MR recycled the article. it gets really confusing when they do that. I wish they would go ahead and reissue a new article with the updated specs and a new conversation thread.
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Mac Mini vs. Mac Studio Buyer's Guide
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That's the easy decision. Do you need the PCI-e slots? If yes, then you need the Pro. If not, then the Studio.
seems like it would be trivial to copy/paste the text to a new article if they’re too lazy to write...
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Is there no four slot pci gen4/thunderbolt adaptor under $4000?
edit: there are 7 slots.
don't get me wrong. I lust after the Mac Pro case design. I suppose even apple is disappointed they haven't been able to come up with a cpu to make use of it
and knowing that you'll never be able to put a real gpu in there would be a bummer too
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Not true at all. The Mini simply moves up a notch to Studio. Until M2 came out for the Studio yesterday the 32 GB M1 Studio versus the 32 GB M2 Mini were very hard to choose between for graphic designer, photographer or art director.
IMO 64 or more GB RAM is essential however, so now that M2 is in Studio there is no place for the Mini. A lot of folks consider M2 minimal, but I think it is a big move forward.
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In 2023, Apple updated the Mac Studio with the M2 Max and M2 Ultra chips, with the latter being the most powerful Apple silicon chip to date. Earlier this year, Apple refreshed the Mac mini with the M2 and M2 Pro chips, meaning that the Mac Studio faces a formidable competitor that offers "Pro" capabilities at a substantially lower price point.
Nonsense.
My home Mac is still a Mid 2010 Mac Pro that I've been running on for the last 12 years. Expandability allowed me to future-proof it and continue to have a viable machine during all that time.
Now that expandability has been thrown out the window, when you realize that a higher-end spec M2 Pro Mac mini is almost the same price as an M2 Max Mac Studio (but with a faster CPU, double the GPU cores, more ports, better cooling, higher memory bandwidth and capacity, etc.) it's a no-brainer to pick the lower-spec Mac Studio instead. In terms of future-proofing, I could easily see an M2 Max Mac Studio still being a viable machine in 7-10 years' time, if your computing requirements don't change all that much.
I love the new M2/M2 Pro Mac mini and think Apple did a great job on it, it's perfect for a lot of people. But I'll be buying a Mac Studio as soon as I have the shekels saved up for it, despite not having a "professional workflow" at home. It's too good of a computer to pass up.
Confirming my base Mac Studio purchased March 2022 is still blazing fast
Good article. The Mac mini is a powerful small computer. For those who require much more computing power, Mac Studio is an option.
its been said multiple times but for me when my usage was a bit different from home (was doing freelance design and packaging work) I was looking at studio base model, however recent work changes led me to understand I don't need all that and then looked at the mini when it went M2 and M2 Pro. I settled on a base M2 Pro as when you started to add memory and cores its gets very close to the base Studio, now the Studio is M2 based you can literally compare Apples to Apples.
Look at what you need vs what you want or perhaps speculate that you need - I think most people winding back their wants to a real purchase might be pleasantly surprised how good a modest Mac can actually be. I've had one memory pressure warning - which was actually News memory leaking ( I used to have MacPro 5,1 with lots of RAM) - but as the Mini M2 Pro quits and launches apps really quickly I don't need to leave as many apps always open.
This also means in perhaps 2-3 years I can look to similar upgrade and not look to have possibly lost lots of $$$$
As always YMMV
Look at what you need vs what you want or perhaps speculate that you need - I think most people winding back their wants to a real purchase might be pleasantly surprised how good a modest Mac can actually be. I've had one memory pressure warning - which was actually News memory leaking ( I used to have MacPro 5,1 with lots of RAM) - but as the Mini M2 Pro quits and launches apps really quickly I don't need to leave as many apps always open.
This also means in perhaps 2-3 years I can look to similar upgrade and not look to have possibly lost lots of $$$$
As always YMMV
No. There is..
1) The base model Mini with 8 CPU cores. With 8 to 32 GB of RAM
2) The Mini with M2-Pro with 10 cores, with 16 to 32 GB RAM
3) Mini with 12 cores. With 16 to 32 GB RAM
Then comes to "Studio"
Iwould argue that the 10 or 12 core M2 Pro is the middle ground. The base M2 is what most users needs and is very fast for general computing.
