- Over the past few months, the M1 Mac mini has quickly
become my M1 and only because the impact it's
had on my video editing and streaming workflow has
been anything but mini. (mellow music) And as you probably know, I'm typically not a
computer review channel, I don't really make
computer related videos. But the fact that this
little thing right here, this is the least expensive
computer I've ever purchased. And it's also the most powerful computer I've ever purchased. I'm not gonna do a
technical computer review, cause there are people
who are just pros at that. The reason that I'm making this
video is because the effect that this thing has had on
my workflow is ridiculous. And if you have a similar workflow to me, you do a lot of video editing, streaming, that sort of stuff. And you're kinda wondering, are those new M1 computers worth it? The answer is absolutely yes. And this is the base base model, the cheapest Apple computer you can buy. It's the 256 gigabyte hard
drive, eight gigabytes of RAM. And the stuff that I've
been able to do with this is a whole frigging desktop computer. It's ridiculous. The stuff that I have been able to do with this is it's unreal. So we'll kinda show you
some examples of that, tell you about it, and also explain why I
got it in the first place. Because as you might know, the 16-inch MacBook Pro
has been my main computer since its release. And this is the most expensive and was the most powerful
computer I'd ever had. But the problem with it
is that it is very loud. And over the past year since my entire job is
switched to being, you know, teaching my classes on Zoom, I've been doing so many
more podcasts and streams. Literally, as soon as I open the Zoom app, the fans start going
crazy on this computer, it sounds like it's gonna
launch itself into orbit. I'll show you right now. So we'll go in here, I'm not playing with
the audio or anything, I will open up Zoom. And this is my typical setup
when I'm teaching my classes or doing a stream is
I have Ecamm Live open and it's usually running through Zoom. Alright, so it's been about a minute, I hadn't used this computer at all today. So it was cold. Once I've got Zoom and Ecamm
open, it's starting to warm up, the fans are turning on. So now pretty much no matter what I'm doing throughout the day, the computer is going to
be revving up its fans. Sometimes they're not super, super loud. And sometimes it's ridiculous. I've literally been in a different room. And my wife, Heather and
I look at each other, like what's that sound. And we realize it's just the computer like running the screensaver. And that can be really frustrating when I'm trying to do
anything that involves audio, it got to the point where I
just have my external display. And then I would just hide my
computer under the desk to try to block out some of the noise. But that's not super practical. And so after almost a
year of working from home with this sound happening constantly. When this is what you
do all day, every day, it just got frustrating. So I thought my solution was, why don't I just get
the cheapest Mac mini. And this can be my streaming computer because it's supposed to be much quieter. So I can use this for all my streams. And then this which is more powerful can
be my editing computer. Well, it took about less than a week for this just to become my main computer. And I actually feel guilty
for how little I use this one. So let's shut it down and
turn off this fan noise here. Even this mat right now where the MacBook was is like super warm. This thing always stays
completely cool to the touch. I know the fans on cause
there's a vent in the back and if I reach my hand behind
it, I can feel air coming out, but you cannot hear it and one of the benefits you might know is that the Mac mini has a few more ports than the current M1 MacBooks. So you've got Gigabit
Ethernet, two Thunderbolt, four USB C ports and HDMI
port, two USB Type A ports and a 3.5 millimeter output. It's not the largest amount of IO ever, but I don't see a problem with it. It works pretty well. What I typically have is my
external display connected via one of the Thunderbolt ports, I have a hub connected into the other. And then I've got the road caster and the 810 Mini plugged
into the USB A ports. I've got speakers or
headphones obviously going out of the headphone jack. There is a built in speaker
but it's really bad. It's like the quality of a
cell phone from 12 years ago, but sometimes I'll still need to connect other things like hard drives. And so I got this guy here
which you might have seen these docks that are
made for the Mac mini. This is a brand called
Hagibis, I think and I had this for a while now and it works really well. So a couple things about it's
a totally ridiculous name. The new Hagibis, did you
hear Tom has the new Hagibis? like a 2021 Hagibis, yeah. They do make a silver version
