Apple Silicon Mac Mini Released: A Comprehensive Review and Comparison with Other Apple Machines

The latest addition to Apple's lineup is the M1 chip-based Mac Mini, designed to provide users with an affordable and powerful computing experience. In this article, we'll delve into the features, specifications, and performance of the new Mac Mini, as well as compare it with other popular Apple machines.

One of the most significant aspects of the Mac Mini is its ability to drive multiple displays. With one display connected via HDMI 2.0, users can enjoy up to 4K resolution at 60Hz. However, this comes with some limitations, as users can only connect a single 6K xDR Pro display using Thunderbolt. While this might not be a major issue for most users, it's worth noting that the Mac Mini is capable of handling more demanding tasks when connected to a dual-display setup.

The port selection on the back of the machine also differs from previous models. The main difference lies in the absence of two Thunderbolt ports and no 10Gigabit Ethernet option, replaced by Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5. These changes may be minor for some users, but they do highlight the Mac Mini's focus on compact design.

When it comes to pricing, the entry-level model offers a balance between performance and affordability. With 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, this configuration provides more than enough power for most users' needs. However, without a keyboard, mouse, or monitor included in the base price, users may need to factor these costs separately.

For our purposes, we've chosen the top-of-the-line model with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. This configuration will provide us with ample power for testing and benchmarking. Another machine that has caught our attention is the Mac Mini, which comes in an entry-level configuration. We're interested in comparing this to a higher-end Mac Mini with more powerful specifications, as well as other popular Apple machines.

To better understand the capabilities of the new Mac Mini, we've purchased one with the exact same specifications: 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. However, after ordering the machine, we found ourselves pondering whether we'd made the right choice by opting for a more powerful laptop instead. This decision was later influenced when one of our staff members was still using an eight-year-old Macbook Air.

For testing purposes, we've decided to upgrade that member of staff's machine with a new 15-inch Intel MacBook Pro. We'll be comparing the performance of the new Mac Mini to various other Apple machines, including the 2013 Mac Pro, 13-inch and 15-inch Intel MacBook Pros. Our goal is to identify where the Mac Mini excels and where it falls short.

As we explore the capabilities of the new Mac Mini, we'll focus on specific tests that showcase its real-world performance and limitations. Whether it's gaming, video editing, or general productivity tasks, we'll put this machine through its paces to determine whether it meets our expectations.

In addition to our internal testing, we've also gained access to a web studio full of various Apple computers, including the 2013 Mac Pro and other Intel-based machines. This will enable us to compare the performance of the Mac Mini against these machines, providing an even more comprehensive understanding of its capabilities.

The release of the M1 chip-based Mac Mini marks an exciting new chapter in Apple's history. With its impressive specs, compact design, and affordability, it has the potential to become a popular choice for users looking for a powerful yet portable computing experience. In this article, we'll delve into the details of this machine, comparing it with other popular Apple devices and exploring its capabilities through various tests and benchmarks.

To make informed purchasing decisions, it's essential to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each device. Our in-depth review of the Mac Mini will provide readers with a comprehensive understanding of this new addition to Apple's lineup, helping them decide whether it's the right choice for their needs.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso we've had the apple silicon announcement and apple has revealed three new macs that will be running the new m1 system on chip the question is which of these computers should you buy let's have a look at some of the specs and some of the differences and the pricing information and see whether or not we can come to some conclusions so we've got a macbook air with a fanless design we've got a new entry-level 13-inch macbook pro and a new mac mini to choose from and on the surface of it all of these machines have the same m1 system on chip now apple always said that the apple silicon would be a system on chip so that's your cpu your gpu your memory all on one one piece of silicon so in effect you could draw the conclusion that it's one computer in three different chassis is that the way we need to look at this when we're choosing one to buy well yes to some degree but also no let's start by looking at the macbook air there are some key differences with the macbook air that we need to be aware of so if we just go onto the apple website here let's just have a look at the tech specs and you'll notice that there are two price points we've got the 999 dollars again let's not do the 99 business we'll just call that a thousand and then one at 1250. uh you can have it in gold silver or space gray and the main difference between these two specifications at those two price points do you notice that the m1 chip on the entry-level thousand dollar model