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M1 MAC MINI VS M2

I

ivnj

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Dec 8, 2006
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M1 MAC MINI VS M2​

I have a base M1 8GB ram 256GB SSD. What is the difference between this and the new M2. I just browse the web and watch netflix and youtube tv. No games really or video editing. Probably dont need M2. But is it really much faster. Are there more ports on the back. Or is the same case just more speed. I read here somebody said dual usb c monitor support. I dont need that. 1 minitor has been enough my entire life for ever pc and mac I have ever owned. What else I gain switching to M2. There was a deal for 500. Plus 270 tradein so not bad. But if its just more speed and ports then maybe not. And maybe apple will price match.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/01/21/pick-up-apples-m2-mac-mini-2023-for-just-499/amp/
 
It's a spec bump and probably not worth upgrading unless you have a specific reason why.

You will notice snappier performance on webpage loading - I see this myself b/w my M2 MBA and my M1P MBP. The M2 is has faster single core performance and it shows on surfing. Is that really enough to make it worth upgrading? Only you know - wouldn't be for me.
 
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So no new ports addded. Same 2 usb a and 2 usb c. No extras.
 
M1 on TSMC N5 to M2 N5P is only about 7% performance improvement. It might help with YouTube 4K software decode edge cases but mostly a sidegrade from M1. The one desirable feature, full HDMI 2.1, that would've made it worthwhile is an upsell to the overpriced $1299+ versions.
 
It doesn't make much sense to upgrade from base M1 to base M2. M2 is slightly faster but less power efficient, there is chance Mac Mini will be warmer/louder than good old M1. Maybe for games it will be somewhat better though, given it has 10 GPU cores vs 8, but that's it.
 
yellowhelicopter said:
It doesn't make much sense to upgrade from base M1 to base M2. M2 is slightly faster but less power efficient, there is chance Mac Mini will be warmer/louder than good old M1. Maybe for games it will be somewhat better though, given it has 10 GPU cores vs 8, but that's it.
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Especially if the M2 is a base unit (i.e. 256GB SSD) since the SSD will be half the speed of the M1 SSD and will likely degrade average performance.
 
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jwahaus said:
Especially if the M2 is a base unit (i.e. 256GB SSD) since the SSD will be half the speed of the M1 SSD and will likely degrade average performance.
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Why would a new SSD be half the speed of the old one? And the M1 base uses 39W max. How much does the M2 use.
 
maflynn said:
Because the 256GB SSD in the M2 models is slow (for SSDs).
We benchmarked the base M2 MacBook Air’s storage and (surprise!) it’s slow
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WOW that sucks. But geek bench shows m2 as much faster.



www.macrumors.com

First Geekbench Scores for New Mac Mini With M2 Pro Surface, Beats M1 Max

Geekbench scores for the newly announced Mac mini with M2 and M2 Pro chips have revealed a significant increase in performance compared to the...
www.macrumors.com www.macrumors.com

7442 VS 15013. So almost twice as good. Unless those numbers are not accurate. So maybe slow SSD does not matter as much. Or multi core score only matters for games and video editing, photoshop, etc.
 
I'd believe the Apple marketing material of 20-30% increase on specific functions.

Is it meaningful enough to upgrade from or are you euphoric by the fact that the community's positive buzz over the a new chip?

Apple sees their macOS users to replace after 4 years. Intel points to every 5-6 years.

I'd only replace if someone's paying for the upgrade.
 
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ivnj said:
Why would a new SSD be half the speed of the old one? And the M1 base uses 39W max. How much does the M2 use.
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because apple put is helping keeping the Mini cost down.... or on the flip side, they are getting more people to upgrade.
 
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sam_dean said:
I'd believe the Apple marketing material of 20-30% increase on specific functions.

Is it meaningful enough to upgrade from or are you euphoric by the fact that the community's positive buzz over the a new chip?

Apple sees their macOS users to replace after 4 years. Intel points to every 5-6 years.

I'd only replace if someone's paying for the upgrade.
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I will stick with the M1. I was just curious what all the hype is about. Even back in the old days there was not much difference. My 2SI was 20 or 30 percent faster than the SE FDHD my sister used for college. But it was not much difference. It was only slightly faster. And about 5 to 10 years later it was obsolete and not even capable of taking OS9. And before you knew it even the best machine OS9 ran on was sluggish for OSX. And so on. So this is no different. I was just surprised they cut the ssd speed in half and was surprised to see the benchmarks so much difference between the M1 and M2. But for my needs looks like the M1 is good enough. And more ports are always better. But 2 C is enough for now. I can always use a hub. But 2 is enough for now.
 
ivnj said:
7442 VS 15013. So almost twice as good. Unless those numbers are not accurate. So maybe slow SSD does not matter as much. Or multi core score only matters for games and video editing, photoshop, etc.
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Keep in mind that the 7442 VS 15013 Geekbench scores you are comparing are the M1 VS the M2 Pro. The M2 non Pro scores ~9000. Additionally, Geekbench doesn't measure storage performance. But for your use case I think you'd be hard pressed to see a difference unless you're talking fractions of seconds in a side-by-side comparison.

M2 256 GB SSDs use a single, 256GB NAND chip, but the M1 uses two, 128GB chips. Since the controller can access both chips at once, performance is much better than with a single chip. The M2 configs that are 512GB and up continue to use this dual chip setup.
 
estabya said:
Keep in mind that the 7442 VS 15013 Geekbench scores you are comparing are the M1 VS the M2 Pro. The M2 non Pro scores ~9000. Additionally, Geekbench doesn't measure storage performance. But for your use case I think you'd be hard pressed to see a difference unless you're talking fractions of seconds in a side-by-side comparison.

M2 256 GB SSDs use a single, 256GB NAND chip, but the M1 uses two, 128GB chips. Since the controller can access both chips at once, performance is much better than with a single chip. The M2 configs that are 512GB and up continue to use this dual chip setup.
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Then I will stick with M1.
 
ivnj said:
OW that sucks. But geek bench shows m2 as much faster.
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That's a multi-core score... and just a score. It doesn't mean that it will be faster 73% IRL, for usual cases it will be much less noticeable than that. Anyway, IMO upgrading from M1 to M2 Pro does make much more sense than upgrading from base M1 to base M2, maybe M3 will be a bigger step ahead.
 
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