Which Mini Mac to buy please guide Me...And what to look out for !?

[PeteMacMan]

Hi All,

I'm currrently adding a SSD to my 2011 Imac for £50 to get a few more years work out of it for the office room.

In the meantime, I'm considering purchasing a Mac Mini or M1 or M2.

My hope is it will perform the following.
- Stream apple tv to my TV and Monitor.
- Stream Kodi to TV and Monitor
- Be used for browsing Internet, mail use and some office work related use.
- Stream SkyGo

I want something that will boot up reasonably quickly, and just carry out the above actions with total ease.

Long term It can then take over from my IMAC as my desktop. (only issue with this is IMAC is currently holding 500gb worth of data 12 years worth - need to review as i think majority are pictures) so i didnt want to go into the 1tb world as mini start to hit higher costs in that bracket. When in truth 512gb im sure would suffice.

1. Bottom line Pros and cons of any choice? definite no go areas. Truth is id like to spend as minimum as a I can (£350-500) but not at the cost of performance and longevity of product so any known limitations would be good to hear so i avoid and any steer on best value for performance also helpful. Baseline must haves would be great to know as there are so many specs. out there.

2. Plus connectivity wise... do you get as good a picture as say the apple tv would connected to a tv for streaming things like apple tv Skysports etc. The Imac is a brilliant picture for streaming.

3. Recommended 27 inch monitors to attach.. or monitors, brands in general?

4 Can they be mounted onto monitors? Are are they pretty cumbersome heavy? Dare I ask on this forum are their competitive mini android or window pc's!?)

thanks all


thanks all
Pete

 

[meson]

For your use, a base model M1 or M2 8/256 mini would be an excellent choice. If you can find a M1 on a good discount, it would be an excellent choice for you. Use an external SSD for your photo library, and you will get at least the longevity you have had with the 2011 iMac. I know it is at or a bit above your budget, but the performance of the M series machines is well worth it.
If you are wirelessly streaming from your mini using AirPlay, you will only output at 1080p. From across the room it will look fine. Up close you will see some compression artifacts. With the screen connected, you will get an excellent picture, the same as connecting your Apple TV to the screen.

For a 27” monitor, look for a 4k display, and you will be quite happy, although coming from a 2011 iMac, a 1440p 27” will offer up the same pixel density you are used to. Personally I use an inexpensive 32” 4k display with my mini and am quite happy.

There are vesa mounting brackets that you can use to piggy back the mini between the screen and mount if you choose to go that route. I’ve not used one so I don’t have a recommendation for a vesa arm or mount.

 

[PeteMacMan]

For your use, a base model M1 or M2 8/256 mini would be an excellent choice. If you can find a M1 on a good discount, it would be an excellent choice for you. Use an external SSD for your photo library, and you will get at least the longevity you have had with the 2011 iMac. I know it is at or a bit above your budget, but the performance of the M series machines is well worth it.
If you are wirelessly streaming from your mini using AirPlay, you will only output at 1080p. From across the room it will look fine. Up close you will see some compression artifacts. With the screen connected, you will get an excellent picture, the same as connecting your Apple TV to the screen.

For a 27” monitor, look for a 4k display, and you will be quite happy, although coming from a 2011 iMac, a 1440p 27” will offer up the same pixel density you are used to. Personally I use an inexpensive 32” 4k display with my mini and am quite happy.

There are vesa mounting brackets that you can use to piggy back the mini between the screen and mount if you choose to go that route. I’ve not used one so I don’t have a recommendation for a vesa arm or mount.

Tnanks so much for that response.

For your use, a base model M1 or M2 8/256 mini would be an excellent choice. If you can find a M1 on a good discount, it would be an excellent choice for you. Use an external SSD for your photo library, and you will get at least the longevity you have had with the 2011 iMac. I know it is at or a bit above your budget, but the performance of the M series machines is well worth it.
If you are wirelessly streaming from your mini using AirPlay, you will only output at 1080p. From across the room it will look fine. Up close you will see some compression artifacts. With the screen connected, you will get an excellent picture, the same as connecting your Apple TV to the screen.

For a 27” monitor, look for a 4k display, and you will be quite happy, although coming from a 2011 iMac, a 1440p 27” will offer up the same pixel density you are used to. Personally I use an inexpensive 32” 4k display with my mini and am quite happy.

There are vesa mounting brackets that you can use to piggy back the mini between the screen and mount if you choose to go that route. I’ve not used one so I don’t have a recommendation for a vesa arm or mount.

Thanks so much for this response..

Would you recommend refurbs? From apple or from alternate sellers there seem to be alot around? My only concern is short warranty and an ability to actually upgrade the mini macs yourself if ram etc become an issue? Unless I'm mistaken and you can.

