While I agree, the issue is cash! Upgrading the mini M2 Pro to 32GB is insanely costly! The 1TB ssd cost less, and is two times faster than the base 512GB. So this may help a bit in case 16GB isn't enough in some not-so-frequent operations.
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Avoiding the M2 Mini slow SSD's - what to do
- Thread starter ZipZilla
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Two times faster? I need to see some real numbers and use case where it took 2X time to do a task. Max Tech fudged their numbers last time when the speed gate happened. I remember Analog Kid exposing Max Tech's clickbait fraud.
Meanwhile, in the real world, Mackbook Air M2, with half the RAM, smokes the m1 Mackbook Pro. My 8GB, 256 GB base Model M2 Macbook Air makes many AI inferences faster than my buddy's Macbook Pro M1 14-inch model.
Biggest problem for Apple isnt the speed of these base model SSD/CPU/GPU but software library support to leverage the hardware and unified memory.
AI for vision, speech, audio is going to be mainstream in near future, and unified RAM will be the biggest differentiator over disk speed or disk space.
The solution is to avoid the slower Sequential read and write SSD speed issue is to upgrade to the 512GB or higher SSD models on the Mac Mini M2 (Non Pro models), or to the 1TB or higher SSD drive on the Mac Mini M2 Pro models. On the 14" or 16" MacBook Pro M2 Pro and M2 Max 512GB models, you need the 1TB or larger models to get the highest Sequential SSD transfer speeds. Here is a new video that lays this out in detail:
I'm running Mac Mini M2 256GB and 16GB of Ram. I have yet to see any page filing swap happen. It's perfect for my use case. Streaming Youtube, Podcasts, Apple Music Lossless. General Internet surfing. If you actually do stuff on it like Video editing, music editing, or any heavy application. Then yes go for the larger SSD and RAM. But for what I'm using it for it's doing it extremely well. I have been Windows user for the better part of 20+ yrs and I still have my gaming rig running current gen hardware. But it's noisy and hot. So for general computing I felt that was too much heat and energy. I got the M2 Mini because it runs really cool and quiet. I used to have 2018 i5 Mac Mini. I sold it to my bro, but boy I remember just turning that thing how hot the chassis got and the hot air that would almost immediately start blowing out the back of it. The M2 Mini chassis is cool to touch even after hours of it being on. It boots extremely fast and shuts down extremely fast. Other than MacOS and me learning how to use it better. It's been a great computer so far.
You only need to avoid the 256GB drive on the base M2 Macs and the 512GB drive on the M2 Pro/M2 Max Macs. Just get 1TB and you'll be fine. Incidentally, you can't upgrade the drive after the fact anyway. So unless this is a secondary Mac, I'd go one size higher than you think you'll need.