that matches the Mac mini, but it was out of stock. So I just got the space gray one. And the idea is that it sits
right on top of the Mac mini. And then you've got two more USB A ports, you've got two USB 3.0 ports, you've got an SD card slot
and a micro SD card slot. And then under it, there's a little port where you can install an internal SSD. And I think this costs about $70, it kind of goes in and
out of stock on Amazon. So the price fluctuates as well. So I just put a SanDisk SSD in there, this is a one terabyte is about $100. But this made a lot more
sense to me than upgrading the memory in the computer,
the eight gigs of RAM has been more than enough
for me, which is crazy, 'cause that computer, my
MacBook Pro is 16 gigs of RAM. And I always thought well my next computer is gonna be at least 32 if not 64. Nope, it was eight. And if you have the budget
for the 16 gigs of RAM, it's probably worth it. But as you'll see in a second, the stuff that the eight
gigabyte can handle like it's more than any reasonable
human who's buying a Mac mini would probably need of course,
your money is your money, your budgets is your budget, but I found it was a lot
cheaper to just do this. And then I just basically edit off of this the only stuff that lives
on my computer's hard drive, our applications and a
few super important files, this just shows up, it's a little hard drive on the desktop, when you wake the
computer, it's right there, it works super well. Let me put this bottom part back on so I don't lose all these little screws. Now there are only two problems I've had with this thing so far. One of them is very minor on the back, there's the USB C port that
connects to the computer. Maybe like three times in the
past two and a half months that I've had this computer, it has just not shown up
when I wake the computer from sleep. And the solution is just to
unplug it, plug it back in, and then it shows up right away. The other issue is just I
don't like having it on top of the Mac mini. I don't know, for some
reason, I just don't. And so my thought was, well,
I'll put it under the Mac mini and then everything is fine. But the back of the Mac
mini here is plastic. And that's where I think
there's some antenna signals and things happening. And then the bottom of it
also has this plastic circle. And I think this is also where
some like the WiFi antenna, the Bluetooth antenna, stuff like that is. When you put that like this, I've noticed it can
cause some interference. I haven't had any of the
Bluetooth connection issues with the Mac mini that some
people have talked about. But I've noticed when I
had the Mac mini on here, my mouse would start like being
jumpy and laggy and weird. It stayed connected, but it
was just like slow and jittery. And then as soon as I
separated these, it was fine and then put it back
and it happened again. So I think the metal from this enclosure interferes with this. And anyway, I just keep them
side by side on my desk now and it's fine. So what I wanna do right
now is basically just try and overload this computer in
a way that you would probably never really do in real life. We'll start a screen recording which I always takes extra
memory on my MacBook. Whenever I do screen
recordings, the fans kick in. And then if I'm doing a voiceover
with the screen recording, it just messes everything up. It's really frustrating. Alright, so I've got Ecamm up, I've got a screen recording going, I'm gonna open up Final Cut Pro. And again, I just rebooted
the computer so nothing is pre-loaded. I'm gonna open up Chrome 'cause
I always have Chrome open with a whole bunch of tabs. Let's see open Zoom because
again Ecamm and Zoom are my main combos and the camera's running into the 810 mini into Zoom. So now I have started a Zoom meeting. Zooms recording. Let's why not record with Ecamm Live also. So Ecamm is gonna be
recording Zoom is recording, we've got 14 Chrome tabs open. I'm doing a screen
recording and QuickTime. Everything so far seems
to be working well. Let's open up Final Cut. Let's start a new project. I'm gonna call this project ridiculous because this is ridiculous
and we'll make it 4k. So we're gonna do a 4k project. Boom got my timeline up. Now I do have a little bit of 4k footage on my external drive. So let's bring some of that
in, this is all native 4k. This is what 24 clips just
gonna drag them straight to the timeline. And now as you can see,
these clips are just playing completely smoothly,
there's no lag or anything. It's ridiculous. But let's add some color correction. So I'm gonna go to my little... The lot that I tend to add to all my stuff and we'll just add that there. So there we go. As Final Cut is processing a lot that's being added to 4k footage, it's still playing back perfectly smoothly while Ecamm is recording and
Zoom is hosting a meeting that it is also recording.
