Mac Mini M2 Pro After 5 Months: What You NEED To Know!

this is the 2023 Mac Mini with the M2 Pro and has been my daily Workhorse for around half a year now while the Mac Mini is somewhat inconspicuous in terms of its design and historically it's been an entry-level Mac with mid-range performance this particular iteration is much different I personally bought this machine because I wanted all the benefits of the pro M series chips but with more of a reasonable price tag and while some of that has come as advertised there's definitely been some Surprises with this machine along the way both good and bad today I want to dive into that whole experience what's been predictable what has surprised me in a few areas that I found to be disappointing so if you're looking to pick one of these up or you just want to go on a little Mac Mini adventure with me stick around and let's get into it [Music] hey everyone Kyle Erickson here as someone who is on a desktop machine or at a desk from the morning when I start my day all the way through to the evening when I'm winding down I require a lot of Versatility in my machine both for work and entertainment a lot of my mornings are filled with doing basic admin stuff like responding to emails project planning and then I'll get into more of a creative workflow as it relates to content that could be anything from script writing photo or video editing 3D modeling you name it on top of that my background is in software development which I also try and keep up with but the gist of it is I use my Mac for a wide variety of things and I just need something that can handle a little bit of everything where at the drop of a dime I can open something up and get to work with minimal Hang-Ups which is why I chose the Mac Mini equipped with the M2 Pro looks wise it's pretty unassuming it looks relatively the same as it did a decade ago which I'm fine with it's a nice minimal design and the best thing about it is it has a very small footprint so rather than me having a stick a tower somewhere around my desk I could sit this on the table top under my shelf aesthetically it's going to fit with almost any spacer desk setup but there are a few things to note that I am a little disappointed have never been updated on the mini the first being the surface along the bottom the housing or casing is aluminum which is great it doesn't scratch and it's very solid but the bottom is plastic and it's prone to sliding around which can generally be a bit of a pain if you're trying to plug anything in but because it is plastic and it has a matte finish it does scratch over time that really sucks if you're trying to resell your Mac somewhere down the line or you just want to keep things in good condition which is why I buy these little silicon tabs and stick them on they keep the mini for moving around and save it from any damage it's sort of strange to me that these aren't on here by default if you pick up a Macbook you can see them on there and most Electronics have some sort of rubber or silicon padded surface for this exact reason so why not have them on the mini as well regardless like I said those do help a lot when you're trying to plug something in the Pro Mac Mini does have an expanded Port selection compared to the m one minis or the base M2 models with four Thunderbolt 4 ports versus two that you get on those base machines I always found just having two of those ports was very limiting especially if you're trying to run two external monitors multiple external drives that kind of thing so that's definitely a plus and just speaking to display support the M2 pro version does have an upgraded HDMI port just like in the new Macbook Pros that resembles HDMI 2.1 capable of 8K resolution at 60 hertz or 4K at 240. I'm really happy to see that get upgraded and be able to support those higher refresh rates when I set an ultrawide monitor paired with the M1 Mac Mini I was limited to 100 Hertz unless I used up a thunderbolt Port so it's nice to not have to worry about that any longer this particular model will support up to three displays as well where the M2 Pro and the MacBooks will only support two externally I have hooked up multiple monitors just to test everything out and it all seems to work fine but for me personally a single 4k monitor is just fine outside of that there's an ethernet port that I don't personally use two USB a ports capable of 10 gigabits per second and a 3.5 millimeter audio output which I use for my bookshelf speakers on my desk stand I brought this up in previous videos but I'm not a huge fan of that audio jack placement because it can tend to obstruct or get obstructed by the USB a ports if you take a look at how the Mac Studio does it I'd much rather have things that way but in any case these are all pretty minor complaints and because I use a cal digit ts4 dock it doesn't really affect me in my day-to-day workflow below the parts there's an exhaust for the fan and while that is running pretty consistently to some extent you'd never know it I don't think I've ever heard this spin up even with a ton of system usage and performance wise this machine has been outstanding let me just prefix this by saying that we are really spoiled when it comes to Performance with these m-series ships honestly the majority of people will be able to get through almost any task with a regular M1 or M2 chips I know I find it very hard to tell the difference between my M2 MacBook Air and my M2 Pro Mac Mini most of the time this Pro configuration that I have has a one terabyte SSD and 32 gigs of RAM so it does have the faster speed Drive compared to the base version with 512 gigs but I found that to make very little difference for most things outside of some pretty specific edge cases where you're running giant batch processes or enormous data transfers for an extended period at a time for most things that are creative I don't find there to be too much of a difference in fact after I got this machine I started editing videos on the local drive versus my external Thunderbolt SSD that I was previously using that drive runs at about half the speed of this one terabyte one in the Mac Mini similar to what the base 512 gig option or the one in my MacBook Air would run at but I thought that it might speed up my workflow and I've just since gone back to the external because I don't really notice much of a difference at all even though the internal drive is much quicker not only that but because everything is integrated with the Mac Mini and not swappable I just prefer to offload a lot of that work to an external