*** The official late 2020 Mac mini thread (it has the M1 chip and everything!) ***

So what’s the verdict on these? Sold my AIO pc over Christmas as got a good price for it so looking to replace it with something.

Main use is web browsing, YouTube / twitch and doing my eBay stuff. Very basic photo editing mainly just cropping and auto adjusting colour balance etc with windows Live Photo editor.

photos all from iPhone, was transferring using a app to windows but guess that would all be auto synced if I went with a mac.

Is 8GB plenty for my use case? Looking at the cheapest option with 256gb / 8Gb as don’t need a lot of storage space as have a large 20tb external drive.

Any monitor recommendation?

Will my normal k&m work fine or should I get the magic k&m?
 
Craterloads said:
So what’s the verdict on these? Sold my AIO pc over Christmas as got a good price for it so looking to replace it with something.

Main use is web browsing, YouTube / twitch and doing my eBay stuff. Very basic photo editing mainly just cropping and auto adjusting colour balance etc with windows Live Photo editor.

photos all from iPhone, was transferring using a app to windows but guess that would all be auto synced if I went with a mac.

Is 8GB plenty for my use case? Looking at the cheapest option with 256gb / 8Gb as don’t need a lot of storage space as have a large 20tb external drive.

Any monitor recommendation?

Will my normal k&m work fine or should I get the magic k&m?
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I can't speak for the 8GB RAM requirement, as I got a 16GB/512GB model, but the machine is fast and deals with everything I throw at it really well.

For general web browsing, basic video editing (in DaVinci Resolve 17), listening to music, playing Cities Skylines etc. it has been wonderful.

I'm impressed how quickly it renders content in Resolve, despite not having a dedicated graphics card.

Screenshot-2021-01-01-at-13-09-15.png


Here is my RAM use with Word, Mountain Duck, Safari, Chrome, 1Password etc open.

Looking at the reviews, I think for your purposes, 8GB would do (the HD swap looks like it is extremely fast), the only reason I didn't go for this, is I like to try and get as much life out of my machines as possible, so I plan on holding on to this for a good number of years.

I have the magic keyboard (with numpad) and I like it a lot. I don't like the magic mouse, so I have a Logi MX Master 3, which I love. The only issue I had is that I couldn't connect either of them via bluetooth to set up the machine, I had to use an old wired mouse and plug in the magic keyboard... not sure what was up there or what I was doing wrong.
 
LiE said:
@Craterloads a base Mini would handle your usage easily.

I’m a fan of the magic keyboard, but use Logitech mice.

For a monitor go with a 4K 27” LG or Dell and run in scaled mode to give 2560x1440.
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squawkBOX said:
I can't speak for the 8GB RAM requirement, as I got a 16GB/512GB model, but the machine is fast and deals with everything I throw at it really well.

For general web browsing, basic video editing (in DaVinci Resolve 17), listening to music, playing Cities Skylines etc. it has been wonderful.

I'm impressed how quickly it renders content in Resolve, despite not having a dedicated graphics card.

Screenshot-2021-01-01-at-13-09-15.png


Here is my RAM use with Word, Mountain Duck, Safari, Chrome, 1Password etc open.

Looking at the reviews, I think for your purposes, 8GB would do (the HD swap looks like it is extremely fast), the only reason I didn't go for this, is I like to try and get as much life out of my machines as possible, so I plan on holding on to this for a good number of years.

I have the magic keyboard (with numpad) and I like it a lot. I don't like the magic mouse, so I have a Logi MX Master 3, which I love. The only issue I had is that I couldn't connect either of them via bluetooth to set up the machine, I had to use an old wired mouse and plug in the magic keyboard... not sure what was up there or what I was doing wrong.
Click to expand...

thanks for the replies.

think 8Gb will be enough, whilst 16gb would be better it’s a considerable price increase.

At most I’ll have a game of hearthstone
running or similar with some chrome tabs / videos in background which isn’t a great deal.


Currently weighing up the Mac mini + monitor option to a 24” HP Amd 4600H AIO / 27” Lenovo intel 10400T AIO.

these both come in around £600 all in, same as a Mac mini standalone (student pricing)

so monitor would be an additional cost.
 
I'm in a similar situation. I do a reasonable amount of photo editing in lightroom but other than that use my pc for nothing other than browsing or my kids logging in for school work currently. Only thing holding me off trying IOS over PC is if this will handle photo editing or get bogged down.
 
IronSpider said:
I'm in a similar situation. I do a reasonable amount of photo editing in lightroom but other than that use my pc for nothing other than browsing or my kids logging in for school work currently. Only thing holding me off trying IOS over PC is if this will handle photo editing or get bogged down.
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You do realise it’s perfect for photo editing?! It wipes the floor with pretty much any other device
 
Alpherah said:
You do realise it’s perfect for photo editing?! It wipes the floor with pretty much any other device
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No I've been working my way through videos on youtube but never used a Mac for editing and was wondering how it would perform. I quite like the idea as all my other devices are IOS devices, watches/phones/tablets etc and I don't play games. I quite like the idea of how small these are.
 
