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"The Mac Mini M1 resets expectations of how fast a small, affordable desktop can be."

• Bubble CPU performance

• Incredibly fast SSDs

• Excellent value

• Compact, robust design

• MacOS Big Sur is great

• Below average gaming performance

The Mac Mini has often been viewed as the ugly duckling in Apple's Mac family. Without the sleek sophistication of the iMac or the portable beauty of the MacBook, it is often overlooked, categorized as a "niche", and viewed as a developer and data center only.

But now that it comes with Apple's M1 chip, the last thing you want to do is ignore it. Although it looks like the previous generation Mac Mini from the outside, from the inside it is nothing short of a revolution.

The Mac Mini is far from a serious competitor for your money – assuming you want a desktop computer and you already have all of the peripherals you need. It's still a niche, but it hits hard against the walls of this descriptor and is ready to break out.

design

The Mac Mini is by far the most compact desktop Mac from Apple. With a width of 7.7 inches and a height of 1.4 inches from top to bottom, this device can easily fit on your desk or slide under a monitor. The footprint is the same as the previous Intel Mini-based Mac Mini.

It's also one of Apple's most minimalist devices. Almost the entire surface of the device is covered in matte aluminum with just a large Apple logo on it to break up the evenness. There is no other branding or labeling, just a tiny white light on the front that comes on when the device is turned on. It's a Jony Ive fever dream, perhaps the ultimate expression of Apple's obsessive design mores.

As we are used to from Apple hardware, the build quality is excellent. The whole device is heavy and solid with no bends or bends to be found. It feels like a device that could take a few hits and still smile – not that you want that to happen.

However, there are some differences between the M1 and Intel models. Most obvious is the paintwork: the M1 model is available in silver and the Intel version in darker gray. The Intel Mac Mini is also a bit heavier, weighing 2.9 pounds compared to the M1 Mac Mini's 2.6 pounds.

A more significant difference is on the back. Apple long ago removed USB-A ports on its MacBooks, but its desktop Macs – including the Mac Mini – have caught on. While the Intel Mac Mini has four USB-A ports, the M1 version only has two (both with 5 Gbit / s). This is more of a limitation on the M1 than a plan by Apple to phase out the Mac Mini's USB-A ports, and I wouldn't be surprised if four ports were available again when more powerful Apple silicon chips come out. However, it's worth noting if you still rely on USB-A for your daily chores. An adapter or dongle may be required.

The M1 Mac Mini has an Ethernet jack, two Thunderbolt 3 / USB 4 ports with 40 Gbit / s, an HDMI 2.0 slot and a 3.5 mm headphone jack as well as a power switch and a slot for the power cord. This is all identical to the Intel Mac Mini.

What you don't get is a keyboard, mouse, trackpad, or other peripheral device. You'll need to provide all of these devices yourself, and a monitor to connect the Mac Mini to. If you already have these, the $ 699 starting price is all the more attractive. If you don't then you need to take them into account when purchasing.

performance

This is the first time the Mac Mini has come with an Apple-owned M1 processor. The basic version of the previous model was equipped with an Intel Core i3-8100H with four cores and 3.0 GHz and ran pretty well. Even on paper, the Apple M1 seems like a significant step up: Not only does it have twice the number of CPU cores than the old entry-level Intel Mini-based Mac Mini, but it also includes an eight-core and one GPU 16-core neural engine on the same system on a chip (SoC).

In addition, Apple uses a so-called "Unified Memory Architecture" (UMA), with which the CPU and GPU can draw from a single memory pool, which reduces the overhead for both. All of this jargon means that in theory everything should run a lot faster – something third-party developers have already told us.

We've already seen how well Apple's M1 chip performs in the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. So we already have an idea of ​​what to expect: this is an incredibly powerful processor. The question, however, is whether the extra space in the Mac Mini compared to these portable laptops can keep the chip cooler and provide it with additional headroom. Does the Mac Mini outperform these devices too?

The answer is yes, and in some cases unequivocally. In GeekBench 5, the Mac Mini scored a single-core score of 1744 and a multi-core score of 7659 ahead of the 1707 and 7337 on the M1 MacBook Pro. These numbers may not mean much to you. Let me put that way: The Mac Mini's single-core score is the highest we've seen in GeekBench 5. The multi-core score is the eighth highest we have measured. This thing flies.

