It's not often that you can look at an Apple product and say, wow, that's a good deal.
13,000? True, their products are well made and long lasting, but the higher prices found across
the lineup can make them inaccessible.
And yet, this new Mac mini is $600, $500 if you're a student.
That's $100 less than it used to be. This seems like a shockingly good deal, but what's the catch?
Well to find out, we gave it to a typical Mac user to see if at this price point there
are any noticeable trade-offs. We didn't find one thing out though, but it probably won't matter to you.
What's surprising about this new Mac mini is that it's not just a price drop.
It's a full update too, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Thunderbolt, and even the headphone jack are
all better. And that's not all, as you also get the M2 processor with the full 10-core GPU.
That's a notable, though not groundbreaking performance improvement, especially for the
price. You can take things further and upgrade the Mac mini to the M2 Pro chip, though that does
cost considerably more and is geared towards professionals.
The base mini is better suited for average people, one of whom I will now meet.
So would you consider yourself an average person?
This is Alexis Wiggett. Last year she moved to Vancouver to study acting.
Her use case for a computer is pretty normal, using it for school and light entertainment.
And given that she currently uses an iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Pro, we thought she'd be
the perfect fit to test the new Mac. So what computer do you currently use?
For those specific things, like how does it perform? It's not slow, it's not incredibly fast.
Yeah, if I play it for like 20 minutes, my computer sounds like it's dying.
Really? Yeah, I can't ever really have it on the highest setting.
Yeah, but overall, like it's still usable, I still do it.
Is there something a little bit of disappointment in the computer?
Well, okay, here's the thing. Yes, that's a good word for it, it's disappointment.
Okay, so we brought along a new Mac mini for you to test, it's about five years younger
than your computer. Yes, okay. So here's the one thing, I'm not going to tell you how much the computer costs, don't
look any of it up, any of the specs or any of that, just use the computer, okay?
That's fun. By having her not know the price of the setup, we can hopefully get an unbiased opinion
about how everything performs and whether or not she feels it's an improvement over
her own MacBook. It's a 2018 MacBook Pro, which was $2,000 at release.
She got it as a gift from her family, who are avid Mac users themselves.
So this should be a good fit. Since the Mac mini famously doesn't come with any peripherals, you and Alexis are going
to need some. To keep things affordable, we elected to use a $100 1080p Acer monitor, as well as a Logitech
keyboard and mouse, each of which cost $40 and use Bluetooth so that you can keep those
precious USB ports free. If you need a webcam and have an iPhone, the Belkin MagSafe monitor mount is a cost-effective
solution. And while the Mac mini does have a built-in speaker, I do recommend buying a separate set
if you want to listen to anything beyond system notifications.
All together, this comes out to $780.
And while it's not the most clean setup on the desk, remember that terrible iMac I bought
from the refurbish store last year? That was $890, and I wouldn't recommend that to anyone.
This is way better. Okay, we're ready for you.
Yeah, so we set up, I got a profile set up for you.
Log in here. We got the new Resident Evil game installed.
Wait, really? Yeah. Okay, you want to play?
So give it a go. No? No, I never thought I'd actually, like, okay.
You never thought you'd actually play? Thing is, I'm like a coward, so.
Oh, I know. Me too. Me too.
So, are you thinking of the graphics? It feels like I'm not wearing my contacts now.
Oh, okay. Let's just try and fix these graphics.
Let me see what I can do. It doesn't look like we have enough storage, though.
I mean, I think it's memory, and I think we're fine.
How can we upgrade it then?
Is this a bit of a controversy?
Yeah. Yeah.
With this Mac Mini, there is a little bit of an elephant in the room.
Memory and storage. It has 8 and 256 gigabytes, respectively, and that's getting to be a little low, especially
considering that with Apple Silicon, the RAM is unified.
Meaning, it's shared between the GPU and CPU.
Also, with the M2, Apple has changed the storage speeds in base configurations, which
are now up to 50% slower than the base M1.
So you're losing something, but is it too much? Well, going by our experience with the machine, I'd say no.
Compared to a fully upgraded M2 MacBook Air with 24 gigabytes of RAM, there's no noticeable
difference in everyday tasks, which include web browsing, emails, word processing, and
listening to music. Pushing the Mac Mini harder, it handles light photo editing in the Lightroom, and speeds
through 4K ProRes footage in Final Cut.
It even refuses to slow down when I'm intentionally trying to push the computer, playing 8K footage
on that timeline. But it's when doing all these things at the same time that you push the limits of memory
and the machine stutters. So if you're a big multitasker or work with large files, the upgrade to 16 gigabytes of
memory is an easy, albeit costly, and annoying recommendation.
