People get this weird idea in their head that all video editing needs super resource intensive computers. It doesn't
That is very true, sacrilege for some.
Yes, video can be edited on the base level machines of all models in the Apple system. Most likely quite nicely. My consideration is that if doing so is the person's profession, where they make money, then don't do so on the cheap. If a video can be rendered in 5 minutes versus 7 minutes that is not much in the scheme of things. When doing so professionally, time is money. Dozens of videos, saving two minutes each time, adds up to people time. That people time is expensive.
For the occasional video editing, home users, the hobbyist, the base model of the Mini, the Air, iMac, and MBP would do just fine. Even putting the resource files on an external drive is not an issue. The working professional, yes, it is an issue in my opinion.
I already bought the machine yesterday and installed the OS on the external SSD
Storage may not be an issue, but RAM may become an issue at some point. That cannot be externalized. Personally I think the OS is smart enough to properly allocate and manage the base memory.
There are people on here that think systems have to be maxed out, 16 Gig is joke, etc. Those people are really good at telling other people how to spend someone else's money when in reality, they are clueless. They most likely don't work in the real world and have nothing to back up their claims other than benchmarks which are far from real world working performance.
Using swap is no big deal as that solid state drive is fast. Long gone are the days of waiting on spinning rust. Swap files may get large, but swapping does not take place that often and is not really a bottleneck.
In the days of big iron where a couple hundred users were using the mainframe, swapping was a real performance issue. Multiple jobs, dozens maybe, were being run at the same time. On a Mac (or PC) there may be dozens of applications open at the same time, but generally only one is being actively used. Swapping the idle apps to disk is trivial and is only done when switching apps. Something that is much faster than the user. The only exception in my use has been using Lightroom, importing, or exporting images. Swapping is not a problem, the CPU is the bottleneck.
But you know what? If you are happy, if it works for you, then good for you. Enjoy your system and ignore the naysayers. There are no incorrect decisions as everyone's needs, wants, and cash, are different.
to the base model, just price the model with the features you want. Storage, RAM, etc. Then ask yourself if that price has value to you. You know you're not going to buy a base model machine, so there's no point in comparing that price to what you'll buy. You only need to worry about whether the machine you want is at a price you agree with, not the price of a different machine, that a person with different needs, is going to buy.
