In that case, spending more money for more RAM is way better than spending more money for a bigger and faster SSD.
At lease disk space can be expanded with external devices.
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Hands-On With the New M2 Pro Mac Mini
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At lease disk space can be expanded with external devices.
The extra 8 inches make all the difference.
Do not reply "That's what she said." to this.
Just a pair of 27" Dell monitors. One is 4K and the other is 1440.
Well, of course the M1 Max is going to be slightly faster than the M2 Pro. But for my purposes, the M2 Pro Mini should be just fine for me, especially considering it's going to be replacing a 2012 quad-core i7 Mac Mini, along with me using that instead of frequently running my M1 MacBook Air in clamshell/desktop mode (it helps I'm going to get the M2 Pro Mini with 32 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD).
That sounds like a great custom build to order configuration that you ordered. I just want to buy my Mac at the store, and don't want to wait to have it built in the factory in China to my specs.
I still can't decide what to call base M2 mini, a massive ripoff or a bargain for the money. Slow, low capacity SSD, only 8GB RAM. A casing that hasn't changed for years and is mostly empty. But on the other hand, best entry Mac so far, good for web and some office work.
I may have missed it... Has anyone posted M1 mini vs. M2 mini specs (not Pros or Maxes)?
I'm curious on those performance deltas for their baseline M-series chips. Thanks.
I'm curious on those performance deltas for their baseline M-series chips. Thanks.
I BTO'd an M2/512/16. That stock 256/8/slower SSD just didn't seem worth the initial savings. Seemed short-sighted. To me. Once I got to ~$1k for my BTO, it was tempting to keep rolling into that M2 Pro/512/16 config for another $300. Thankfully the reality that an M2/512/16 config was targeting a 12 yo's Steam gamers first Mac brought me back down to Earth.
Makes me think back to the first Mac I owned (not used)... A PowerMac G4/graphite (can't recall other specs atm). At the time, was maxed out. Used it for multi-track audio recording in (Pro Tools), video editing (FCP), graphic design juggernaut that was probably almost as powerful as Apple Watch. Jokes aside - that rig was one of the most stable, high-performing Macs I have ever used. Rock solid. And I think set my broke-ass back something like $6k back then. Bonkers! Let's just say, lessons were learned. 🤪
This guy tries to apologize and justify for Apple using slower SSD drive chips in the M2 Mac Mini and Mac Mini M2 Pro models, but I am not buying his reasoning. The "it's just good enough" or "you won't need the faster SSD speed" arguments are getting old, especially for Pros who buy either the Mac Mini M2 Pro 512GB models or 14" or 16" MacBook Pro 512GB SSD models, which are also affected by the slower SSD speed issue:
Are you sure? Swapping is mostly random read/writes, not sequential. For random read/writes latency matters more than sequential speed. I don't know if the single NAND would be noticeable but I'm also not sure that your statement is correct.
If you can live with the specs, it's a fantastic bargain - pretty much the same price as a low-end Dell desktop and for many tasks just as quick as much more expensive machines.
As ever, it gets into expensive (although I don't think ripoff) territory when you start adding upgrades.
It's 2023 - Apple really needs to treat 16/512 as the base spec.
They're USD 983 in Hungary. 4-pack ;-)
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In Apple's 'US defence', this includes VAT.
Here you go, Max Tech on YouTube just analyzed the SSD read/write speed of the 14" MacBook M2 Pro 512GB model compared to the 14" MacBook M1 Pro 512GB model. The video below has an interesting tear down of the machine and SSD layout also. Seems to be a similar reason as the Mac Mini M2 Pro 512GB SSD drive issue, except on the 14" MacBook Pro M2 Pro 512GB machine Apple only used 1 512GB SSD nand chip to get 3000 MB/s slower SSD speed, while on the Mac Mini M2 Pro 512GB model Apple used 2 256GB SSD nand chips to get the slower 3000 MB/s speed than the larger SSD configurations (1TB+) which get 6000 MB/s SSD read/write speed on both the Mac Mini M2 Pro and the 14" MacBook Pro M2 Pro models. Not great for a new M2 Pro model compared to the previous model 14" M1 MacBook Pro 512GB model.
Here is Max Tech's latest video showing the above:
Here is Max Tech's latest video showing the above:
Can you please explain to me with exact examples, what pro work requires a mac mini with much faster than 1500MB/s SSD speeds?