only has seven cores in the gpu not eight cores so apple is obviously binning their silicon or switching off individual cores so it could be that some of their production line doesn't quite meet the specifications so they switch off one of the cores and then put it into this entry level machine it could be that apple's holding it performance back as well deliberately just to even out the pricing across the range and it may well be that they're aiming to build more than eight cores in the cpu and gpu and they're switching some of those off and we'll get a future m1x processor when the yields get better i don't know the answer to that it's not my area of expertise but you just need to know that there is a difference between these two chips and it's very important to remember as well that there's no fan inside the macbook air now of course some would say that the existing macbook air with the intel chip doesn't have any active cooling either because the fan doesn't appear to be connected to the cpu in any meaningful way but this is definitely a completely fanless design and that means that it's not going to be able to sustain performance in the same way as the models with active cooling can could it be that these particular versions of the m1 chip are running at a lower wattage inside the macbook air don't have the answer to that until we test it but just something to be aware of if you want the best performance you're probably not going to get it from the new macbook air how much difference there is between the models that remains to be seen when it comes to battery life again your best performance is in the 13-inch macbook pro not the macbook air but it is still phenomenal battery life 15 hours wireless web 18 hours of movie playback that's pretty impressive just like the intel version of the macbook air you're only getting two ports on the left hand side thunderbolt 3 or usb4 ports if you're not familiar with that usb4 is based on the thunderbolt 3 specification hence the the two different names there so it will support thunderbolt 3 up to 40 gigabits a second and it will support usb up to 10 gigabits a second you can charge with either port and it also has display port output for one display and you can drive an external display at up to 6k resolution and 60 frames per second or 60 hertz so that's pretty impressive most people won't need to use more than one external monitor if you need two external monitors for your laptop you're going to have to go with one of the intel macbooks let's look at memory here and my comments on memory will apply to each of the three computers because each of them comes with eight gigabytes as standard again lots of people uh find that unacceptable but just bear in mind though that we don't know how the apple silicon is using ram yet do we need to think about ram in a different way to how we currently do with x86 systems bear in mind that when they were doing the demos for the event they were showing some fairly heavyweight video editing uh being conducted by these machines kind of editing that you'd expect an x86 machine with at least 32 gigabytes of ram to be doing but you can't spec up to 32 geeks you can only go up to 16. so that to me might indicate that these system-on-chips can do more with less ram so maybe we need to adjust our perspective on that bear in mind too that the ipad pro which of course is using apple silicon in the ipad form is capable of doing an awful lot with just six gigabytes of ram and some of those other ipad models have even less you know three or four gigabytes of ram and they achieve some amazing things with that amount of memory so perhaps we just need to adjust our mindset that said i'd still be cautious about buying one of these machines and not upgrading it to 16 gigabytes i think eight gigabytes is fine for a macbook air but i think if you're buying the macbook pro or the mac mini you probably would want to consider a 16 gigabyte option again another difference between these two models is the storage so you get 256 gig in the thousand dollar model and 512 gig in the 1250 model just a couple of other things to mention it's still got a touch id sensor it's wi-fi six bluetooth five the webcam is still 720p but you're getting some extra image refinement from the machine learning on the m1 we spoke about the single display output you've got stereo speakers they're not the greatest they're certainly best in class for this kind of ultrabook but they're not as good as those that are in the macbook pros there's a three mic array which is going to really help with your video conferencing which all of us are having to do now so let's have a look at the pricing if we go over to the the purchase page have a look let's select the entry level model and you notice we can specify that additional ram for another 200 i don't think i would ever do that on the base specification you do have the option as well to go up to 512 gigs of storage and if you do that it essentially makes it a very similar spec to the hundred and fifty dollar version but at fifty dollars less and that fifty dollars difference is paying for that one additional gpu core so you need to decide whether that's worth fifty dollars to you or not i would say it probably isn't uh it probably won't make that much difference to the way that most people would use a laptop like this where it will make a difference is when you come to sell on your laptop uh it'll obviously be worth more money if it's got that additional gpu call if you're the type of person that uses a laptop for years until it dies and can't be used anymore then the resale value is not going to be important to you but if you regularly upgrade your