Totally agree. When you max out the Mini, it seems like a small jump to the more versatile Studio with M2 Max. That is what I am getting.
can you experts stop those pointless arguments about mid vs high tier for just 1 min and explain the numbers to us non “pro” folks. it doesn’t make sense the max performance is near identical to pro….isn’t max suppose to be 2x the performance of pro in multi core and gpu benchmarks? Thanks
I am guessing that the items I put in yellow might be of interest to you. You can see where the Studio offers
'more' in a few areas.
| Mac Mini | Mac Studio |
|---|---|
| Height of 1.41 inches (3.58 cm) | Height of 3.7 inches (9.5 cm) |
| M2 chip or M2 Pro chip | M2 Max chip or M2 Ultra chip |
| Up to 12-core CPU | Up to 24-core CPU |
| Up to 19-core GPU | Up to 76-core GPU |
| Media engine with video decode engine, video encode engines, and ProRes encode and decode engine | Media engine with two video decode engines, up to four video encode engines, and up to four ProRes encode and decode engines |
| Up to 200GB/s memory bandwidth | Up to 800GB/s memory bandwidth |
| Up to 32GB unified memory | Up to 192GB unified memory |
| Support for up to two displays (M2) or three displays (M2 Pro) | Support for up to eight 4K displays, six 6K displays, or three 8K displays |
| Up to four Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports | Six Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports |
| Gigabit Ethernet or 10Gb Ethernet port | 10Gb Ethernet port |
| – | SDXC card slot (UHS-II) |
| Starts at $699 for M2 model or $1,299 for M2 Pro model | Starts at $1,999 for M2 Max model or $3,999 for M2 Ultra model |
Mac Studio is the middle ground, Mac Pro is the high ground
Well that is how it ended up due Apple's inability to offer an "Extreme" SoC for the Mac Pro, but again, my post is from over a year ago and back then, the Mac Pro was expected to be more than a Mac Studio with PCIe slots.
So yes, looking at the desktop lineup today, the iMac and Mac mini are the "low end", the Mac mini Pro and Studio Max are the "middle" and the Mac Studio Ultra and Mac Pro are the "high end".
So same computer plus pci slots defines high ground vs middle ground?
In some respect, yes.....plus the rest of the build out options on the Pro. RAM capacity, drive capacity, GPU/Afterburner cards, etc. You can build out a $50K plus workstation on the PRO. Not everybody NEEDS PCIe slots for their process. Where I work we do, at least 5-6 slots. We recently took delivery of 6 Intel Mac Pro's with 192GB RAM, dual 28 core CPUs, Dual GPU. We run video post.....Avid/Flame/Adobe on 10GB/s optical fiber to a video server with 750TB storage. Too many people are just complaining for the sake of complaining......I certainly can speak for all people but I suspect that the Studio is most likely more than enough for a vast majority of users. I would buy what you truly need, what does the work that you have to do. Tech gets old and obsolete quickly.
The studio and the pro now have the same ram capacity. It doesn’t seem you are going to be able to add gpu
So it comes down largely to pci slots, which is great if you need them, but sucks that they are an extra $4k. That’s $682 per pci slot
All of this was true with the 2019 Intel Mac Pro (which is no longer offered for sale), but with the 2023 Apple Silicon Mac Pro, the main difference is that the Mac Pro offers PCIe Gen4 slots and SATA ports for internal cards and storage.
The Pro can have 1.5TB RAM (well with the Intel) honestly what you do with that. I have 3 HP Z8 workstations at work....they can be maxed out at $125k if you go nuts....3TB RAM 4 Quadra top end GPU, 48 TB SSD and more. I think there are tasks that require workstations like that, but not what most people do.
We’re talking about apple silicon though
Studio and pro have the same ram and same gpu
Not really. Mini->Studio->MacPro simply offer a continuum of increasing performance. Not high or low ground so much as a slope that users can choose to position themselves wherever they like.
Things like SSD storage and high-speed networking (25gbps) can reach higher performance when plugged directly into the Mac Pro's PCIe slots compared to being in an external enclosure connected to a Mac Studio over Thunderbolt 4.
Yes, these are niche use cases, but they are niche use cases where the Mac Pro might be the preferred option over the Mac Studio.