IronSpider said:
No I've been working my way through videos on youtube but never used a Mac for editing and was wondering how it would perform. I quite like the idea as all my other devices are IOS devices, watches/phones/tablets etc and I don't play games. I quite like the idea of how small these are.
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Full embracing the eco-system can be a wonderful thing.
 
How do these M1 macs handle external devices? For example I'd want to connect my sound blaster x7 USB to it....built in drivers? Do ANY mac drivers off manufacturers website work? I'm not sure now given the arm nature of the os.
 
Combat squirrel said:
How do these M1 macs handle external devices? For example I'd want to connect my sound blaster x7 USB to it....built in drivers? Do ANY mac drivers off manufacturers website work? I'm not sure now given the arm nature of the os.
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Anything that needs a system extension installed will need the manufacturer to have sorted an Apple Silicon native version. My DAC as well as my other external devices have all worked fine, with the exception of my eGPU enclosure which I already knew wouldn’t be supported.
 
Not sure if the external monitor thing has been sorted with an update yet but if you’re feeling super flush LG have announced an OLED monitor - the 4K 31.5” UltraFine Pro monitor and a 5K2K ultra-wide IPS monitor.
 
I know crystal balls don’t come cheap these days, but I’m thinking of getting a Mac Mini and wouldn’t like to find it immediately superseded by an M2 with twice the cores. Is the Mini ever likely to be offered with the (potential) improved versions of M1 rumoured to come in the iMacs, or will it always be entry level? It’s unlikely I’ll ever play games on it, but if D4 ever comes to Macs I’d like the chance to try it out.
 
Squink said:
I know crystal balls don’t come cheap these days, but I’m thinking of getting a Mac Mini and wouldn’t like to find it immediately superseded by an M2 with twice the cores. Is the Mini ever likely to be offered with the (potential) improved versions of M1 rumoured to come in the iMacs, or will it always be entry level? It’s unlikely I’ll ever play games on it, but if D4 ever comes to Macs I’d like the chance to try it out.
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My expectation is that the MM will get a better, bigger chip, Apple didn't discontinue the Intel MM. They still sell them as their higher end model and I expect those will be replaced by a higher end Apple Silicon MM. I also expect this to come fast as these MMs are heavily used by software developers and they would seriously appreciate more cores and more ram and Apple needs them to push the ecosystem ahead as fast as possible. So maybe it will be with M1X (or whatever chip ends up in the 16-inch MBP or the smaller iMac) rather than M2 which likely comes for the holiday season.

It's been 3 months since Apple launched M1-based Macs and we still have 1-4 months until we see new products, so it's the dilemma of a mid-cycle purchase for you.

Personally, I'd wait.
 
Thanks for the input. I’m planning to hand my PC down to my son and I have a Win 10 laptop I can use for a while. I do feel this first new gen MM is just waiting to be improved to a model that Apple can market for a few years with only iterative changes (as they did with the intel models). This first gen version probably isn’t that product.
 
I’m certain the 16 MBP will look the same as the current one, which tbh is fine, it’s a good looking laptop.

The 14” that is rumoured will probably look the same as the 16 in that it will have smaller bezels. We won’t see a complete new design until maybe next year or even the year after.

Mac Mini will likely get the new improved chips as I’m sure it will be ease for Apple to drop them into the chassis.
 
LiE said:
I’m certain the 16 MBP will look the same as the current one, which tbh is fine, it’s a good looking laptop.

The 14” that is rumoured will probably look the same as the 16 in that it will have smaller bezels. We won’t see a complete new design until maybe next year or even the year after.

Mac Mini will likely get the new improved chips as I’m sure it will be ease for Apple to drop them into the chassis.
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I'm wondering if smaller bezels are actually desirable. I've been looking at a few monitors and TVs with tiny bezels and found the lack of separation between the image and the background a little off-putting. The black bezel on the older MBP (which is probably a little too large) does a great job of framing the image.
 
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Squink said:
I know crystal balls don’t come cheap these days, but I’m thinking of getting a Mac Mini and wouldn’t like to find it immediately superseded by an M2 with twice the cores. Is the Mini ever likely to be offered with the (potential) improved versions of M1 rumoured to come in the iMacs, or will it always be entry level? It’s unlikely I’ll ever play games on it, but if D4 ever comes to Macs I’d like the chance to try it out.
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I doubt they will update the Mini M1 again anytime soon which is why I bought one. A year at least; they will want to maintain the distance between the mini and the new M series iMacs. And when they do release a new Mini, remember that Apple HW maintains its value very well, especially if you keep the box. So you won't take a huge loss on it.

It is a fabulous machine. I would highly recommend the ones with 16G to make even more future proof and resell-able.
 
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