machine if you're buying this particular apple silicon as a stop gap against future apple silicon then the resale value is going to be important and should factor into your considerations i don't think i would personally do anything to the entry-level macbook air i just leave it at the standard spec it's a thousand dollar notebook that's fine you know it's got plenty of performance for a thousand dollar notebook of this particular form factor and this build quality if you particularly want the macbook air but you want to spec it up a bit then go for the 1250 version you're gonna get 512 gigs of storage which is a great start you've got the option to put the extra 16 gigs of ram in and you're getting the full eight core gpu and the total cost for that with 16 gigs of ram is going to be 1450 which is more than the starting price of the macbook pro 13 inch so let's have a look at that one now it's important to remember that there were previously two versions of the 13-inch macbook pro in fact there still is two versions which i'll explain in a minute there was the two port version and the four port version and they're different in more than just the number of ports that they have on board the four port version has an additional woofer so it has better speakers better sound quality it also has an extra cooling fan so the cooling system is more advanced and able to you know provide much better thermal performance apple are using the two port chassis here and they've replaced the existing macbook pro 13-inch 2-port intel model so you can't get that one anymore from the apple store likewise i should have said with the macbook air that has also replaced the intel macbook air so let's just have a quick look at the tech specs of the macbook pro what are you getting in addition to the price of the macbook air the screen is essentially the same you're getting that m1 chip with the full eight core gpu but critically it's attached to a cooling system and a fan so it's going to be able to sustain more performance if you're looking to do photo editing video editing anything where you're going to be working on the machine for a long period of time and driving it hard then you're probably going to want a machine with some cooling in it so that you can maintain that performance so i would expect the macbook pro 13 inch will outperform the macbook air despite having the same chip inside you'll notice that the battery performance is better on the macbook pro you're up to 17 hours wireless web 20 hours movie playback again it's 8 gigs of ram the first thing i would do is upgrade that you can't upgrade it later you need to do it at the time of purchase and i would definitely be putting 16 gigabytes into any machine with a pro label one the only difference between these two price points is the amount of storage you can spec up the cheaper model up to 512 gigs it doesn't save you any money it will come out at the same price again you've got two usb 4 or thunderbolt 3 ports this is no different to the outgoing intel version of the 2 port macbook pro 13 inch obviously you're getting that magic keyboard again now you're getting a touch bar in addition to the fingerprint sensor whether or not the touch bar is important to you will depend on your workflow wi-fi 6 bluetooth 5 and again a 720p facetime camera one external display at 6k resolution up to 60hz that's specifically been designed to so that you can use apple's ludicrously expensive xdr display for most of us i mean i use a 4k screen here i'm going to be able to plug in my 4k screen to one of these machines and run it at 60hz i'm perfectly happy with that i imagine most consumers will be happy with that i think the fact that it only supports this one display is slightly telling it probably indicates that the m1 system on chip has a limited number of pci express lanes compared to its intel counterparts and that may expose other limitations in the system you'll notice here that it says stereo speakers with high dynamic range it doesn't say that on the macbook air so they're superior quality speakers that's always been my experience just before we go to look at the pricing you'll see that you can still buy the intel version it's more expensive and this is only the four port model so the apple silicon has just completely replaced that intel two port version of the macbook pro 13 inch so if we go through to the purchase page and i'll just pick the the cheap one because it doesn't really make any difference how are you going to spec it up well you've got to choose the 16 gigs of ram it's a pro machine surely you're going to want to have that that's going to push you up on the the base model up to 1500 now this question is storage again you need to choose how much you want on the machine because it's soldered onto the board you can't change it later it's also tied to the secure enclave so in the same way as intel macs have their ssds tied to the t2 chip it's the same story with the m1 max so if the ssd dies and you haven't got the the password or you know it's a trip back to apple basically it's non-repairable i've got into the habit actually of not storing anything of use on my macbook pro i will always use external drives in fact i favor these um samsung t5 drives they're not the fastest drives in the world but they're fast enough for everything i do and if that's not quick enough of course you can get thunderbolt external storage and that in the long term is much cheaper than specking up the storage inside your macbook where it is useful is to have working space so i do actually have a one terabyte ssd in my intel macbook pro and that says that i've got space to copy files around and you know