I recently acquired a used MacBook pro 13 2015 base model and I'm in love with it and Mac OS. It's far superior to any windows or chrome OS laptop I have used. It's just so fluid and smooth. My usage is pretty much just using it for web browsing with multiple tabs, youtube videos, spotify, social media, light word documents. No video editing, gaming etc.
I am quite interested in the idea of buying a Mac Mini to do the same tasks on an external monitor at my desk, and using my MacBook elsewhere like in bed or as a portable machine.
For my usage which Mac Mini model would you recommend?
I'm interested in getting a 2014 version onwards as I want to still get official Mac OS updates for a few more years. Is the base model 500GB HDD with 4GB RAM sufficient? I'm not too fussed about storage, ideally SSD would be better of course, but its more expensive.
Will it have similar performance to my 2015 MacBook pro for what I use it for? I have seen some good deals from resellers £150-£250. Ideally I want my investment to last 2-3 years with future OS updates.
I am going to offer you a slightly different viewpoint as my sister was asking me about this same thing 4 months ago. She bought the Mac Mini 2014, but with 8Gb of ram. She does freelance Photoshop and Indesign and also web browsing with multiple tabs using Chrome, Youtube and social media and light word documents using Open Office. And she has the 500Gb HD. It was the cheapest Mac she could afford in her budget and she found the Mac to be more than fine. She could get away with 4Gb of ram, but because she needed it for graphics work, 8Gb was what she needed and opted. You have to order this from Apple as the 2014 ram is soldered.
So for your usage, the base 4Gb 500Gb HD would actually suffice as long as you are aware that nothing is going to be as snappy as your Macbook Pro 2015, but the performance is certainly better coming from most Windows and Chrome OS laptop. At least the user experience is better because what Apple does best is that, it designs the OS around its hardware platform, so it make efficient use of its available hardware. Windows 10 now almost approaches the minimalist design, but it's still slightly slower and bloated because with the same specs computer, a Mac OS computer is still faster than a Windows 10 computer. I have both so I know!
I noticed that in this forum, there is a higher tendency for people to suggest a much higher spec computer without really knowing what a lower spec computer would do in a more modest setup needs, or coming from a less resourceful OS computing platform. I have many experiences dealing with multiple platforms from Linux, Mac OSX and Windows and I can say that a base Mac Mini 2014 is quite capable in serving your needs. The base 2014 Mac Mini is an "ENTRY LEVEL" Mac. It's called an ENTRY LEVEL mac because it's meant to attract entry level Windows and Chrome user to buy into a Mac experience without breaking the bank. How does it make sense for people coming from an entry level Windows and Chrome system buy into a more powerful 2018 model at higher prices?!? As an entry level machine, the 2014 is quite adequate.
Sometimes, some of us including myself are so spoiled with the prosumer and pro level Macs that we need that experience and so we tend to bias our needs that everyone must need that experience. It's like when you drive a Ferrari Testarossa, then you should expect others drive a Ferrari as well to achieve that same experience and forget about the Honda Civic to me really does not make any sense at all.
Having said that, 4Gb is really quite at the bare limit for web browsing with multiple tabs, especially Chrome web. But Mac OSX is pretty efficient with memory management and as long as you leave about 20% of your hard drive space for memory paging needs (as it would do a lot more of that than with 8Gb or 16Gb of ram), then you'll be fine. My sister is using her 2014 Mac Mini Core i5 1.4Ghz very productively and had never complained about what she paid.
She, like you, was also persuaded to go for the better 2018 Mini with lots of ram but these people were never interested in what her needs were, but rather in whatever their personal agenda were -- selling her MORE hardware to make money off her!