Following that, I would also like to know why this professional doesn't buy at least 1TB of SSD to get the speeds they need for the specific workload.
I know what you mean. Though when I ordered my M1 MacBook Air online, I opted for the 8-core graphics model with 16 GB of RAM, and it was ready to ship only a couple days after placing said order! Maybe the Chinese factory was already making some M1 Airs with those specs in anticipation of customers ordering them that way?
Which would be best future proof choice: M2 with 24gb ram and 2tb SSD, or M2Pro with 16gb ram and 2tb SSD?
The new M2-series MacBook Pro and Mac mini models launched today, marking the debut of the first M2 Pro and M2 Max chips. We have the M2 Pro Mac mini on hand, and thought we'd take a look at the machine and do a series of benchmarks to see how it fits into Apple's lineup.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.
Base model Mac mini machines come with either an M2 or M2 Pro chip, and like the now-discontinued Intel model, the M2 Pro has four Thunderbolt 4 ports while the M2 version has just two. Other than that distinction, the two Mac mini models are identical externally, offering two USB-A ports, an Ethernet port, an HDMI 2.1 port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Because Apple transitioned from an older Intel chip to an Apple silicon chip with the high-end M2 Pro Mac mini, there is no direct comparison that we can make. Other M-series chips already outperformed the prior-generation Intel Mac mini, but to give some perspective, we thought we'd share some benchmarks comparing the M2 Pro Mac mini to the M1 Max MacBook Pro.
The M1 Max MacBook Pro features a 10-core CPU and 32-core GPU, and the higher-end base Mac mini with M2 Pro chip features a 10-core CPU and 16-core GPU.
Here are our test results:
Speedometer(Web Responsiveness)
- M2 Pro Mac Mini - 383
- M1 Max MacBook - 319
Cinebench
M2 Pro Mac Mini:
- Multi-core - 11696
- Single-core - 1642
M1 Max MacBook Pro:
- Multi-core - 12240
- Single-core - 1528
Geekbench
M2 Pro Mac mini:
- Single-core - 1886
- Multi-core 11862
- OpenCL - 38712
- Metal - 45831
M1 Max MacBook Pro:
- Single-core - 1787
- Multi-core - 12721
- OpenCL - 55866
- Metal - 67403
Obviously the M1 Max is outperforming the M2 Pro when it comes to the GPU because it has twice the GPU cores, but the performance isn't doubled. The M2 Pro Mac mini is closer in performance to the M1 Max than you might expect.
The M2 Pro Mac mini is priced starting at $1299, a solid price for the performance that it's providing. If you're looking for a desktop machine that's affordable but still able to be used for video editing, 3D rendering, and similar tasks, it's worth looking into. Make sure to watch our video up above to see our full suite of benchmarks, and we'll have an M2 Max MacBook Pro video coming tomorrow.
Article Link: Hands-On With the New M2 Pro Mac Mini
The best answer is to get what you need for the next year or two, and resell it and get something massively faster and massively better for cheaper in the next 3 years when Apple makes something newer, better, faster.
We all know they will. The interest in future proofing, to me, is baffling. Why would you ever want to spend money now if you could possibly instead spend it later?
Anyone waiting to review the Samsung's 5K ViewFinity S9 monitor S90PC before buying a Studio Display?
Right here. I want a bake-off with that, Apple’s display, and LG’s 5k display. Currently I’m leaning towards an open box LG 5k display at around $1000.
I'd be curious to see some figures for just using apps, instead of benchmarks measuring raw speed. How much does the transfer rate actually impact the experience of using apps? Or is it lost in the overall process?
I recall some people reporting when the MBA came out that for most tasks using SSD there wasn't a lot of real world difference. I'm sure if you were doing a lot of sequential read/writes it would add up.
You're going from 6 to 8 performance cores so basically 33% more performance. I know we're ignoring the efficiency cores for this exercise, but yeah that's why it's such a big jump.
Agreed, but I think we should also note: it’s ONLY for those apps (video export, that sort of thing) that can actually use all six (or 8) cores at the same time.
For day to day normal things (opening an app, mail, web, etc.) there’s no performance improvement whatsoever. An app has to be made to use all of those cores, or you have to be running enough apps concurrently that you’re stressing all six to get benefit of having 8 cores.
I don’t think this is said enough….