transport files between the studio and home and that can be really useful just to have that working space but i only did that because i got a cheap deal on it and that's been discussed in another video so should you upgrade the storage only you can answer that uh if you do go up to say 512 with 16 gigs of ram you're at 1700 just 100 less than the intel version of this computer and i would expect that the m1 version will have more performance on offer than the intel version generally speaking but there will be specific things that only the intel version can do if you want to run windows you need an intel mac don't expect to be running windows or any kind of windows apps or windows in a virtual machine even on the m1 equipped max so those are the two laptops let's have a look now at the mac mini and i think arguably this is the most exciting of the three it's the one where they actually drop the price of entry it's at 699 dollars you can still get an intel version of the mac mini and this is eleven hundred dollars for a mac mini with a six core i5 in it and eight gigs of ram 512 storage and you get these intel uhd graphics 630. that is not a good graphics chip you anybody who's got one of these mac minis will know that you can't do any serious graphical work with it but it does support connecting up to three displays and we're not going to be able to do that with the new m1 mac mini i just wanted to have a look at the ports on the existing mac mini because quite a few people have been saying that apple has been taking away lots of ports and that you're getting much less io with the new mac mini so just bear in mind we're looking at the intel mac mini at the moment you see it's got ethernet and it has the 100 option of going up to 10 gigabit ethernet you don't have that option with the m1 based mac mini it's just one gigabit ethernet you'll notice on the intel version we have four thunderbolt 3 ports on the new m1 version there are two thunderbolt 3 or usb 4 ports there's an hdmi 2.0 two usb a's and a headphone jack and that is exactly the same then on the m1 mac mini i've seen a few people say well apple have taken away the sd card slot as well well yes they have but they already had done that with the intel version of this mac mini so let's go and look at the the m1 version you see again we're getting that eight core cpu eight core gpu and this is attached to a fan yes it's still a mobile chassis in effect the mac mini always use mobile components it's not a full desktop grade machine but it's got a big fan in there it's connected to the mains all the time i'd have thought that it's going to probably give the best performance out of all three we'll have to test that but that's my expectation so if you want this you want to try out the m1 and see what its performance is like this is your cheapest point of entry again it's eight gigs of ram i guess if you're just looking for a cheap home machine then eight gigs of ram might be okay i think anyone looking to do anything serious should upgrade to 16 gigabytes again so again the the two pricing options are just 200 difference between them and that 200 is the price of the ssd upgrade so you can spec it again 256 twelve one terabyte or two terabytes you'll notice that it says it can simultaneously support up to two displays you could be forgiven for thinking that it's better in some way than the chip that's in the the two laptops but of course the laptops already have a screen on board so they are also driving two displays and the way that the mac mini is going to do it is that you need to connect one of the displays to the hdmi 2.0 so you can only go up to 4k at 60 hertz with that connector but you can then also again do a display up to 6k at 60hz via the thunderbolt i'd have thought for most people buying a mac mini being able to drive two 4k displays that's absolutely fine most people would be happy with that i don't imagine there's a huge number of mini users that are plugging into the 6k xdr pro display if we look at the ports then on the back of the machine yes you can see that the main difference is that there are two less thunderbolt ports and of course there's no 10 gigabit ethernet option again there's wi-fi six on board and bluetooth five so let's just go and have a look at the pricing so if we choose well i may as well just choose this entry level one what's your choice in pricing i would say for a desktop machine you know if it's on your desktop it's very easy to have you know a couple of these external drives hidden away around the back of the machine somewhere so why spend loads of money on internal storage depends on your workflow you could just put it up to 16 gigs of ram with 256 gig of storage and for 900 dollars that's going to be a pretty capable machine you don't get a keyboard you don't get a mouse or a track pad so you've got to you know pay for those separately you don't get a monitor with it so if you don't already have all of those things then you're probably better off going for a macbook pro so there you go there's the three machines and some of the basic differences between them now i've said that i was going to get a machine to to use on the channel and to do some testing you know i thought long and hard about this before the macs were released so i had an idea of what i would go for what i was keen to do was to make sure i tried the most powerful option that is available i've bought a mac mini with this exact specification 16 gigs of ram and 256 gigabytes of storage it's going to be fine for my testing purposes whether or not i will keep that as a machine long term is another question but certainly it'd be interesting to test it um but after i'd ordered