I take it a 4k hdr TV 32 " would not prove as finer picture as your monitor?

Can either of the m1 and m2 in theory link to a TV and a monitor at the same time to use as desktop pc on one and stresm say apple TV on the other?

Thanks again

 

[Algus]

Apple's refurb center is fantastic and indistinguishable from new. You can get all the same coverage as if you buy new from them. There's an argument to be made that it's actually silly to buy new from them when the refurb center exists but then the refurb center depends on what Apple is taking back in so all configurations are not always available there. It's usually worth checking though and the baseline systems are generally available.

If you're concerned about the RAM, you will want to buy that up front as with the new M series chips, everything is centralized on one board. This has some performance advantages but the huge downside is that you can't provide your own memory.

The last Mac mini that had user serviceable RAM was the 2012 unit so there isn't much reason to buy one of the older Intel models at this point since after 2012 none of the Minis could take RAM upgrades.

 

[meson]

As mentioned, upgrading ram is not something that you can do on a Mac these days. That said, unless your usage changes significantly, I believe you will be fine with 8GB for a long time. My wife regularly batch edits dozens of portrait photography images in Lightroom and Photoshop on her 8/256 M1 Air (bought for use in her preschool classroom). Even when really pushing these machines, the slowdown is very manageable. The only reason that I went with 16GB on my M1 mini was to have headroom for running an occasional VM.

I’m in higher education and typically buy through the edu program, but have purchased refurbed devices from Apple in the past and found them to be good as new and would go this route without hesitation. I would only buy new-in-box from a third party. Given that truly servicing these machines is very difficult, going with a 3rd party refurb is just buying a used machine.

My monitor is an LG-UL500. It has a VA panel similar to what you would find in a lower end TV, although 4k 32” TVs seem tough to come by. Compared to a nice IPS panel, pixels in the periphery of your field of view look slightly off, so you may have to move your head slightly as you focus on different parts of the screen. The brightness could be a little brighter. I run it at or near full brightness, but find it perfectly serviceable.

I went with 32” over 27” so I could run it at full resolution without scaling. 4k @ 32” gives me the screen real estate I need. A 27” screen would have left me wanting another screen and would have pushed me to an iMac and I would have used one of my existing lower resolution screens as an external display.

Yes, you can connect to a monitor with one port and a TV with another and use it as you intend. Although you can only connect 2 displays to the base M1 and M2 chips, you can connect up to 4 total when you use Apple’s other built in tricks. For kicks I’ve used my 13” M1 MBP with its internal screen and external monitor(accounting for the 2wired displays) while also using AirPlay with my tv mounted on the wall and my iPad in SideCar mode. The same can be done with the mini.

The one issue that may come up is that you will only be able to output audio to one location as far as I know. If the goal is to work on the mini and stream a show for the kids in another room, all audio will only go to one set of speakers. If you just want to push a show off to another screen for background noise while you work, this is a great solution.

 

[Longplays]

Do you use Chrome?

 

[sracer]

Hi All,

I'm currrently adding a SSD to my 2011 Imac for £50 to get a few more years work out of it for the office room.

In the meantime, I'm considering purchasing a Mac Mini or M1 or M2.

My hope is it will perform the following.
- Stream apple tv to my TV and Monitor.
- Stream Kodi to TV and Monitor
- Be used for browsing Internet, mail use and some office work related use.
- Stream SkyGo

I want something that will boot up reasonably quickly, and just carry out the above actions with total ease.

Long term It can then take over from my IMAC as my desktop. (only issue with this is IMAC is currently holding 500gb worth of data 12 years worth - need to review as i think majority are pictures) so i didnt want to go into the 1tb world as mini start to hit higher costs in that bracket. When in truth 512gb im sure would suffice.

1. Bottom line Pros and cons of any choice? definite no go areas. Truth is id like to spend as minimum as a I can (£350-500) but not at the cost of performance and longevity of product so any known limitations would be good to hear so i avoid and any steer on best value for performance also helpful. Baseline must haves would be great to know as there are so many specs. out there.

2. Plus connectivity wise... do you get as good a picture as say the apple tv would connected to a tv for streaming things like apple tv Skysports etc. The Imac is a brilliant picture for streaming.

3. Recommended 27 inch monitors to attach.. or monitors, brands in general?

4 Can they be mounted onto monitors? Are are they pretty cumbersome heavy? Dare I ask on this forum are their competitive mini android or window pc's!?)

thanks all


thanks all
Pete

I went from a 2017 iMac 8GB RAM/1TB HDD (that died and was replaced by a 1TB external SSD) to a base 8GB/256GB M2 Mac Mini.