Apple has always been stingy when it comes to memory and storage, especially when compared
to PCs, but consider this.
At our local Best Buy, the cheapest desktop PC available has the same memory and storage
as the Mac Mini for the same price.
Sure, the PC is more likely to go on sale, but a refurbished M1 Mac Mini is now $470.
So spec-wise, it shows just how competitive the Mac Mini has become.
I'm confident this will work for most people. Let's see how it worked for Alexis.
Okay, so you've had the computer for a couple of days.
What do you think? I mean, yeah, it's a nice computer.
I'll give it that. Yeah? Yeah.
No, I didn't have any problems with it. What were some of the first things you installed on the Mac Mini?
It was Minecraft. Ah, it was Minecraft.
There's no shame in playing Minecraft. I just want to make this clear.
There's a macOS version of it, right? I'm too old for Minecraft.
You can play Java version. You can't play Better Rock. How did Minecraft then run on the Mac Mini compared to the...
Yeah, it was fine. It ran probably a bit faster.
Yeah, a bit more smoother. But it seems like you're a bit of a gamer, which Macs aren't really good for, are they?
I don't know. I wanted to download things like Arc Survival Evolved.
That's just simply... I couldn't get it to work. I wasn't able to find one that I was able to work with.
I think it's Ventura was the... Is the new one yet?
Yeah. Yeah, nothing I could get to correspond with that.
Oh, so this Mac Mini added a bunch of complexity to the way you want to use your computer.
Yeah, exactly. I don't know.
Sometimes I feel like I'm putting off trying to even bother downloading a game.
If I'm playing a game, I want to relax. I don't want to have a headache trying to set this up, you know?
I was not expecting you to be such a gamer, and it seems like that's the one big weakness
with macOS, but why not just get a gaming console?
The thing is, I didn't really grow up with a console. Why would I just not stick with the controls that I'm used to?
Okay, so back to this Mac. How much do you think it sells for?
How much do I think Apple sells it for? Yeah, like if you were to go on the website, it would be the price listed underneath the
picture of the Mac Mini. Approximately three grand, maybe.
Three grand? Yeah. Wow.
You think it's that powerful? No.
Oh, okay. But it's Apple. Okay, okay, fair enough.
Oh, but it's okay. How much would you pay for it?
Um, $1,500, maybe. Okay.
Okay, so the actual retail price is $600 US or $800 Canadian.
Really? Wow, okay, well that's surprising.
I will be completely honest. Really?
This is like a new computer, though. Brand new, just came out last month, so does that sort of change the calculus for you?
Much more doable. I just don't want to go buy it, though.
I'll be completely honest. I don't think Mac's bad.
I don't. I just don't think it offers a lot of the things that, I mean, I personally want.
I can't speak for other people, but it's really worth looking into what you want exactly
in the future as well as currently when you're about to invest in a computer, because I think
if I were to go back in time, I would have really done my research and pushed for a PC
rather than a Mac instead. But yeah, it's simply not the right or wrong choice for everyone.
I guess I'm not going to win you over, eh? Yeah, don't try.
Alexis' experience made me realize something.
The switch to Apple Silicon has not only made what's great about the Mac even better, it's
also exacerbated the negatives. True, you can get impressive performance in Apple's cheapest machines, but now that they
run on ARM, you can't rely on bootcamp for apps and games not available on the Mac.
And developers now need to put more effort into port their PC games to Apple's chips
and APIs. The results can be amazing, but with fewer than 3% of Steam users on macOS, I'm not
holding my breath. So where does that leave this thing?
Well, outside of games, neither Alexis nor I really felt held back by the hardware.
And even though she said she wouldn't buy one, it's a great experience as far as Macs
go. From there, though, we clearly differ.
She feels inconvenienced by staying on macOS, whereas moving to Windows would inconvenience
me. What the f- Ultimately, I think the real question is if macOS works for you.
As far as the average person goes, this should be able to fly through anything you throw
at it. It just can't do everything at once.
And if it can do everything you need it to do, it's a great option.
Just think about the RAM upgrade if you want the machine to last.
That's really how they get you with that RAM upgrade.
Thanks for lowering the price of this Mac Address. If you love that the Mac Mini is now only $600, give this video a like.
And if you want to know how expensive you can make a Mac Mini, well, you might as well
subscribe. I'm curious in the comments if any of you are running any Apple Silicon Macs with 8GB
of RAM. Have you pushed it to the limits? And if so, how?