upgrade to Mini M2 Pro - or go two grand more for new Mac Studio?

[silverlakerCA]

Well here I sit, wondering which way to go.

I just canceled my Mac Studio M2 order which crept up to $3400 w/ Applecare, 2TB, 64 RAM.
I did that and then priced the Mac Mini M2 Pro and with a trade in of my Mini m1 - it would be $1300.

Putting the price aside and just thinking of what I use it for - writing, lightroom and photoshoping, some editing, website creation - isn't the M2 Pro more than enough for what I need? Please help me make the right choice.

Thanks!

 

[Moonjumper]

I'm thinking about Mac Studio M2, but will stay with the base storage and get an external multi-SSD Thunderbolt enclosure if I do. It will work out cheaper, be expandable, and can reuse it when upgrading to a new machine, which will be more likely to happen if I don't need to pay for extra storage at Apple rates.

 

[colinsky]

I tried the base m2 Pro Mini for a week but it didn't feel that much better than my 16/512 m1 Mini, so I sent it back. I waited until the m2's hit the Refurb store and grabbed a 32/1tb model and it has been superb for me so far. My memory pressure was always in the yellow with the m1 and I had to develop a habit of checking Activity Monitor all the time.

The 32gb of memory seems to have solved that problem. I got the 1tb SSD because it has full speed; the speed on the base m2 Mini is half the speed of the 1tb SSD.

The refurb price was at the very top end of what I could afford. I haven't heard yet whether the base 512gb SSD on the Studio has the crippled speed or not.

 

[jimthing]

get an external multi-SSD Thunderbolt enclosure

But what? SATA is dead, as NVMe is the same price for lower capacity <4TB, and almost at parity for 8TB ones.

There are almost no available multi-bay NVMe enclosures. The OWC 4M2 is L O U D as hell (read the reviews) as its cooling is active and uses a crap model of fan, inside its rattling metal box.

And RAID-ing has issues on macOS too. Latest SoftRAID needs a kext which means making your system insecure to run it, and Apple RAID only does 0/1/JBOD and also has outstanding long term reliability issues.

Does Sonoma fix these, who knows?

 

[jimthing]

Mini M2 Pro vs. Studio M1/M2 Max – comparison analysis

 

[tvv]

But what? SATA is dead, as NVMe is the same price for lower capacity <4TB, and almost at parity for 8TB ones.

There are almost no available multi-bay NVMe enclosures. The OWC 4M2 is L O U D as hell (read the reviews) as its cooling is active and uses a crap model of fan, inside its rattling mental box.

And RAID-ing has issues on macOS too. Latest SoftRAID needs a kext which means making your system insecure to run it, and Apple RAID only does 0/1/JPOD and also has outstanding long term reliability issues.

Does Sonoma fix these, who knows?

Uh this isn't true at all in the latest version of softraid. As others have pointed out online, the extension is no longer in the user space, so there is no security risks. You can verify for yourself too.

 

[Fishrrman]

My vote goes to the Mini.
Use the saved money for a nice display.

Do you really, really need 64gb for Lightroom and Photoshop?
Do you really, really need 2tb of internal storage?

 

[brandair]

There are viable options if you know what and where to get.

I use two Acasis TB405 Thunderbolt 3 enclosures, each containing a WD Black SN850X 2TB NVMe. Zero Raided via Apple Disk Controller (SoftRAID is a waste of money and makes you dependent). Total cost around 500 USD. My Mac Studio Max has an internal 512GB SSD which is used as the system disk (OS, apps, bare user dir). I get sequential read/write speeds up to around 6300/3700, which is close to the internal Apple NVMe. Another bonus: if you later sell the computer you keep the external NVMe drives.

This setup runs very reliable, and has always had with earlier desktop Macs and earlier SSD's/enclosures, except for one issue with the Mac Studio. I experienced several forced disconnections when having my 32" 4k monitor's DisplayPort connected to one of the MS TB3 ports, and when all TB3 disk and DisplayPort ports were saturated at the same time, i.e. when exporting images from Capture One. This is maybe due to a bug with Apple's Thunderbolt 4 controller. Of the 40Gbps data rate per TB4 Port, 8Gbps are reserved for video and 32Gbps for non-video data, and after overhead, PCI encoding, etc. this is further reduced to peak data throughput of approx. 22Gbps. After switching to a HDMI connection the raid performs very stable.

But what? SATA is dead, as NVMe is the same price for lower capacity <4TB, and almost at parity for 8TB ones.

There are almost no available multi-bay NVMe enclosures. The OWC 4M2 is L O U D as hell (read the reviews) as its cooling is active and uses a crap model of fan, inside its rattling mental box.

And RAID-ing has issues on macOS too. Latest SoftRAID needs a kext which means making your system insecure to run it, and Apple RAID only does 0/1/JPOD and also has outstanding long term reliability issues.

Does Sonoma fix these, who knows?

