![]() ![]() And given that it starts at $1299, it’s priced far enough below the Mac Studio to offer some cost savings. With 200GB/s memory bandwidth and up to 32GB of RAM, the M2 Pro’s specs handily trump those of the M1 iMac. ![]() The default M2 Pro configuration offers a 10-core CPU-six performance cores and four efficiency cores-with a 16-core GPU, but you can also upgrade it to a 12-core CPU with eight performance cores and four efficiency cores for an additional $300. The new M2 Pro Mac mini fills that gap quite nicely. Even if you were prepared to pay a little bit more for better performance, the realm in between the $1299 iMac and the $1999 Mac Studio was a barren wasteland. With the introduction of the Mac Studio last spring, desktop Mac users had to choose between an iMac running the company’s least powerful chip or a much beefier machine that not only carried a higher price tag but also required you to shell out for a separate monitor. But with the demise of the 27-inch iMac (and, more to the point, the demise of my personal 27-inch iMac), I’ve been waiting for a mid-range desktop-a machine that can bring a little extra performance without the heftier price tag of the Mac Studio.Īnd until now, that gap was unaddressed in the Apple silicon era. For the last decade, I’ve split my time between an iMac and a MacBook Air prior to that, I was an all-laptop-all-the-time person for several years. I’ve owned a handful of Mac minis over the years, though never as my primary machine. If the iMac, the Mac Studio, and the still-waiting-in-the-wings Apple silicon Mac Pro are the bricks of Apple’s Mac lineup, the Mac mini is the mortar, with its various configurations filling the gaps in between. It’s hard to argue that the mini’s versatility isn’t the biggest part of why the product is still going strong, nigh on two decades after its debut. But bump the mini up to an M2 Pro, and it’s also a high-performing machine that will go up against the more expensive products in Apple’s desktop line, like the Mac Studio. In its base configuration, with an 8-CPU-core/10-GPU-core M2 processor, it’s a respectably performing desktop that can now be had for just $599, a $100 price drop from the M1 mini, solidifying its status as the cheapest Mac around. With the most recent update to the M2 family of processors, the Mac mini is once again doing more than just one thing at the same time. It’s an entry-level machine, but it’s also been deployed in server farms and modded and smushed into any number of applications. It was one of the first Macs to make the jump to Apple silicon back in 2020, but at the same time, a more expensive model lingered as one of the last remaining Intel Macs. At its core, however, it remains a machine of contradictions: it has become a bastion of Apple’s lineup, but it’s been updated more sporadically than any other Mac. In 2005, when Apple first introduced the Mac mini, it was a carefully designed, strategic product: a low-cost computer aimed primarily at luring customers from the Windows PC hegemony with the promise that they could save even further by using all of their existing accessories, thus putting a dent into the argument that investing in the Mac was by necessity expensive.Įighteen years after its debut, the Mac mini is, surprisingly enough, still going strong. M2 Mac mini Review: Whatever you want it to be ![]()
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