But you know what? I think this Final Cut project
is looking pretty good. How long is it? It's 15 minutes long 4k footage, well, let's just copy and paste it and make that a nice hour. So now we've got an
hour of 4k footage here. I think I'm ready to export that. There we go. So now I've got a 4k export happening. While that's exporting,
I'm gonna do the thing you should never do and
still just double check some of my footage,
which is still rendering is still playing totally smoothly. But now for that video,
I should probably work on a thumbnail. Let's open up some Photoshop real quick. Photoshop is one of the only things that I've seen little bits
of lag pop up here and there. And that probably is also
because it's not native for the M1 chip yet, it's still running through
Rosetta still runs faster and better than anything
on my old MacBook ever did. But that is where I've seen some lag. I'm noticing now just a little bit of lag. I've never seen this lag
before, Ecamm Live is, I don't know, over here you can see Ecamm is is not as smooth as
it normally would be. Photoshop had an issue
opening, I had to force quit and reopen but it opened really quick. And now Ecamm is smooth. I don't know where Zoom is. Zoom is over here. Zoom is pretty smooth,
Final Cut is still exporting and also playing back perfectly smooth. And now I've got Photoshop up here, I can work on a thumbnail
for a video, add some layers, I don't know, resize some
things, zoom in and out, move stuff around. This is more than I would ever do at once. Who's gonna like, do all
of these things at once. Plus, I'm also running a screen
recording for this video. But let's also open Adobe Audition, because maybe I wanna edit
something along the way, why not? Now I've got Adobe Audition, I can add in some audio over here. So Audition is processing some audio. Now I will say even though
this is working pretty well, I definitely would not
recommend running all this stuff at once just because you will probably have reliability issues. And then also because if
you're exporting footage and doing other stuff,
sometimes you can have errors. I haven't had any yet on the
M1, but every once in a while on my other MacBook you
get like a frame of green or something would look
kind of glitchy real quick. So it's usually a good idea when you're exporting your
video, a real project, let the computer do its thing. Make sure it exports well
and then jump back in. Now we've got Adobe
Audition up and running in addition to Final Cut
Pro in addition to Ecamm, in addition to Zoom, which is recording, in addition to running a
screen capture and Photoshop all at the same time. And everything, as you can see
is running like super smooth. I mean, honestly, these
programs, by themselves don't run this smoothly on my 16-inch MacBook Pro. Final Cut while exploiting, again, is still playing back video just fine. And if I go through the external drive, open up some of these 4k clips, I can press the space
bar and preview them. So now I can even
playback other 4k footage. This is eight gigabytes of RAM. I mean, come on. Oh, and also the computer has not made a sound and it's
literally cold to the touch. Not just cool, not just room temperature, but cold metal to the touch. The only way I was able
to make the video lag for a few seconds was when I
had all that stuff happening and then I tried to open Photoshop. That's one thing ground to a halt. And Photoshop just didn't open. So I forced quit it, reopened it. It opened in about three
seconds and then worked fine and everything stopped lagging. So that's the only hiccup I've had. Cheapest computer I've ever bought. And it can do all that.
And that's the base model. Again, eight gigs of RAM. So sure, if you wanna
spend the money on 16, I don't think you'll regret it. But are you realistically
gonna do what I just did on a regular basis? Probably not, which would mean that eight
gigs is probably okay. I didn't care when it was first announced. I was like, I don't need
a new computer, who cares? And then I am absolutely
sold on this so much so actually that my wife
Heather now has a matching M1 Mac mini in her office,
same base model specs, and it has had the same
effect on her workflow. So we each have an M1 Mac mini, we could call them our M and Ms. So if you've been on the
fence about whether or not to invest in one of the M1 Macs, and you have a workflow
that's at all similar to mine, I say go for it. I did run Geekbench
tests when I first got it and the M1 Mac mini
outperformed the 16-inch in the computing tests. But the 16-inch outperform the
Mac mini in the graphic test, which makes sense because it
has a dedicated graphics card, but I'm not even including
that in this video because I don't really care. Because even though the
16-inch MacBook outperformed the Mac mini in the graphics test, I can tell you from using
it, the M1 outperforms the MacBook Pro, it beats
it in literally every way other than having a
beautiful built in display and that 16-inch screen is the
nicest display I've ever had. This is my old computer. This is my 2013 13-inch MacBook Pro. Barring the years of experience
I had with this computer working really well, I can
easily say that the M1 Mac mini is my favorite computer and
I already did have a display, I already had keyboard
I already had mouse, so I didn't have to spend
money on that stuff. I just spent money on the external dock, the hard drive to go in
the dock and that's it. I didn't have to spend
money on anything else. So it really made sense
financially for me, and the amount of friction
that it reduced in my workflow, oh my gosh, it's so incredibly worth it. So if you have a workflow like me, I hope this showed you just how powerful this M1 Mac mini is. There is absolutely nothing
mini about the massive power in that Mac, Macssive power. That's right, maximize the power.
