David Hanak Starting tomorrow morning, the official sale of the new products presented last week by Apple will begin. These are mainly the new iPad Pro, the new MacBook Air and the new Mac Mini. In this article, we will focus on the last-named novelty, about which the first reviews were published in the last few hours, which are also completely positive.
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Patrik Siwek Fans of Apple's smallest and cheapest computer have been waiting four long years for the Mac Mini to receive a major update. It has arrived and in addition to the changed hardware inside, it also brings a new color - Space Grey. So at first glance, it may seem that not too many things have changed, but the opposite is true, as the reviewers confirm.
Before we look at what's been going on under the hood, reviewers often praise the great connectivity that the new Mac Mini has. First of all, it is the presence of four Thunderbolt 3 ports, which is the same number as offered by the iMac Pro. Reviewers also perceive the presence of a 10 Gbit Ethernet port (for an additional charge of 3) and the presence of HDMI 000 and another pair of USB (this time type A) as very positive. So there is nothing to complain about in terms of connectivity.
In terms of performance, the new Mac Mini is the power king in terms of processors. The most powerful i7 configuration offers more single-threaded performance than any other Mac on offer. In multi-threaded tasks, it is beaten only by the top configuration of the iMac Pro and the old (though still very powerful in this respect) Mac Pro, i.e. significantly more expensive systems than the Mac Mini with the most powerful processor.
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Dan Pražák Less powerful CPU variants are also no inferior sharpeners. Even the least powerful variant with an i3 processor is still more powerful than the previous highest configuration. In this regard, the range of processors is very wide and will be chosen by both an undemanding user who will only do light office work and a professional who needs the highest possible CPU processing power.
This brings us to probably the only negative in terms of hardware inside the new Mac Minis. The integrated graphics accelerator is really not dazzlingly strong. It is sufficient for normal work, but as soon as you want to play something or use the power of the GPU to render some 3D object or video, the integrated graphics in the processor will not help you much. Apple focuses on the use of external graphics cards in this regard, hence so many TB 3 ports. However, this negates to some extent one of the biggest benefits of the Mac Mini - its compactness.
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Another positive was outlined in the previous paragraphs and concerns the possibilities of individualization. In the case of the Mac Mini, Apple offers a really wide range of configurations, from several levels of processors, to the size of the operating memory, storage capacity and LAN speed. The good news is that it is possible to increase the operating memory after purchasing the device. On the other hand, the storage capacity is fixed because the (PCI-E nVME) SSD is soldered to the motherboard. Again, due to the connectivity, it is not a problem to connect some fast (and relatively cheap) external 3 TB storage. The most important component when configuring a new Mac Mini is the processor, which you can't do anything with afterwards.
In the final, there is a price that corresponds to the wide range of individualization possibilities. The cheapest variant of the Mac Mini starts at 24 thousand for an i3, 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage. This configuration will certainly be enough for the vast majority of undemanding users. The surcharge for the most powerful processor is either NOK 9 or NOK 000 if you are starting with a more expensive configuration. The surcharge for more RAM also starts at NOK 6, which ends at NOK 400 for 6 GB 400 MHz DDR 45. The amount of surcharges for RAM then corresponds to the surcharges for larger storage. In the finale, there is a surcharge for 64 Gbit LAN. In the end, everyone should choose, and as the reviews suggest, the new Mac Mini has the potential to please everyone who chooses it. You can read the original reviews on the servers TechCrunch, MacWorld, CNET, Tom's Guide, AppleInsider and many others.
At the moment, I'm either buying a new mac mini with an i7, 512 SSD and 16 GB RAM for about 52, or an HP Z2 Mini G4 Performance for 32. I'm not sure if the 20 thousand is worth it for me to stay on macOS, HP also has the advantage of the NVIDIA Quadro P1000 4GB GDDR5 graphics card and 3 years of on-site warranty + slightly better expandability. It's been a long time since Apple has come up with something I'd really like, even with iPhones, so I'm starting to wonder if after a few years of living with Apple it's time for a change, because paying so much more just for the Apple logo I disagree, although of course I can enjoy Apple's ever-increasing profits :-(
If you don't need macOS, get the Z2.
Just for the price of the Mac mini... You could save a few thousand on RAM... Again, it is user replaceable, so take 8GB and expand it yourself...
That iPod mini in the background behind the Mac mini is great!