Apple Mac mini review (M4 Pro, 2024): Shockingly small, incredibly powerful

“That’s a computer?!” My daughter just couldn’t believe her eyes when I pulled the new Mac mini out of its box. It measures just five-inches by five-inches across, and it sits a mere two inches tall. The Mac mini is an adorable box that resembles an oversized Apple TV. But what’s more impressive is that it’s significantly faster than before, thanks to Apple’s M4 and M4 Pro chips, and it still starts at $599. Once again, the Mac mini redefines what a desktop can be.

While Apple may have started the tiny PC trend with the original Mac mini in 2005, it’s certainly not alone today. Intel’s NUC line survived execution and is now being spearheaded by ASUS, but those boxes are still expensive and relatively niche. HP sells “Elite MIni” desktops for businesses, but they mainly exist to make IT workers’ lives easier.

The Mac mini, meanwhile, has for years been an affordable gateway into the world of Apple desktops. Now, it’s the cheapest way to get a taste of Apple Silicon, especially if you already have a monitor, keyboard and mouse. (And if you don’t, you can still configure a whole desktop setup for under $1,000.) As I said when it was announced, even if you don’t need one, the Mac mini’s pint-sized frame and powerful hardware makes it incredibly compelling.

What’s new with the Mac mini?

Just look at it! The Mac mini’s redesigned case is less than half the size of the previous version, so you won’t have to devote as much desk space to it. It also features front connectivity for the first time — two USB-C ports and a headphone jack — something that previously required upgrading to the $1,999 Mac Studio. Most people will likely be better off with the 3.5mm jack up front, but if you’re the rare user who needs to connect speakers, you’re better off relying on a USB-C dongle in the rear, or a high-quality audio interface.

More so than aesthetics, the Mac mini’s biggest upgrade this time around is Apple’s new M4 hardware, as well as the fact that it – like all new Macs going forward – now comes with 16GB of RAM standard. The M4 sports a 10-core CPU (four high-performance cores and six high-efficiency), a 10-core GPU and a 16-core Neural Engine. For $1,399, you can bump up to the dramatically more powerful M4 Pro chip (which is what’s in our review unit), featuring a 14-core CPU (10 high-performance and four high-efficiency) and 20-core GPU.

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

The M4 chip includes support for Thunderbolt 4 on its three rear USB-C ports, while the M4 Pro brings Thunderbolt 5 to Macs for the first time, with triple the data transfer speeds (120 Gb/s compared to 40 Gb/s). Every Mac mini also includes a full-sized HDMI connection (supporting up to 8K 60Hz or 4K 240Hz), as well as an Ethernet port (gigabit standard, or upgradable to 10GbE). While it lacks the integrated SD card reader of the Mac Studio, the Mac mini is otherwise well-equipped to meet the demands of many creative professionals.

There are some curious design choices, though. For one, the Mac mini’s power button is along the bottom of its rear end, which leads to some awkward finger gymnastics whenever you want to turn it on. (Read into that what you will.) That means you probably wouldn’t want to hide it in an unreachable corner of your desk. The previous Mac mini also hid the power button along its rear, but at least that was right beside its ports, and it didn’t require tipping over the device.

Apple likely doesn’t expect its users to be completely turning off their devices very often, but that’s also clearly at odds with its sustainability efforts. (The company loudly claims the Mac mini is carbon neutral, for example, as it’s mostly built with recycled metals and other materials.)

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

How fast is the Mac mini?

The Mac mini was the fastest computer I’ve reviewed this year, at least when it comes to CPU benchmarks. I’ve grown used to being impressed by Apple Silicon, but the M4 Pro in our review unit (which was also equipped with 48GB of RAM) was still a bigger leap ahead than I expected. While running in high power mode, which cranks up performance, the Mac mini’s Geekbench 6 single-threaded score of 3,943 was well above the typical 2,500 to 2,800 point range we’ve seen in PCs this year. Its multithreaded Geekbench 6 score reached a whopping 22,850 points — the only other systems that cracked 14,00 points this year were the Snapdragon X Elite-powered Surface Laptop 7 and XPS 13.