that and i did order it immediately after the event um the following day i was sort of thinking well perhaps i made the wrong choice perhaps i should have gone from for a laptop so that you know i could because i think a lot of people who are buying this are going to buy laptops not mac minis so i want my content to be useful um as it happens one of our members of staff is still using um an eight-year-old macbook air so we'll upgrade that member of staff so i've bought a macbook air as well and when thinking about the specification for the macbook air i thought what is going to be the most interesting specification to choose and i think it's the entry level specification i want to see what difference that lack of gpu core makes i'd like to see what difference there is between 16 gigs and 8 gigs of ram i feel that those two machines gives me a bit more scope for testing so that's what i've bought that's what you can expect to see coming on the channel i'm going to test the the mac mini against my 2013 mac pro i'm going to test it against my 13-inch intel macbook pro i'm going to test it against a 15-inch intel macbook pro maybe even a 16-inch mac pro i'm going to test uh you know what else have i got access to i mean we've got a web studio full of different types of apple computers so i can test it against many of these things and try and find where it fits what i'm most interested in of course is it's real world performance and i said this in my last video so we'll look for specific tests that we can do to show what this machine is capable of and where does it fall short hopefully that will help anybody who hasn't gone out and bought one yet to make a more informed choice about whether you buy apple silicon now or whether you're gonna wait until next year and see whether they work out some of these kinks and limitations so i hope you found this video useful um please subscribe to the channel because there'll be plenty more apple silicon content to come uh hopefully i did enough to earn a thumbs up or a thumbs down if that's your thing but in any case see you next time for some more geekery youso we've had the apple silicon announcement and apple has revealed three new macs that will be running the new m1 system on chip the question is which of these computers should you buy let's have a look at some of the specs and some of the differences and the pricing information and see whether or not we can come to some conclusions so we've got a macbook air with a fanless design we've got a new entry-level 13-inch macbook pro and a new mac mini to choose from and on the surface of it all of these machines have the same m1 system on chip now apple always said that the apple silicon would be a system on chip so that's your cpu your gpu your memory all on one one piece of silicon so in effect you could draw the conclusion that it's one computer in three different chassis is that the way we need to look at this when we're choosing one to buy well yes to some degree but also no let's start by looking at the macbook air there are some key differences with the macbook air that we need to be aware of so if we just go onto the apple website here let's just have a look at the tech specs and you'll notice that there are two price points we've got the 999 dollars again let's not do the 99 business we'll just call that a thousand and then one at 1250. uh you can have it in gold silver or space gray and the main difference between these two specifications at those two price points do you notice that the m1 chip on the entry-level thousand dollar model only has seven cores in the gpu not eight cores so apple is obviously binning their silicon or switching off individual cores so it could be that some of their production line doesn't quite meet the specifications so they switch off one of the cores and then put it into this entry level machine it could be that apple's holding it performance back as well deliberately just to even out the pricing across the range and it may well be that they're aiming to build more than eight cores in the cpu and gpu and they're switching some of those off and we'll get a future m1x processor when the yields get better i don't know the answer to that it's not my area of expertise but you just need to know that there is a difference between these two chips and it's very important to remember as well that there's no fan inside the macbook air now of course some would say that the existing macbook air with the intel chip doesn't have any active cooling either because the fan doesn't appear to be connected to the cpu in any meaningful way but this is definitely a completely fanless design and that means that it's not going to be able to sustain performance in the same way as the models with active cooling can could it be that these particular versions of the m1 chip are running at a lower wattage inside the macbook air don't have the answer to that until we test it but just something to be aware of if you want the best performance you're probably not going to get it from the new macbook air how much difference there is between the models that remains to be seen when it comes to battery life again your best performance is in the 13-inch macbook pro not the macbook air but it is still phenomenal battery life 15 hours wireless web 18 hours of movie playback that's pretty impressive just like the intel version of the macbook air you're only getting two ports on the left hand side thunderbolt 3 or usb4 ports if you're not familiar with that usb4 is based on the thunderbolt 3 specification hence the the two different names there so it will support thunderbolt 3 up to 40 gigabits a second and it will support usb up to 10 