Apple Mac mini with M1 review: over-performer

The Mac mini has always been Apple ’ s most flexible background computer. sure, most people go for the traditional have and plug in a display, sneak, and keyboard — but you can besides have it serve as a home field personal computer, or put it to work with professional photograph or audio edit, or turn a group of miniskirt into a server farm. Apple opened new possibilities for the mini with the big upgrade it got in 2018, and two years by and by, it ’ randomness one of the beginning three Macs to transition away from Intel processors and showcase the electric potential of Apple silicon and the M1 chip. ( It ’ randomness besides deserving noting that Apple was using the miniskirt as its early Arm test unit for developers, so the ship’s company was already partway to a consumer intersection. )
Apple has dropped the start price for the M1-powered Mac mini down to $ 699, which is $ 100 less than earlier. For that money, you get an eight-core CPU, eight-core GPU, 256GB of memory, and 8GB of RAM. The follow-up unit I received costs $ 1,299, as it increases the SSD size to 1TB and doubles the memory. But the Apple M1 chip stays the like no matter which configuration you choose, and it matches the one in the new 13-inch MacBook Pro. Like that machine, the mini has a fan for cooling, but it besides has the most efficiently cooled human body of all the newfangled M1 Macs. As a leave, it ’ s technically the best performer — tied if merely by a shred .
aside from returning to a silver exterior from the previous quad grey, this mini looks largely like the honest-to-god one. I say by and large because compared to the newfangled MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro, the Mac mini has actually undergone the most significant outward invention exchange : it lost a match of ports. Apple has gone from four USB-C / Thunderbolt 3 ports to barely two — plus the match of USB-A ports that are however present. technically, the USB-C ports are more promote ( USB 4 ), and you can daisy-chain Thunderbolt devices to your heart ’ second subject. But there ’ s nothing more commodious than built-in ports, and looking at this objectively, it ’ s a downgrade for the miniskirt ’ sulfur expandability. ( You ’ re besides now limited to connecting two external displays directly to the mini rather of three, though one of them can be a 6K monitor. ) The Intel Mac mini remains available for those that demand maximum ports or more RAM, which I ’ ll receive into later .

There ’ south distillery a speaker inside the Mac miniskirt, but it ’ s the kind of speaker you ’ ll never, always want to use. It ’ sulfur tinny, excavate, and barely plain bad ; even the macOS Big Sur inauguration chime sounds embarrassing compared to my deafening 16-inch MacBook Pro. Considering the speaker advancements Apple has made with its laptops, I wish it would put in some more feat here — even if the huge majority of people will plug external speakers into the miniskirt ’ s earphone jacklight or use Bluetooth sound recording.

Reading: Apple Mac mini with M1 review: over-performer

I ’ ve besides got to point out that getting up and running with the Mac mini can be a harass. For initial apparatus, you need a electrify keyboard and mouse ; my Logitech ergonomic keyboard and MX Master 3, which both connect over Bluetooth, were useless. They work fine after setting up the machine, but merely be aware so you don ’ t run into this initial concern like I did .

If you read Dieter ’ s recapitulation of the MacBook Air and Nilay ’ s take on the 13-inch MacBook Pro, it shouldn ’ thyroxine come as a surprise that the theme of surprisingly great performance applies to the Mac mini. I ’ ve thrown a distribute at this bantam desktop computer over the last respective days, and it chews through everything — Lightroom Classic, Plex transcodes, piles of Chrome tabs — with aplomb. And those are all apps that are still designed to run on Intel chips .
Every app runs well enough to feel native on the M1
The first prison term you install an app built for Intel chips, you ’ ll be prompted to download Apple ’ s Rosetta 2 software, which is the clandestine sauce in how those apps play so well with the M1 check. And since Apple doesn ’ thyroxine have to account for the tight confines of a laptop enclosure with the Mac mini, the M1 chip can hit the identical best speeds it ’ s capable of and sustain them without throttling. Heck, I never even heard the sports fan spin up during repeated 30-minute Cinebench tests or when transcoding several 4K Blu-ray rips back to back. The miniskirt has stayed dumb no matter how hard I work it .

Mac mini

Outside of benchmark earth, the Mac mini feels wonderfully fast sidereal day to sidereal day. That said, I ’ ve noticed the episodic odd hitch : sometimes Spotify takes a obtrusive measure of bounces in the dock ( up to 10 ) before it opens after a cold boot of the system. That ’ sulfur been reasonably rare, and once Intel-optimized apps are capable, performance feels identical from how they run on my in full loaded 16-inch MacBook Pro. I ’ ve besides not run into any glaring app compatibility issues, though if there ’ s some part of software that ’ mho job-critical for you, it ’ s credibly worth waiting on reports of how it runs on the M1 .

M1-based Mac benchmarks

Benchmark
MacBook Air
MacBook Pro
Mac mini

Cinebench R23 Multi
6803
7729
7729

Cinebench R23 Single
1494
1519
1520

Cinebench R23 Multi looped for 30 minutes
5369
7729
7780

Geekbench 5.3 CPU Multi
7510
7554
7711

Geekbench 5.3 CPU Single
1730
1730
1754

Geekbench 5.3 OpenCL/ Compute
18357
19211
19654

early benefits of the M1 chip, like moment on, aren ’ triiodothyronine as obvious when using a Mac mini compared to a laptop. Unless you ’ ve got an Apple Watch, you ’ ll frequently be typing in your passcode when the mini wakes from sleep, which works against the speed improvements. Would a Touch ID detector somewhere on the Mac miniskirt be that airheaded ? I ’ five hundred consumption it. Battery life international relations and security network ’ t a factor on the Mac mini, of course, and the M1 miniskirt uses the same 150W exponent supply as the Intel model, but it ’ s up to 60 percentage more energy effective than the comparable Intel exemplar. AnandTech did some tests that highlight the deoxidize office draw .
iPhone and iPad apps on… a desktop?
The appeal of running iPhone and iPad apps on a Mac miniskirt seems much lower to me than it might on a MacBook. You lose some handy use cases, like offline downloads for the HBO Max app, which can be convenient when traveling with a laptop. The Mac miniskirt outputs to my 23.7-inch LG 4K display. That ’ s not precisely huge, but it ’ sulfur big enough to make many iPhone apps — particularly the ones that can ’ metric ton be resized, of which there are many — feel very out of place. aside from the big Overcast podcast app, I ’ ve had a baffling time finding io apps that I actually want to run on macOS .

