Bluetooth headphones mice and keyboards resulting in frequent dropouts of these accessories especially when using multiple Bluetooth connections well after one month of use knock on wood I have yet to experience any Bluetooth dropouts like I did on my M1 model I don't know if Apple changed something internally or just the addition of the better Bluetooth 5.3 spec was enough to fix these issues but hey for me they seem to be fixed and if you experience these issues before like I did I hope I can say that this new Mac Mini finally fixes a lot of those Bluetooth flaws now for the base level Mac Mini again it's like the same thing right so it's unchanged from that 2020 version so it's still two Thunderbolt ports still 2 two usba ports one HDMI port a headphone jack and an ethernet port it's got a decent Port selection for a Mac but it's still not a huge selection for a desktop computer but Apple does at least give you some options here so they do offer a new Mac Mini it's more pricey at 12.99 but that is decked out with an additional two Thunderbolt ports and if you do find the port selection limiting here on the base model there are a lot of accessories or hubs that can add some much needed ports to this Mac Mini to fix those shortcomings but in the modern 2023 era of this computer I mean I think the port selection is probably going to be fine for most people but unchanged with that Port is also the limited display support that this M2 Mac Mini offers it's still only natively supports only two external displays one running through the Thunderbolt port and one running through the HDMI port personally these days I'm usually a one monitor setup kind of guy so this really hasn't affected me I think two monitors would be the most I'm ever going to use at once again I thought that the multi-monitor support was going to be kind of fixed when Apple introduced these new M2 chips and and that just didn't happen but with that being said I gotta say like this design it's fine it's been here for a while I kind of like the design of the Mac minion way it's a very clean looking computer and I always like seeing on my setups but I would have done something more with the design here like what I'm talking about is functionality wise we've seen Apple come out with uh the Mac Studio now and that added ports onto the front and they are very convenient obviously you can get that Hub like I mentioned which adds ports to the front and that does fix some of my issues but it would be nice to natively just have like an SD card slot on the front and like one usba port or one USB C port and I really feel like that would solve a lot of my issues with the design of this M2 Mac Mini but hey it's just a small desktop box what more can you expect right there's not too much to complain about here with the design of course the biggest internal change to this M2 Mac Mini is the M2 Chip itself now I can go on and on about how this m 2 chip performs with single core performance and multi-core performance and some of you will know exactly what I'm talking about while other people will think I'm speaking to them in Latin the performance benchmarks are here for the people that care about them and yes this M2 Mac Mini as you can see performs very well with CPU and GPU related tasks especially when you consider its very budget-friendly price point however it isn't even the CPU speed charts or how fast this thing can export video in Final Cut Pro that really has me impressed it's just how fast and responsive everything is on this base level machine the cheapest Mac performs almost identically for everyday tasks as their most expensive Mac and maybe even perform slightly better thanks to the Speedy single core performance on the M2 Chip so like if you're opening an app it might actually open faster because of that faster single core performance so if you plan on getting this M2 Max mini for anything that is below what I'll call Professional work and examples of that would be things like web browsing or having multiple tabs open having multiple apps open at once word processing Excel sheets watching or listening to Media storing files browsing photos all the things Mac users do on a day-to-day basis this thing is just fast it is instant and this base model I have here does not need to be upgraded to take advantage of any you're like you're not going to see any speed advantages doing those basic tasks if you upgrade this computer in any way at least for the most part right like we're just talking in basic terms this base level model can get through anything an everyday user would throw at it that's maybe not something you could say about every Mac in history because there was a time when even for basic tasks you would worry about the performance of these machines and specking out a Mac would result in a better experience for many of these ever everyday common tasks but that appears to thankfully be a thing of the past and this is the case with every Apple silicon computer it's one of the best things about these Machines That Really differentiates them from the old Intel processors and really offers a unique experience of optimization probably not found anywhere else in the entire Computing industry I don't think and feel free to correct me if I am wrong here I don't think there is a better computer out there for the price point that would offer you as quick or as responsive performance on a whole I just don't think that computer exists and if you are the type of user that wants a Mac desktop and and you're only using those base level features you should probably stop watching this video it's Apple's best value Mac ever and if you want a Mac desktop that isn't an all-in-one this is a no-brainer purchase however Computing needs evolve and the world is constantly evolving and changing and it may seem like a niche audience but I feel like media production is booming with the rise of short form content like on Tick Tock and and even longer form videos on YouTube now like like the platform you're watching this on and I feel like more and more people expect their computers to be able to handle these types of media tasks whether that's video editing photo editing music production or even like live streaming and I'll say it again for this price point no other computer is going to be able to handle how well this thing can go through like Final Cut Pro timeline or how fast and responsive it is in photo editing or a lot of these