 

[Velin]

One thing to note. The new M2 Studio tech specs says HDMI now has "support for variable refresh rate (VRR), HDR, and multichannel audio." From the M2 Studio tech specs:

I don't see this included for the M2 Mini Pro HDMI port specs page. As someone who wants to use OLED monitors with high refresh rates, VRR and HDR are very nice to have.

Does the M2 Mini Pro have this in its HDMI 2.1 port? Just an oversight, or is there some difference between the M2 Mini Pro HDMI port and the M2 Mac Studio HDMI port?

 

[jimthing]

One thing to note. The new M2 Studio tech specs says HDMI now has "support for variable refresh rate (VRR), HDR, and multichannel audio." From the M2 Studio tech specs:

View attachment 2214038


I don't see this included for the M2 Mini Pro HDMI port specs page. As someone who wants to use OLED monitors with high refresh rates, VRR and HDR are very nice to have.

Does the M2 Mini Pro have this in its HDMI 2.1 port? Just an oversight, or is there some difference between the M2 Mini Pro HDMI port and the M2 Mac Studio HDMI port?

See #5 above, where I mentioned that in the link.

AFAIUI, they've just made it clearer in the new specs for the new Macs, as these all are on the previous M-series Macs already – but haven't bothered to update older spec pages to make this clear.
(not the first time Apple haven't updated older pages; thus making the new device spec pages look like new features have been added, when they haven't!)

 

[dgdosen]

What are some good reasons for needing the M2 Max Studio over the M2 Pro Mini? I can see those specs differences - but what are the real world use cases that make opting for the M2Max Studio a no-brainer?

 

[jz0309]

What are some good reasons for needing the M2 Max Studio over the M2 Pro Mini? I can see those specs differences - but what are the real world use cases that make opting for the M2Max Studio a no-brainer?

64 vs 32GB RAM. OP mentions Photoshop which is a RAM hog…

 

[dgdosen]

I definitely would want 1TB. I'd want to make a small partition to test beta OS and keep some headroom. Too bad that wasn't standard.

 

[dgdosen]

This youtuber makes a good case:

 

[ovbacon]

I use a mini M2, 16GB/512GB with an external Samsung 980 Pro 2TB ssd for all the things you mention and it is more than adequate for the task... these mini's are really good and just get a good monitor for the money saved.

 

[ovbacon]

64 vs 32GB RAM. OP mentions Photoshop which is a RAM hog…

I can run Photoshop, Lightroom and Illustrator all at the same time on my mini 16GB/512GB without a hitch and everything runs like a dream... When I did the same on my 2015 iMac 5K it definitely caused some issues.

 

[jz0309]

I can run Photoshop, Lightroom and Illustrator all at the same time on my mini 16GB/512GB without a hitch and everything runs like a dream... When I did the same on my 2015 iMac 5K it definitely caused some issues.

Not questioning that.
For myself I made the decision to got the Studio route with 64GB RAM back last December as I antipoate that my own photography needs are going to grow over the next several years and Adobe is not a company that develops SW to run within constraints, but, it did come at a price and whether or not it was really necessary I will find out over the years, but since there is no upgrade path I chose the way I did. YMMV

 

[robertosh]

Well here I sit, wondering which way to go.

I just canceled my Mac Studio M2 order which crept up to $3400 w/ Applecare, 2TB, 64 RAM.
I did that and then priced the Mac Mini M2 Pro and with a trade in of my Mini m1 - it would be $1300.

Putting the price aside and just thinking of what I use it for - writing, lightroom and photoshoping, some editing, website creation - isn't the M2 Pro more than enough for what I need? Please help me make the right choice.

Thanks!

M2 Pro is a nice beast and great value. Unless you need more graphical power I don't see a reason of going for the Studio. If you look the benchmarks, there is almost no difference between the M2 Pro vs the M2 Max in pure cpu single/multicore cpu benchmarks (12c Pro I mean). Only graphic power is where the Max pushes.

 

[silverlakerCA]

I did the unexpected - trigger the purchase of a refurbished Mac Studio M1.
I'll trade in my mac mini once I set up my new computer.

 

[Dr_Charles_Forbin]

This youtuber makes a good case:

I noticed the same thing.

 

[Dr_Charles_Forbin]

M2 Pro is a nice beast and great value. Unless you need more graphical power I don't see a reason of going for the Studio. If you look the benchmarks, there is almost no difference between the M2 Pro vs the M2 Max in pure cpu single/multicore cpu benchmarks (12c Pro I mean). Only graphic power is where the Max pushes.

Well, that’s it. I Ike the mini M2 Pro and I’d rather spend that extra money on an external storage device, but I keep getting drawn to that 32GB RAM because I already have a windows VM and I’m thinking of adding another Linux VM. But I could live without it because I’d never run them concurrently.

 

[silverlakerCA]

I pulled the trigger and bought a refurbished M1 Mac Studio. Did a migration from my M1 Mac Mini and tomorrow will spend the day doing photoshop to see how the new machine handles all the generative AI fill