Naturally, other laptops with dedicated, power-hungry video cards outclassed the Mac mini in the Geekbench 6 GPU test, but Apple’s tiny desktop still beat out the RTX 4050 in Dell’s XPS 14, as well as the Radeon 7700S in the 16-inch Framework Laptop. That’s still a very impressive result for graphics built into a single system-on-a-chip.

Outside of benchmarks, the Mac mini impressed me by running Lies of P in 1,440p with maxed out graphics settings at 60fps. It even managed to run the game in 4K with medium graphics settings, but the frame rate hovered around 30fps, which wasn’t very playable. That’s not a huge surprise though — what’s more important is that I know the GPU is powerful enough to run modern games at more reasonable resolutions. Resident Evil 4 and No Man’s Sky also held a steady 60 fps in 1,440p.

To test out the Mac mini’s AI capabilities, I used the Whisper Transcription app to transcribe an hour and nine-minute long episode of the Engadget Podcast. That took two minutes and nine seconds, using the small language model. In comparison, the M4-powered 14-inch MacBook Pro took three minutes and three seconds, while an M3 14-inch MacBook Pro took three minutes and thirty-seven seconds. These figures tell us Apple’s M4 hardware can help students quickly get notes from lecture recordings, or even transcribe classes in real-time without much effort.

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

As I threw benchmarks, games and encoding jobs at the Mac mini, I was constantly impressed by how much it could tackle without making any discernible fan noise. But Apple can’t escape heat. The Mac mini has a large intake fan along its bottom that sucks in cool air and spreads it out throughout the entire system. However, when I started running Cinebench’s multithreaded benchmark, the fan kicked into high gear and the Mac mini sounded like it was getting ready to take off.

It’s not an unpleasant sound — it’s more like a calming white noise machine than the obnoxiously loud Mac fans of yore — but it’s certainly noticeable. If you’re typically wearing headphones or blasting music, it may not be an issue, but it could make the Mac mini very annoying in a shared office setting. If you’re planning to constantly throw heavy workloads at it in high power mode, you might be better off with the larger Mac Studio, which can better handle heat. Apple still hasn’t updated the Studio with M4 chips, though — you’ll have to wait until next year for that.

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

Should you buy the Mac mini?

There’s no doubt the M4 Pro Mac mini is an absolute beast, but at $1,399 (with 24GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD to start), it’s mainly targeted at creative professionals. I didn’t have the $599 M4 model to test (which starts with 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD), but I benchmarked that exact same chip on the 14-inch MacBook Pro and still found it impressive. Its Geekbench 6 and Cinebench scores still beat out most of the computers we’ve tested this year, and its GPU is fast enough for solid 1080p 60 fps gameplay.

If you’re just looking for a basic and adorably small Mac desktop, the $599 Mac mini will likely be all you need. And if you’re looking to do a bit more serious work, and can’t justify the $1,999 Mac Studio, the $1,399 model is a decent value compared to PC workstations. Just be prepared to stomach Apple’s upgrade prices: You’ll have to spend an additional $400 just to get 32GB of RAM on the base Mini, and another $400 to get a 1TB SSD. That’s wildly out of step with prices outside of the Apple ecosystem, where you can easily find a decent 1TB NVMe SSD under $100. (That said, unlike a laptop, connecting a cheap but capacious external drive to the mini is a more viable option.)

Apple’s gonna Apple when it comes to upgrade pricing, but at least you can finally buy a $599 Mac mini with 16GB of RAM. That alone is reason to celebrate. The fact that it’s cute enough to impress my kid is a nice bonus.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/apple-mac-mini-review-m4-pro-2024-shockingly-small-incredibly-powerful-140042432.html?src=rss

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