Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Should you get the cheapest Mac?”.
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 six hundred dollars 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 did find one thing out, though, but it probably won’t matter to you. It does to me 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 all right. Hi, hey come on in. Thank you yeah thanks. So would you consider yourself an average person average in what sense the average computer user, maybe yeah? Oh yeah, I play video games, do Zoom calls for class and I do my homework like yeah. 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? Um, I’m using this one right here 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.
I was thinking a little bit of disappointment in the computer. Well, okay, here’s the thing: um! Yes, yeah, okay, yeah yeah! 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 gon na! 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 two thousand dollars 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 gon na 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 forty dollars 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 dollars and while it’s not the most clean setup on the desk, remember that terrible iMac I bought from the refurbished store last year that was 890, and I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone which is way better, okay, we’re ready for you yeah! So we set up, I got ta, get a profile set up for you, we’ll log in here we got the new Resident Evil game. Installs, wait really yeah. What she did say you want to play so give give it a go. No, I never thought I’d actually like okay, you never thought you’d actually play the thing. Is I’m like a coward? So, oh, I know me too me too.
So what do you think 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 uh? This is a bit of a controversy.
Yeah um 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 Lightroom and speeds through 4K prores footage in Final Cut and, yes, it can handle gaming like War, Thunder they’re.
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So if you’re, a big multi-tasker 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 dollars, 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 yeah? No, I I didn’t have any problems with it. What were some of the first things you installed in 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 Mac OS version of it right. I 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, so it seems like you’re a bit of a gamer which Macs aren’t really good for. Are they I don’t know um? I wanted to download things like Ark survival evolved. That’S just simply couldn’t get it to work, wasn’t able to find one that was able to work with uh. 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 like 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 of Mac OS, but why not? Just get a gaming console, the thing is I: I didn’t really grow up with a console like. 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? Oh, how much do I think Apple sells it yeah like if you go, if you were to go on the website, what would be the price listed underneath a picture of the Mac Mini approximately three grand? Maybe three grand yeah wow? It’S 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 1500? Maybe okay, okay, so the actual retail price is 600 us or 800 Canadian? Really wow, okay! Well, that’s that’s surprising. I will be completely honest. Really is this like this is like a new computer, though brand new just came out last month, so does that sort of changed the calculus for you much more doable, I’m still gon na buy it though it looks 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 uh 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 and stuff said, but yeah. It’S simply not the right or wrong choice for everyone. I guess I’m not going to win you over a don’t, try, Alexis’s 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 an arm, you can’t rely on boot camp for apps and games not available on the Mac and developers now need to put more effort into Port, their PC games to Apples chips and Apis, the results can be amazing, but with fewer than three percent of steam users on Mac OS – 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 Max go from there, though, we clearly differ. She feels inconvenienced by staying on Mac OS, whereas moving to Windows would inconvenience me what the ultimately. I think the real question is: if Mac OS 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. Uh 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 six hundred dollars 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 Max with eight gigabytes of RAM, have you pushed it to the limits and, if so, how? .