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Review: Apple's M4 Mac Mini is the Best Desktop Mac

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Apple refreshed the Mac mini back in November, adding M4 chips and increasing the base memory. We did a hands-on impressions video at the time, but we thought we'd follow that up with a more in-depth review now that we've had more time to spend with Apple's cheapest desktop machine.


Priced starting at $599, the Mac mini offers the most affordable way to get access to Apple's new M4 chip, plus the machine got a design overhaul with the 2024 refresh. The Mac mini now measures in at 5 inches by 5 inches, and it's more than two inches smaller than the prior-generation model. It takes up much less space on a desk, and while it isn't quite as small as the Apple TV, it offers impressive performance in a super compact package.

With Apple Intelligence and the M4 chip, Apple stopped using 8GB as the base amount of memory that Macs ship with, and upped it to 16GB. The $599 Mac mini has an M4 chip and 16GB of RAM as a result, and it is an excellent deal for a desktop machine. Of course, you're going to need to supply your own display, keyboard, and mouse, but it's so small that you can easily move it between desktop setups at home and work.

The base Mac mini comes with an M4 chip, but there is an option to upgrade to the faster M4 Pro for those who need more power. The M4 models have three Thunderbolt 4 ports, but choosing the M4 Pro nets you three Thunderbolt 5 ports with faster transfer speeds. There are also two USB-C ports with 10Gb/s transfer speeds at the front of each machine. Compared to the prior-generation M2 Mac mini, the M4 models are up to 55 percent faster in terms of CPU speed.

If you're looking for a desktop Mac, the base Mac mini is the best deal that you're going to get. The performance is more than enough for day to day tasks and even gaming, photo editing, and video editing, and that $599 price tag really can't be beat.

Article Link: Review: Apple's M4 Mac Mini is the Best Desktop Mac
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/01/03/m4-mac-mini-review/
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I was considering holding out for one of these, I think they are good value for the money. In the end I ended up getting a laptop as I was thinking I needed some portability. I think next time I will get a Mini.
 
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Edit: article has been corrected

Your article states in the first paragraph the M4 Mac mini increased base storage but it’s still 256GB, I believe you meant to say increased base unified memory to 16GB, as you detail further along in the article.
 
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Picked up the base M4 Mini and so far so good. Quiet, pretty quick, and macOS finally has features like window snapping that make it decent to use as a desktop.

Only annoyances are that Apple Intelligence, even disabled entirely, downloads and uses about 5GB of the 215GB you have on a fresh first boot. It would have been nice to include one or two USB-A ports for mouse, keyboard, thumb drives, etc.

Great computer for the price -- so long as you don't need to upgrade through Apple with their eye-watering upgrade prices.
 
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Altis said:
Picked up the base M4 Mini and so far so good. Quiet, pretty quick, and macOS finally has features like window snapping that make it decent to use as a desktop.

Only annoyances are that Apple Intelligence, even disabled entirely, downloads and uses about 5GB of the 215GB you have on a fresh first boot. It would have been nice to include one or two USB-A ports for mouse, keyboard, thumb drives, etc.

Great computer for the price -- so long as you don't need to upgrade through Apple with their eye-watering upgrade prices.
Click to expand...
You should be able to change the amount of ram and ssd storage. If Apple took their environmental stance seriously they should enable that for all their devices. There are other ways to collect your money by them. Hope greediness is something from the past and 2025 will be the one of innovation.
 
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>>you're going to need to supply your own display, keyboard, and mouse, but it's so small that you can easily move it between desktop setups at home and work.

and speakers.
 
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Altis said:
[...]

It would have been nice to include one or two USB-A ports for mouse, keyboard, thumb drives, etc.

[...]
Click to expand...
A lot of people now use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and although I'm with you on the USB-A ports it's easy to fix with an external hub. By doing so, you can split a single USB-C port into multiple different ports that won't even come close to maxing out the bandwidth capabilities of that single high-speed USB-C port.

As for flash drives, my preferred flash drive so far is the SanDisk 64GB Cruzer Fit USB Flash Drive (SDCZ33-064G-G35) because of its incredibly compact size. The problem is that it's so old that it's not even USB-3 and the biggest model is 64GB. You really need to be patient when copying a lot of data.

So for my next flash drive, I've been trying to find something as compact as the SanDisk and while it's a bit bigger, the Verbatim 128GB Store ‘n’ Go Dual has both USB-A and USB-C connectors. I haven't bought one yet because I'm not a huge fan of the fact that the USB-A side is made of plastic instead of metal, but otherwise it's the smallest USB-A/USB-C flash drive I have been able to find so far. I also don't have any experience with Verbatim for flash drives so I'm not sure of the long-term reliability.
 
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Thunderbolt 5 effectively nulls the Apple storage tax. You still pay for RAM, but it's no where near the SSD costs.

I bought an Icasis TB5 enclosure for $215, and I already have a gen4 4TB .m2, so this should cover me.

Unlike a laptop, external storage options aren't as intrusive. At least I rationalize that, whatever.

There's a really good review of this drive on YT. He found that there's a read issue with Apple hardware now, as these drives are overloading the system. So Apple needs to update this, which I imagine they will. If the external drive can read at 6000/gbps (writing from the Apple), there's no reason the Destop/laptop can't.
 
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Macalway said:
Thunderbolt 5 effectively nulls the Apple storage tax. You still pay for RAM, but it's no where near the SSD costs.

I bought an Icasis TB5 enclosure for $215, and I already have a gen4 4TB .m2, so this should cover me.

Unlike a laptop, external storage options aren't as intrusive. At least I rationalize that, whatever.

There's a really good review of this drive on YT. He found that there's a read issue with Apple hardware now, as these drives are overloading the system. So Apple needs to update this/
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I get that it can work, but the whole idea of a mini computer then needing a bunch of external dongles and storage strapped to it kind of makes the fact it's so small pointless.
 
HVDynamo said:
I get that it can work, but the whole idea of a mini computer then needing a bunch of external dongles and storage strapped to it kind of makes the fact it's so small pointless.
Click to expand...

Well, I sort of get a kick out of it. Anyways, there's no way around this, so there's that (unless you are insane).
 
Yvan256 said:
A lot of people now use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and although I'm with you on the USB-A ports it's easy to fix with an external hub. By doing so, you can split a single USB-C port into multiple different ports that won't even come close to maxing out the bandwidth capabilities of that single high-speed USB-C port.
Click to expand...
Fortunately I'm using a Dell U2723QE which has built-in KVM with several USB-A ports, so I happen to be covered in that regard. Works great for using one setup for both the Mini and my old PC.

But it'd be annoying if I didn't have one. Looking to get another one for my parents and they have of USB-A stuff so will definitely need a hub. Since USB-A is still so common, I'd say more so than USB-C, it would be nice to have it on-board and not need to get external devices to do such simple things -- especially if you don't have it when you suddenly need it.
 
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