drive to avoid racking up mileage on that internal drive and avoid any kind of failure somewhere down the road oh luckily that actually is I'm not entirely sure it could be good forever but just for peace of mind I do prefer having that separation similarly to drive speed I found that for singular tasks as they relate to productivity or creative work like graphic design or photo and video editing the base m-series chips are still perfectly capable if you're working in Lightroom or photoshop editing an image or working on a video with a regular 4K timeline just making Cuts color grading and maybe adding some light effects it's difficult to distinguish the performance difference between the regular M2 and the M2 Pro with individual applications where the M2 Pro starts to separate itself quite a bit is with super GPU intensive stuff like 3D modeling or working on Motion Graphics and basically anything that requires a lot of graphical resources to run smoothly but for me where I see the M2 Pro really pull ahead is multitasking having a powerful chip combined with 32 gigs of RAM allows me to have a bunch of apps open at once and toggle between them without ever feeling any slowness for example in the video that I did last week reviewing my LG display I wanted to make a visual to show how IPS panels work so while I had Final Cut Pro open I was able to open up blender create an animation and render it and have other apps like Affinity photo open for stuff like making thumbnails or supplemental images for that video just having that amount of Versatility is an asset to me as a Creator and just on a whim being able to spin something up without ever having to worry about bogging down my system there are some days that I might want to work on an app or learn something new whatever it is I know that this machine can handle it in contrast if we compare that with my M2 air that machine is 16 gigs of RAM within 8 core CPU and 10 core GPU I can still do all those same tasks but the difference is I can't usually have them all open at the same time and be toggling between them without a pretty big hit on performance I just have to be a lot more calculated and strategic in what I have open and how I use the machine otherwise there can be times where things hang and that can be pretty stressful plus it's nice to know that somewhere down the line if I really wanted to dig into 3D work more shoot an 8K video for whatever reason or play around with game development I've got a Mac that's more than capable now while performance has been outstanding I was also fairly excited to the upgrades and wireless connectivity when this came out bluetooth was upgraded from version 5.0 to 5.3 and Wi-Fi also moved up to Wi-Fi 6E from Wi-Fi 6 and I have to say I found some mixed results there Bluetooth is fine in a general sense I don't have any connection issues but I do find the range to be a bit limiting say if I have a set of earbuds in and I go up a floor in my house they'll start cutting out on me where if I have a phone paired with the same buds the range is a lot further I realize this is a desktop machine so maybe it's not meant to have a broad range but it just sucks if you're listening to music and you go run and grab a coffee or maybe you're on a call or something like that moving around it can tend to be a bit frustrating also on the Wi-Fi side of things I found Mac OS to be pretty inconsistent at times with Wi-Fi 6 in particular this is is a pretty common complaint with a lot of folks right now where it'll drop out of the six gigahertz band to the five gig one which kind of negates the whole purpose of Wi-Fi 6 and I have found speeds on the 5 gig band are considerably slower when it is on the six gigahertz band speeds are blazingly fast usually around 800 megabits per second on a one gigabit connection definitely the fastest out of any devices that I've used here and there's been no issues with cutting out or drops on the 5 gig band it seems to drop to around 500 megabits or so so it's not the end of the world it is still quite fast but it is a noticeable decrease with those complaints in mind this is still Leaps and Bounds better than most of the other built-in Wireless solutions that I've tried I know my windows machines upstairs with onboard Wi-Fi are really finicky to the point where I've just given up and wired them to my mesh pods the Mac mini is still super reliable in terms of Wireless stability and overall outside of that band switching I don't find it to cause me too much grief at all in fact I see that as a whole this may be one of the most solid Max that I've owned to date I can do anything that I want on here there's more than enough power connectivity in both Port selection and wireless is great with all up-to-date protocols for the most part and for everything that you get in here it is quite affordable as well this machine will run you 18.99 from the Apple store with the same configuration with 32 gigs of RAM and a one terabyte SSD or the base version of the 14-inch MacBook Pro is a hundred dollars more with only 512 gigs of storage and 16 gigs of RAM and if you keep an eye out on the Apple refurb site you can likely find them for a couple hundred bucks cheaper there as well for those prices there's a lot of value here I feel like I haven't seen a ton of other folks buying this particular configuration it seems like a lot of people about m-series chips previous to this and are happy with them and the M2 hasn't seen a high adoption rate but if you've got the M2 Pro Mac Mini drop a comment down below and let me know how you're liking it and what you're using it for even if you got the base Mac Mini I'd love to hear how you're liking those machines as well it's always interesting to hear how much folks are getting out of their machines and all the different ways that they're using them that's it for me today I hope you found this video useful or enjoyable if you video you can feel free to hit that like button if you want to see more Tech related videos or paint pictures of each other blindfolded Please Subscribe thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next upload out [Music]

Channel: Kyle Erickson

Views: 134,919

Keywords: mac mini, m2 mac mini, mac mini m2, mac mini m2 pro, 2023 mac mini, m2 pro mac mini, m2 pro mac mini review, m2 vs m2 pro mac mini, mac mini m2 pro review, m2 pro, mac mini m2 pro vs m2, apple mac mini, mac mini 32 gb, mac mini 1tb, new mac mini, apple, m2 pro vs m2, m2 vs m2 pro, mac mini long term review

Id: B3LraI0n9yI

Length: 11min 3sec (663 seconds)

Published: Tue May 23 2023