gigabits a second you can charge with either port and it also has display port output for one display and you can drive an external display at up to 6k resolution and 60 frames per second or 60 hertz so that's pretty impressive most people won't need to use more than one external monitor if you need two external monitors for your laptop you're going to have to go with one of the intel macbooks let's look at memory here and my comments on memory will apply to each of the three computers because each of them comes with eight gigabytes as standard again lots of people uh find that unacceptable but just bear in mind though that we don't know how the apple silicon is using ram yet do we need to think about ram in a different way to how we currently do with x86 systems bear in mind that when they were doing the demos for the event they were showing some fairly heavyweight video editing uh being conducted by these machines kind of editing that you'd expect an x86 machine with at least 32 gigabytes of ram to be doing but you can't spec up to 32 geeks you can only go up to 16. so that to me might indicate that these system-on-chips can do more with less ram so maybe we need to adjust our perspective on that bear in mind too that the ipad pro which of course is using apple silicon in the ipad form is capable of doing an awful lot with just six gigabytes of ram and some of those other ipad models have even less you know three or four gigabytes of ram and they achieve some amazing things with that amount of memory so perhaps we just need to adjust our mindset that said i'd still be cautious about buying one of these machines and not upgrading it to 16 gigabytes i think eight gigabytes is fine for a macbook air but i think if you're buying the macbook pro or the mac mini you probably would want to consider a 16 gigabyte option again another difference between these two models is the storage so you get 256 gig in the thousand dollar model and 512 gig in the 1250 model just a couple of other things to mention it's still got a touch id sensor it's wi-fi six bluetooth five the webcam is still 720p but you're getting some extra image refinement from the machine learning on the m1 we spoke about the single display output you've got stereo speakers they're not the greatest they're certainly best in class for this kind of ultrabook but they're not as good as those that are in the macbook pros there's a three mic array which is going to really help with your video conferencing which all of us are having to do now so let's have a look at the pricing if we go over to the the purchase page have a look let's select the entry level model and you notice we can specify that additional ram for another 200 i don't think i would ever do that on the base specification you do have the option as well to go up to 512 gigs of storage and if you do that it essentially makes it a very similar spec to the hundred and fifty dollar version but at fifty dollars less and that fifty dollars difference is paying for that one additional gpu core so you need to decide whether that's worth fifty dollars to you or not i would say it probably isn't uh it probably won't make that much difference to the way that most people would use a laptop like this where it will make a difference is when you come to sell on your laptop uh it'll obviously be worth more money if it's got that additional gpu call if you're the type of person that uses a laptop for years until it dies and can't be used anymore then the resale value is not going to be important to you but if you regularly upgrade your machine if you're buying this particular apple silicon as a stop gap against future apple silicon then the resale value is going to be important and should factor into your considerations i don't think i would personally do anything to the entry-level macbook air i just leave it at the standard spec it's a thousand dollar notebook that's fine you know it's got plenty of performance for a thousand dollar notebook of this particular form factor and this build quality if you particularly want the macbook air but you want to spec it up a bit then go for the 1250 version you're gonna get 512 gigs of storage which is a great start you've got the option to put the extra 16 gigs of ram in and you're getting the full eight core gpu and the total cost for that with 16 gigs of ram is going to be 1450 which is more than the starting price of the macbook pro 13 inch so let's have a look at that one now it's important to remember that there were previously two versions of the 13-inch macbook pro in fact there still is two versions which i'll explain in a minute there was the two port version and the four port version and they're different in more than just the number of ports that they have on board the four port version has an additional woofer so it has better speakers better sound quality it also has an extra cooling fan so the cooling system is more advanced and able to you know provide much better thermal performance apple are using the two port chassis here and they've replaced the existing macbook pro 13-inch 2-port intel model so you can't get that one anymore from the apple store likewise i should have said with the macbook air that has also replaced the intel macbook air so let's just have a quick look at the tech specs of the macbook pro what are you getting in addition to the price of the macbook air the screen is essentially the same you're getting that m1 chip with the full eight core gpu but critically it's attached to a cooling system and a fan so it's going to be able to sustain more performance if you're looking to do photo editing video editing anything where you're going to be working on the