Pro level apps for a budget setup this M2 Mac Mini it's nothing short of amazing but it's not perfect I can only speak with my own workflows and my own personal use case but for example like like say if I'm doing 4K video editing this thing is generally fast but there is a Breaking Point with longer timelines and multiple streams of 4K video that breaking point is probably because of the eight gigabytes of memory which is a hard limit on this base model machine so whenever the memory needs to swap with the SSD you'll experience some spinning beach balls and you'll have to wait for the program to catch up and then once it does you're usually smooth for a little while and then you might experience another Breaking Point again so as much as I love this machine don't be fooled it's not perfect it can still be tripped up however a lot of those flaws can be fixed with more money so for pro level users my biggest advice is to consider some upgrades like adding in an extra eight gigabytes of memory which will greatly reduce some of the memory constraints that the base level model has and I'm sure you've also heard the controversy of the slower M2 SSD speeds on the 256 gigabyte unit and while the drive speeds aren't painfully slow it's still an nvme Drive we're talking about here not a slower SSD SATA drive and certainly far far away from the slow spinning disc drives of uh older desktop Macs but still if you want faster storage speeds well you might want to consider upgrading to that 512 gigabyte SSD model not only that but you also get double the storage 256 gigabytes for a desktop it can feel pretty constrained it can feel pretty limiting although you need to be careful because as you approach these upgrades adding on one or two upgrades is fine but a few of them and this mini computer starts to get pretty expensive and with a few clicks on the configuration page you could be awfully close to the price of a base level M2 Pro Mac Mini which may be the better choice for you if you value even faster multi-threaded CPU performance or require faster GPU performance or want nice add-ons like the HDMI 2.1 port or the additional two Thunderbolt ports to really get the maximum amount of i o that this computer could potentially offer and I know when you're working with a really constrained budget believe me I've been there before I know some of this can kind of feel a little bit defeating like okay I found the perfect base level computer but I need a little bit more storage or something like that and I want storage upgrades and memory upgrades then you start like running into this problem where it's like well now what do I do but here's my advice if you're like a pro on a budget as a desktop computer I think the best upgrade path is to just worry about memory and expand storage with external drives that can be easily plugged into the mini to increase its storage at a fraction of the price because on like a laptop where using this method is a bit more painful because you're constantly shuffling the machine around on a stationary desktop it really doesn't matter all that much in fact when I was first starting out with my YouTube career this is how I made the most out of my Max because I could only afford the base level machines at the time and I get the specs for like the CPU or the memory and then if I could increase like the memory on them then I would and then I would start to expand my storage starting with external drives rather than spending large amounts of money on Apple's upgraded storage because I needed more storage to store my video files I can never have enough storage so getting those external drives when I first started out was a great way for me to make this happen and that's why when I started out I always chose a desktop Mac because that was the easiest way to make sure that external storage was always plugged in also another thing you do have to consider when getting the mini I do I do want to list all the negatives if you don't have things like a display a keyboard or a mouse well you need to factor in those options into your budget as well of course there's so many options for third-party accessories that even if you need to buy everything for the smack mini if you don't have a setup already it it probably still is the cheapest Mac on the market you may have to make some sacrifices in like some areas in the terms of quality you want but you could probably spec this out to still be the cheapest overall Mac instead of something like a MacBook Air and listen as much as I or other channels can nitpick the additional cost of accessories or the expensive upgrades on Apple's end for their storage and memory upgrades or show you a chart after chart of how the 16 gigabytes is better than the eight gigabytes or how the faster SSD is going to give you a slightly better performance in the slower SSD ultimately a lot of these charts are just pointless because there's never been a mac this capable at this low of a price point anyone telling you to avoid this computer probably doesn't have another solution for you anywhere near this price point and as we covered it's not only great for regular users but this thing can scale up to become a really competent Mac that is going to be great for creators or professionals on a budget the possibilities and creativity that this little box can Empower are exciting and I really wish that when I started my YouTube channel I had something like this as an option because I have personally spent a lot more on a lot less and now you don't have to you can buy this and you can make something great with it or and just enjoy a hassle-free Computing experience but those are my thoughts on the M2 Mac Mini one month later I think it's a great machine I like this base model machine that's the one I've been using for my all my tests and and for this review and hey if you need to spec it up beyond the base level machine don't feel guilty about that either this is just a really great computer well done Apple well done thank you very much uh hopefully this video is well done if it was please give me a like if you want to see more from the channel make sure you're subscribed and hopefully you liked it enough that I'll catch you in the next one take care everyone

Channel: GregsGadgets

Views: 178,664

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Id: kxQMQlRSg38

Length: 13min 49sec (829 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 17 2023