High end Mac Mini or High end 11" MacBook Air?

[z4x0n]

I am trying to make up my mind here, I was thinking of getting a new Mac and I am confused between the High end Fusion Drive Mac mini or the High end MacBook Air 11", I will upgrade from a 13" 2010 MacBook.

I don't play games at all, I have not a single game installed on my laptop. I do care about the speed of the machine, my MacBook has 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD, but that's not enough because I do a lot of video editing, and what I don't like about my machine is that it takes forever to finish its job.

1 GB video file takes about more than 1.5 hrs to export using Compressor on FCPX

I know that both the Mac Mini and the MacBook Air has the Intel HD4000 and no discreet dedicated GPU but hey, that's my limit. I don't mind waiting till it finishes exporting, but at least to wait less time

I do care about Portability, the Mac Mini is still Portable.

Forget about the iMac, MacBook Pro 13 i7 as it's out of my limit.

I Know that the High end Mac Mini is a Quad Core and the High end MacBook Air is a Dual Core.

if you were to choose between the 2.6Ghz i7 Fusion Drive Mac Mini or the i7 2.0 GHz 11" MacBook air, what would choose for video editing? and why?

 

[z4x0n]

nobody knows? cool

 

[Fishrrman]

My opinion only, but if you don't require the ability to "walk around" with the computer in the house -- that is, if you're satisfied sitting and working at the desk -- the Mini is the better choice.

It's got far more "connectivity" out of the box, many ports, user-upgradeable RAM. Best value for money spent, too.

 

[jjhoekstra]

Under the conditions you give I would choose the Mac mini. It will be around 20-30% faster (due to the quad-core) for rendering than the MBA and has a better cooling-system meaning it will not throttle down as much as the 11" MBA while rendering. And the fusion-drive has a larger overall capacity which is very useful for video-editing.

 

[z4x0n]

My opinion only, but if you don't require the ability to "walk around" with the computer in the house -- that is, if you're satisfied sitting and working at the desk -- the Mini is the better choice.

It's got far more "connectivity" out of the box, many ports, user-upgradeable RAM. Best value for money spent, too.

Under the conditions you give I would choose the Mac mini. It will be around 20-30% faster (due to the quad-core) for rendering than the MBA and has a better cooling-system meaning it will not throttle down as much as the 11" MBA while rendering. And the fusion-drive has a larger overall capacity which is very useful for video-editing.

that's what i was thinking, i still find the 13" not so portable after the MBA .. haha, anyway, does the VRAM have any effect on rendering? which Machine has more VRAM?