New to Macs - Need some advice

[713spacegladiator]

Hi all, I need some help figuring out what model Mac Mini I should order.

Little background about myself.
I've only used Windows desktops/laptops for the last 30 years and I'm looking to buy my first ever Mac desktop for personal use.
However, in the last year, I've bought my first iPhone (13 Pro Max), an Apple Watch, 2021 iPad and lastly an AppleTV 4K... I am now fully entrenched in the Apple ecosystem lol.

I'm used to keeping my machines for 4-5 years and keep most of my data backed up on multiple external drives and the cloud.

My primary use will be for light-moderate photo editing in Lightroom and Final Cut Pro (4K home movies) as a novice with the intent to learn more over the next year or 2 but not on a professional level and more so as a hobby.

Which Mac Mini would make the most sense for my use case with a budget of $1200 - $1500?

 

[Corso99]

With your price range, the $1300 M2 Pro mini would be perfect for your needs. But if you wanted to save $300, I’d also consider getting the regular M2 mini upgraded with 16 GB ram and a 512 GB SSD.

 

[now i see it]

I’ve come to the conclusion that all Mac computers sold that are configured with the minimum RAM are ‘skimping’ on the RAM. Yes the machine will do light duty work, but when you want to start really doing stuff — the minimal RAM will rise it’s ugly head.

My advice for ALL Mac users is buy a Mac that doesn’t have the minimum quantity of RAM. Bump it up to the next level.

Internal storage is another story. It seems that 512GB drives are pretty much the best minimum size drive to choose. The 256GB drive is too risky (and 50% slower)

 

[mcnallym]

M2 Pro Mini 16/512 would be where I would be buying if buying today.

like you is home movies in fcp x but last April when buying then no M1 Pro Mini so went with the base max.

don’t recall seeing above 16gb memory usage whilst working so m2 pro should be fine.

 

[Fishrrman]

4k video?

Then get the m2pro and "bump up" the drive size to 1tb. This not only doubles the storage space, it doubles drive speeds, also.

Comes with 16gb of RAM standard.

 

[713spacegladiator]

Thanks all!

Went ahead and placed an order for an M2 Pro 16GB w/1TB SSD bringing my order to $1492 with tax.
$350 less than what I would have spent on a Mac Studio which in all honesty would have been overkill for a casual hobbyist like myself.

The 1TB should give me the best performance for decent 4K video scrubbing and file transfer compared to the 512GB option with it's slower R/W. Hope to get 4-5 years of decent performance out of this little system.