Hey everyone, I wanted to post this write-up about my new Mac mini m2 pro outfitted with 16gb of ram and the 512 ssd. I read a ton of reviews and did a lot of research when looking to make this purchase. So I hope this helps out someone.
So a little about me and my workflow... I'm a professional photographer and videographer. However, I'd say 70% of my revenue is video - which the majority of that coming from weddings, large events and corporate work. I've been in business roughly 10 years and do north of six figures in annual revenue - a modest amount for a one guy shop like me.
Anyway, the last NEW computer I bought was in 2017 when I got a refurbished 15 mbp. It was on this machine that I built my business. In 2019 I couldn't stand editing all day on a 15 inch screen so I bought a USED 2013 27 inch iMac. I LOVED the extra screen real estate and the machine itself handled my workflow fairly easy. At that time I only shot in 1080 24fps and sometimes 60 fps. Believe it or not I used this 2013 iMac until March of 2023. Not wanting to buy the current iMac - I opted for another used one. This time I got a 2017 i5 iMac and went to work. At this point I was shooting most everything in 4K60fps - this iMac handled it pretty well for the most part. Fast forward to this summer and my 2017 iMac was STRUGGLING! Lightroom was SLOW and my large video projects were grinding to a halt in Premiere.
So I FINALLY decided I would buy a BRAND NEW computer! I spent HOURS and MONTHS on Youtube looking into which set-up I should buy. A regular display or the apple display? the Mac mini or Mac studio? 8, 16 or 32GB of RAM, how big of an SSD? on and on and on! 8GB of RAM seemed INSANE! I had 64GB of my 2017 iMac... but when you watch these youtube videos and when Apple says you don't as much with their chip - it gets really confusing! At times I was very close to buying the BASE Mini 8/256. Others times I was like - lets get the base Mac studio m2 max.
I couldn't decide for the longest time - my workflow is pretty simple. I really only use Premiere and Lightroom - no after effects, and very little photoshop. I shoot everything in 4K24,30 and 60 - mostly 60fps. I do have multiple cameras in the timeline, audio stuff some light graphics like lower thirds, basic color grading etc.
But I had been doing all this on a 2017 iMac so certainly the BASE mini could do this right? I should save that money! But I couldn't get past 8GB of RAM.
I ended up buying the Mac mini m2 pro base model 16/512. I just felt like this was the sweet spot between the base m2 mini and base Mac studio.
Sorry for the long background info - but I want people to understand how and why I chose what I did.
Here's what I LOVE about this machine ::
- Using the AI Denise feature in Lightroom is WAY faster! My old computer took about 35-40 seconds to complete on each photo - this Mac min m2 pro does it in less than 10 seconds! HUGE time saver!
- Staying in Lightroom - moving thru photos is INSTANT - my old computer took forever to load each photo - not forever, but at least a few seconds - now it's INSTANT - and when moving thru THOUSANDS of photos - you save a lot of time.
- photo export on the Mac mini is about 1 second - my old machine - about 4-5 seconds - when editing 2,000 photos that's a lot of time saved.
In Premiere ::
- everything is smoother and more responsive for the most part. Sometimes I use the warp stabilizer feature to smooth out shots - on my old computer is took a decent amount of time depending on the length of the clip. This new machine is MUCH faster - probably about 5-6 times faster. Export times are of course faster!
Here's what I found disappointing (Now maybe these aren't disappointing - maybe my expectations were off, BUT either way I expected better) ::
- In my premiere timeline I did a speed ramp on a 4K30 drone clip and then when replaying it hung up and didn't play back smoothly. Now if I back the playhead further back in the time line and gave it more room to play before getting to the speed ramp it seemed to do better. Maybe it was rendering in the background, because it did play back better as time passed. BUT still - COME ON MAN! Again as I continued to edit in the timeline the playback got much better.
- RAM usage - I got 16GB because I just didn't believe 8 could hack it. Well even with 16GB I am getting LOTS of swap - 6, 7, even 8GB at one point. All I had open during that time was premiere pro and media encoder. I was exporting a project and media encoder was using up to 11GB on it's on! So while the performance of my machine did not seem to be affected - it was using quite a bit of memory swap. I do not multitask on this computer - it is solely an editing machine - so AT most I have 2 apps open at once - premiere and media encoder. When I'm editing photos I only have Lightroom open.
Overall, I'm fine with this purchase - I do wish I would have gotten 32GB of RAM, BUT it is what it is. However when bumping up to 32GB of RAM you get very close to the base Mac studio m2 max.
At the end of the day this machine - the m2 pro Mac mini is a MAJOR improvement over my 2017 iMac. I am definitely saving a TON of time already which is very important as time is money.