machine for a long period of time and driving it hard then you're probably going to want a machine with some cooling in it so that you can maintain that performance so i would expect the macbook pro 13 inch will outperform the macbook air despite having the same chip inside you'll notice that the battery performance is better on the macbook pro you're up to 17 hours wireless web 20 hours movie playback again it's 8 gigs of ram the first thing i would do is upgrade that you can't upgrade it later you need to do it at the time of purchase and i would definitely be putting 16 gigabytes into any machine with a pro label one the only difference between these two price points is the amount of storage you can spec up the cheaper model up to 512 gigs it doesn't save you any money it will come out at the same price again you've got two usb 4 or thunderbolt 3 ports this is no different to the outgoing intel version of the 2 port macbook pro 13 inch obviously you're getting that magic keyboard again now you're getting a touch bar in addition to the fingerprint sensor whether or not the touch bar is important to you will depend on your workflow wi-fi 6 bluetooth 5 and again a 720p facetime camera one external display at 6k resolution up to 60hz that's specifically been designed to so that you can use apple's ludicrously expensive xdr display for most of us i mean i use a 4k screen here i'm going to be able to plug in my 4k screen to one of these machines and run it at 60hz i'm perfectly happy with that i imagine most consumers will be happy with that i think the fact that it only supports this one display is slightly telling it probably indicates that the m1 system on chip has a limited number of pci express lanes compared to its intel counterparts and that may expose other limitations in the system you'll notice here that it says stereo speakers with high dynamic range it doesn't say that on the macbook air so they're superior quality speakers that's always been my experience just before we go to look at the pricing you'll see that you can still buy the intel version it's more expensive and this is only the four port model so the apple silicon has just completely replaced that intel two port version of the macbook pro 13 inch so if we go through to the purchase page and i'll just pick the the cheap one because it doesn't really make any difference how are you going to spec it up well you've got to choose the 16 gigs of ram it's a pro machine surely you're going to want to have that that's going to push you up on the the base model up to 1500 now this question is storage again you need to choose how much you want on the machine because it's soldered onto the board you can't change it later it's also tied to the secure enclave so in the same way as intel macs have their ssds tied to the t2 chip it's the same story with the m1 max so if the ssd dies and you haven't got the the password or you know it's a trip back to apple basically it's non-repairable i've got into the habit actually of not storing anything of use on my macbook pro i will always use external drives in fact i favor these um samsung t5 drives they're not the fastest drives in the world but they're fast enough for everything i do and if that's not quick enough of course you can get thunderbolt external storage and that in the long term is much cheaper than specking up the storage inside your macbook where it is useful is to have working space so i do actually have a one terabyte ssd in my intel macbook pro and that says that i've got space to copy files around and you know transport files between the studio and home and that can be really useful just to have that working space but i only did that because i got a cheap deal on it and that's been discussed in another video so should you upgrade the storage only you can answer that uh if you do go up to say 512 with 16 gigs of ram you're at 1700 just 100 less than the intel version of this computer and i would expect that the m1 version will have more performance on offer than the intel version generally speaking but there will be specific things that only the intel version can do if you want to run windows you need an intel mac don't expect to be running windows or any kind of windows apps or windows in a virtual machine even on the m1 equipped max so those are the two laptops let's have a look now at the mac mini and i think arguably this is the most exciting of the three it's the one where they actually drop the price of entry it's at 699 dollars you can still get an intel version of the mac mini and this is eleven hundred dollars for a mac mini with a six core i5 in it and eight gigs of ram 512 storage and you get these intel uhd graphics 630. that is not a good graphics chip you anybody who's got one of these mac minis will know that you can't do any serious graphical work with it but it does support connecting up to three displays and we're not going to be able to do that with the new m1 mac mini i just wanted to have a look at the ports on the existing mac mini because quite a few people have been saying that apple has been taking away lots of ports and that you're getting much less io with the new mac mini so just bear in mind we're looking at the intel mac mini at the moment you see it's got ethernet and it has the 100 option of going up to 10 gigabit ethernet you don't have that option with the m1 based mac mini it's just one gigabit ethernet you'll notice on the intel version we have four thunderbolt 3 ports on the new m1 version there are two thunderbolt 3 or usb 4 ports there's an hdmi 2.0 two usb a's and a headphone jack and that is exactly the same then on the m1 mac mini i've seen a few people say well apple