The experience has been fantastic. I added a Satechi dock (with an internal SSD bay) and an additional external SSD. I have a 24" Samsung monitor attached and that has worked extremely well.

One of the things that frustrated me with iMacs is their form over function approach of placing all of the ports in the back. The Satechi dock sits under the Mac Mini. The size and color match perfectly and offer a bunch of front-facing ports.

 

[PeteMacMan]

I went from a 2017 iMac 8GB RAM/1TB HDD (that died and was replaced by a 1TB external SSD) to a base 8GB/256GB M2 Mac Mini.

The experience has been fantastic. I added a Satechi dock (with an internal SSD bay) and an additional external SSD. I have a 24" Samsung monitor attached and that has worked extremely well.

One of the things that frustrated me with iMacs is their form over function approach of placing all of the ports in the back. The Satechi dock sits under the Mac Mini. The size and color match perfectly and offer a bunch of front-facing ports.

Hi THanks for this.

Couple of questions. The 256GB's have been criticised for being real slow in comparison to the 512/1TB m1 or m2's? Youve not found this to be the case?

And can you explain the internal ssd bay ? And the external added SSD - just so i feel for physically how this looks and the benefits if you doing so.. against say buying a 1tb all in.

thanks appreciate

 

[sracer]

Hi THanks for this.

Couple of questions. The 256GB's have been criticised for being real slow in comparison to the 512/1TB m1 or m2's? Youve not found this to be the case?

And can you explain the internal ssd bay ? And the external added SSD - just so i feel for physically how this looks and the benefits if you doing so.. against say buying a 1tb all in.

thanks appreciate

I don't have another Mini to compare it to so I can't say what if any performance difference there is between the two. What I DO know is that this M2 Mini is blazingly faster than the 2017 iMac w/external SSD (which itself was lightyears faster than the internal harddrive that came with the iMac).

I have a 2TB SSD for Time Machine that is installed in the dock's internal M.2 SATA SSD slot. I don't have any need or plans to use that drive for anything other than backup, so it made sense for me to keep it contained within the dock.

I have an external Samsung T7 1TB SSD attached to one of the Thunderbolt ports in the rear of the M2 Mac Mini for my work files. It is the size of a stack of 8 credit cards so it is easy to keep it out of sight. My more frequently used set of files are stored on the M2 Mac Mini's internal SSD (which is currently sitting at 140GB free).

Time Machine backs up data on both the T7 external and internal SSDs.

I like having my files on an external drive so that I can use the data on other systems if the need arises. I have not noticed any significant performance difference by having files on that external drive.

I have really been pushing this system with media creation, office productivity, content consumption, and virtual machines of vintage hardware. I'm thoroughly impressed with what this base model can do.

 

[aneftp]

I just traded in m1 8/256gb for m2 8/256gb. Cause it really only cost me net $95 to trade in with USA education promo
$499 usd plus $100 gift card
$305 trade in m1

I have not noticed any speed difference in Normal internet browsing word excel with SSD speed.

The m2 is 10% faster single core and 22% faster multi core than m1. Though no one really can tell difference in real world for 90% of general users like me.

I have high end dell ultra sharp cubes 34 inch 1440p screen ips usb c monitor. It’s fantastic monitor.

But monitors are a personal choice. I prefer 1440p for texts reading since I use it for business.

 

[mcnallym]

Hi THanks for this.

Couple of questions. The 256GB's have been criticised for being real slow in comparison to the 512/1TB m1 or m2's? Youve not found this to be the case?

And can you explain the internal ssd bay ? And the external added SSD - just so i feel for physically how this looks and the benefits if you doing so.. against say buying a 1tb all in.

thanks appreciate

Yes they are indeed real slow at 1500mbps.
the 512gb is 3000mbps as was the 256 on m1 as used 2 x 128gb nand chips rather then a single 1 x 256gb nand.

with your stated used (and intended use for the machine) then unless you run a benchmark you won‘t notice the difference and real world test of the overall m2 vs m1 systems shows that the m2 still completes the real world task. Certainly coming from a 2011 iMac then any SATA SSD is going to be way slower then tha.

if working with 40-50gb file transfers you won’t buy a 256gb storage anyway.

there is no SSD bay wih Apple silicon. They use nand chips direct on the board with all the controller parts that usually find on an nvme ssd inside the apple silicon SoC.

a decent external nvme ssd will be fast enough for you and doesn’t look too bad but not as clean as an internal one. However as noted a 1tb mini gets expensiv.

streaming wise you can attach SATA HDD and stream from them without issue. I used to use a drobo 5c with SATA 3.5” HDD as storage for iTunes which streamed without issue to Apple TV.