If you head to the “ purchased ” area of the Mac App Store, you ’ ll now find a tab for iPhone and iPad apps. many of these will say that they haven ’ triiodothyronine been verified for Mac. But flush some that lack that warning — like Tumblr — wholly crash when opened. And many developers have opted out, meaning you won ’ thyroxine find pillar apps like Gmail, Instagram ( though Facebook is listed ), Netflix, TikTok, and countless others. Some developers are probable holding off so they can polish their mobile apps to behave better on macOS. But a distribute of what ’ s available just… doesn ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate make smell. Why would I want to run a utility app for Samsung earbuds on my Mac ? Or the Dunkin ’ Donuts app ? It ’ vitamin d be nice to use my darling guitar radio receiver app, Fender Tune, but it doesn ’ t recognize any sound input signal since there ’ s no internal mic on the mini. ( It works a intended on the new laptops. ) I think people are going to run into some confusion and disappointment, and it actually seems like Apple should ’ ve made this an opt-in veranda alternatively of serving customers this eldritch odds and ends .
iPhone apps feel just as out of invest on the desktop as expected

back to normal apps. possibly the biggest sphere where the Intel-based Mac miniskirt trounces the M1 version is in RAM. You can outfit the 2018 mini with up to 64GB of memory, whereas the newly model tops out at 16GB equitable like the M1 MacBook Air and Pro. ( RAM could besides be upgraded by anyone will to open up the Intel Mac miniskirt, but that international relations and security network ’ thymine indeed for this machine. ) Apple says the modern unite memory structure of these Macs “ allows all of the technologies in the SoC to access the same datum without copying it between multiple pools of memory, further improving performance and efficiency. ”
It ’ s not arduous to get a Mac with 16GB of memory to start swapping between RAM and the inauguration phonograph record, and this is something I ’ ve noticed in Activity Monitor but seaport ’ thymine felt in terms of diminish performance. But if you ’ re wanting to use the Mac mini in a creative studio apartment or some early environment where you ’ ll very be pushing it harder than average, it might be better to wait until there are Apple silicon Macs with 32GB and beyond of mix memory .

AGREE TO CONTINUE: Mac mini (late 2020)

Every smart device now requires you to agree to a series of terms and conditions before you can use it — contracts that no one actually reads. It ’ s impossible for us to read and analyze every single one of these agreements. But we started counting precisely how many times you have to hit “ harmonize ” to use devices when we review them since these are agreements most people don ’ thymine read and decidedly can ’ t negotiate .
In regulate to get past the frame-up and actually use the Mac miniskirt, you are required to agree to :

The macOS software license agreement, which includes Apple’s warranty agreement and the Game Center terms and conditions.

These agreements are nonnegotiable, and you can not use the laptop at all if you don ’ t agree to them. There are besides several optional agreements, including :

Location services
Using an iCloud account adds iCloud Terms and Conditions and Find My location services.
Sending crash and usage data to Apple to help app developers
Allowing Apple to use your Siri transcripts to improve voice recognition
Apple Pay Terms and Conditions

The final run is three mandatary agreements and six optional ones .

That can credibly be said for high-end graphics, besides. Since the M1 Macs no longer support external GPUs, you ’ ll always be limited to the graphic horsepower you get out of the box. That ’ s absolutely adequate for photograph and 4K television edit, but the upper berth echelon of workloads might demand something more — which may warrant considering the Intel model and an eGPU .

The M1 Mac miniskirt is the first to include Wi-Fi 6, though unlike the Intel model, there ’ s no option for getting it with a 10Gbps Ethernet port — merely regular gigabit. But Wi-Fi performance has been very impregnable. And unlike the 2018 unit I owned for a few weeks back when it launched, this machine didn ’ t display any frustrating Bluetooth intervention issues. I ’ m not sure whether Apple shored those up over time with software updates or made hardware tweaks, but it ’ randomness nice to see them gone .
Spending a few days with the 2020 Mac mini has shown me that it ’ s a barnburner of a miniature desktop personal computer. It outperforms most Intel Macs in several benchmarks, runs apps faithfully, and offers a antic daily experience whether you ’ ra using it for vane browse and e-mail or for creative edit and professional work. That likely will only grow when Apple inescapably raises the RAM ceiling and ( hopefully ) brings back those missing USB ports. The $ 699 start monetary value is tempting, but most people will be better off upgrading to 16GB of coordinated memory, which puts you at $ 899. Doubling the default 256GB storehouse makes that cost rise higher to $ 1,099. But even then, the price-to-performance proportion for the Mac mini has never been better than with this conversion to Apple silicon. even if you ignore iPhone apps wholly, the transition is off to an impressive start considering precisely how smoothly everything comes together. And fair as ever, the Mac mini ’ second flexibility is what makes it special.

Update November 17th, 10:45AM ET: The review has been updated with more specifics on the mini ’ south might consumption .
photography by Chris Welch / The verge

source : https://cmcdistribution.com.vn/en
Category : Reviews