have taken away the sd card slot as well well yes they have but they already had done that with the intel version of this mac mini so let's go and look at the the m1 version you see again we're getting that eight core cpu eight core gpu and this is attached to a fan yes it's still a mobile chassis in effect the mac mini always use mobile components it's not a full desktop grade machine but it's got a big fan in there it's connected to the mains all the time i'd have thought that it's going to probably give the best performance out of all three we'll have to test that but that's my expectation so if you want this you want to try out the m1 and see what its performance is like this is your cheapest point of entry again it's eight gigs of ram i guess if you're just looking for a cheap home machine then eight gigs of ram might be okay i think anyone looking to do anything serious should upgrade to 16 gigabytes again so again the the two pricing options are just 200 difference between them and that 200 is the price of the ssd upgrade so you can spec it again 256 twelve one terabyte or two terabytes you'll notice that it says it can simultaneously support up to two displays you could be forgiven for thinking that it's better in some way than the chip that's in the the two laptops but of course the laptops already have a screen on board so they are also driving two displays and the way that the mac mini is going to do it is that you need to connect one of the displays to the hdmi 2.0 so you can only go up to 4k at 60 hertz with that connector but you can then also again do a display up to 6k at 60hz via the thunderbolt i'd have thought for most people buying a mac mini being able to drive two 4k displays that's absolutely fine most people would be happy with that i don't imagine there's a huge number of mini users that are plugging into the 6k xdr pro display if we look at the ports then on the back of the machine yes you can see that the main difference is that there are two less thunderbolt ports and of course there's no 10 gigabit ethernet option again there's wi-fi six on board and bluetooth five so let's just go and have a look at the pricing so if we choose well i may as well just choose this entry level one what's your choice in pricing i would say for a desktop machine you know if it's on your desktop it's very easy to have you know a couple of these external drives hidden away around the back of the machine somewhere so why spend loads of money on internal storage depends on your workflow you could just put it up to 16 gigs of ram with 256 gig of storage and for 900 dollars that's going to be a pretty capable machine you don't get a keyboard you don't get a mouse or a track pad so you've got to you know pay for those separately you don't get a monitor with it so if you don't already have all of those things then you're probably better off going for a macbook pro so there you go there's the three machines and some of the basic differences between them now i've said that i was going to get a machine to to use on the channel and to do some testing you know i thought long and hard about this before the macs were released so i had an idea of what i would go for what i was keen to do was to make sure i tried the most powerful option that is available i've bought a mac mini with this exact specification 16 gigs of ram and 256 gigabytes of storage it's going to be fine for my testing purposes whether or not i will keep that as a machine long term is another question but certainly it'd be interesting to test it um but after i'd ordered that and i did order it immediately after the event um the following day i was sort of thinking well perhaps i made the wrong choice perhaps i should have gone from for a laptop so that you know i could because i think a lot of people who are buying this are going to buy laptops not mac minis so i want my content to be useful um as it happens one of our members of staff is still using um an eight-year-old macbook air so we'll upgrade that member of staff so i've bought a macbook air as well and when thinking about the specification for the macbook air i thought what is going to be the most interesting specification to choose and i think it's the entry level specification i want to see what difference that lack of gpu core makes i'd like to see what difference there is between 16 gigs and 8 gigs of ram i feel that those two machines gives me a bit more scope for testing so that's what i've bought that's what you can expect to see coming on the channel i'm going to test the the mac mini against my 2013 mac pro i'm going to test it against my 13-inch intel macbook pro i'm going to test it against a 15-inch intel macbook pro maybe even a 16-inch mac pro i'm going to test uh you know what else have i got access to i mean we've got a web studio full of different types of apple computers so i can test it against many of these things and try and find where it fits what i'm most interested in of course is it's real world performance and i said this in my last video so we'll look for specific tests that we can do to show what this machine is capable of and where does it fall short hopefully that will help anybody who hasn't gone out and bought one yet to make a more informed choice about whether you buy apple silicon now or whether you're gonna wait until next year and see whether they work out some of these kinks and limitations so i hope you found this video useful um please subscribe to the channel because there'll be plenty more apple silicon content to come uh hopefully i did enough to earn a thumbs up or a thumbs down if that's your thing but in any case see you next time for some more geekery you\n"