I hope all this info helps someone make an informed purchase.
So a little about me and my workflow... I'm a professional photographer and videographer. However, I'd say 70% of my revenue is video - which the majority of that coming from weddings, large events and corporate work. I've been in business roughly 10 years and do north of six figures in annual revenue - a modest amount for a one guy shop like me.
Anyway, the last NEW computer I bought was in 2017 when I got a refurbished 15 mbp. It was on this machine that I built my business. In 2019 I couldn't stand editing all day on a 15 inch screen so I bought a USED 2013 27 inch iMac. I LOVED the extra screen real estate and the machine itself handled my workflow fairly easy. At that time I only shot in 1080 24fps and sometimes 60 fps. Believe it or not I used this 2013 iMac until March of 2023. Not wanting to buy the current iMac - I opted for another used one. This time I got a 2017 i5 iMac and went to work. At this point I was shooting most everything in 4K60fps - this iMac handled it pretty well for the most part. Fast forward to this summer and my 2017 iMac was STRUGGLING! Lightroom was SLOW and my large video projects were grinding to a halt in Premiere.
So I FINALLY decided I would buy a BRAND NEW computer! I spent HOURS and MONTHS on Youtube looking into which set-up I should buy. A regular display or the apple display? the Mac mini or Mac studio? 8, 16 or 32GB of RAM, how big of an SSD? on and on and on! 8GB of RAM seemed INSANE! I had 64GB of my 2017 iMac... but when you watch these youtube videos and when Apple says you don't as much with their chip - it gets really confusing! At times I was very close to buying the BASE Mini 8/256. Others times I was like - lets get the base Mac studio m2 max.
I couldn't decide for the longest time - my workflow is pretty simple. I really only use Premiere and Lightroom - no after effects, and very little photoshop. I shoot everything in 4K24,30 and 60 - mostly 60fps. I do have multiple cameras in the timeline, audio stuff some light graphics like lower thirds, basic color grading etc.
But I had been doing all this on a 2017 iMac so certainly the BASE mini could do this right? I should save that money! But I couldn't get past 8GB of RAM.
I ended up buying the Mac mini m2 pro base model 16/512. I just felt like this was the sweet spot between the base m2 mini and base Mac studio.
Sorry for the long background info - but I want people to understand how and why I chose what I did.
Here's what I LOVE about this machine ::
- Using the AI Denise feature in Lightroom is WAY faster! My old computer took about 35-40 seconds to complete on each photo - this Mac min m2 pro does it in less than 10 seconds! HUGE time saver!
- Staying in Lightroom - moving thru photos is INSTANT - my old computer took forever to load each photo - not forever, but at least a few seconds - now it's INSTANT - and when moving thru THOUSANDS of photos - you save a lot of time.
- photo export on the Mac mini is about 1 second - my old machine - about 4-5 seconds - when editing 2,000 photos that's a lot of time saved.
In Premiere ::
- everything is smoother and more responsive for the most part. Sometimes I use the warp stabilizer feature to smooth out shots - on my old computer is took a decent amount of time depending on the length of the clip. This new machine is MUCH faster - probably about 5-6 times faster. Export times are of course faster!
Here's what I found disappointing (Now maybe these aren't disappointing - maybe my expectations were off, BUT either way I expected better) ::
- In my premiere timeline I did a speed ramp on a 4K30 drone clip and then when replaying it hung up and didn't play back smoothly. Now if I back the playhead further back in the time line and gave it more room to play before getting to the speed ramp it seemed to do better. Maybe it was rendering in the background, because it did play back better as time passed. BUT still - COME ON MAN! Again as I continued to edit in the timeline the playback got much better.
- RAM usage - I got 16GB because I just didn't believe 8 could hack it. Well even with 16GB I am getting LOTS of swap - 6, 7, even 8GB at one point. All I had open during that time was premiere pro and media encoder. I was exporting a project and media encoder was using up to 11GB on it's on! So while the performance of my machine did not seem to be affected - it was using quite a bit of memory swap. I do not multitask on this computer - it is solely an editing machine - so AT most I have 2 apps open at once - premiere and media encoder. When I'm editing photos I only have Lightroom open.
Overall, I'm fine with this purchase - I do wish I would have gotten 32GB of RAM, BUT it is what it is. However when bumping up to 32GB of RAM you get very close to the base Mac studio m2 max.
At the end of the day this machine - the m2 pro Mac mini is a MAJOR improvement over my 2017 iMac. I am definitely saving a TON of time already which is very important as time is money.
I hope all this info helps someone make an informed purchase.