It's the same elsewhere. The SSDs are lightning fast with an average of 2,144.1 Mbit / s write speed and 2,775.1 Mbit / s read speed. In Cinebench R23, the Mac Mini was only beaten by the Falcon NW Talon, which packaged a Ryzen 9 5950X, a machine that will cost you at least $ 4,000. The Mac Mini we tested costs $ 699. This is just a yardstick of course, and this Falcon NW machine is far more capable of doing heavy duty tasks like gaming or video editing. Still, it is amazing value for money.

The starting price of $ 699 for the Mac Mini is an almost absurd feat.

Synthetic benchmarks can only tell you so much, however. How does the Mac Mini work in real life situations? In HandBrake 1.4 (an app optimized for the M1), the Mac Mini encoded a two-minute 4K video in two minutes and 36 seconds – the same length as the M1 MacBook Pro. In Adobe Premiere Pro, the Mini outperformed both the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro in the PugetBench benchmark. The Intel version of the Adobe app is used, which was translated with the Apple wizard for working on the M1.

If the Apple Silicon version of Adobe's video app comes out sometime this year, the performance will get even better. If this is your type of workload, the Mac Mini is going to make a world of difference, especially if you're currently using older Intel-based hardware.

The difference in performance between the MacBook Pro and the Mac Mini isn't that big. It's only 8% faster in Premiere. This should be considered when trying to decide between the two.

The Mac Mini is a workhorse and is great for CPU-intensive workloads. He's ahead of machines that cost twice (or more) as much. Oh, and it did it all without the fans turning. Not even. I had to put my head against the machine to hear something, and even then it was almost silent. Apple wasn't kidding when it said the M1 performed better in a more efficient way than anything Intel had to offer.

In fact, the $ 699 starting price of the Mac Mini feels almost absurd given the performance of the M1 chip. Sure, you don't get a screen, mouse, or keyboard and if you have to buy these the price goes up. However, if you already have a lot of peripherals on your desk, the Mac Mini is the cheapest way to get M1 performance.

Gaming performance

Despite all of this, the Mac Mini is not a slot machine. The M1 may have an integrated 8-core GPU, but it is still smoked by a computer with a discrete graphics card. That's not to say the gaming performance was terrible – it was respectable for a machine this size and price tag – but if you're looking for high frame rates, especially at higher resolutions, you have to look further.

The performance varied depending on the game. In games like Civilization VI that didn't put too much stress on the GPU, performance was acceptable with the right settings. At 1080p and medium quality, the Mac Mini averaged 48 frames per second (fps). At 1440p ultra, however, this value sank to 26 fps.

Gaming is an obvious weakness.

The tactical stealth game Desperados III ran smoothly on high settings, but the more demanding Deus Ex: Mankind Divided only managed 27 fps on 1080p medium. at 1440p ultra it barely cracked 12 fps.

So gaming is an obvious weakness, but I don't think there are many hardcore gamers out there who will buy a Mac Mini as their main device. If all you want to do is make a few easy games you should be fine, but don't expect too much more in this area.

App support

When Apple announced the M1 chip, it was clear that it had learned from the mistakes of its competitors as well as from its own past actions. When Microsoft introduced its own specially designed ARM chip in the Surface Pro X, it was in an app compatibility nightmare that it is still trying to break away from. Apple probably looked at it once and knew it had to be better.

The good news is that Apple has largely achieved this. If you buy a Mac Mini today, your favorite Mac apps will likely work fine, whether or not they are optimized for the M1. Many developers have already released M1-specific versions of their apps (e.g. Microsoft Office), but those who don't benefit from something Apple developed is called Rosetta 2.

This goes back to the last time Apple switched processor platforms and is translating Intel apps to work on the ARM-based M1. It's preinstalled on the Mac Mini and you won't even see it boot up – your Intel apps will just load with no issues. It's an exceptionally smooth process.

With apps optimized for the M1, the performance is likely to be much better than anything translated with Rosetta 2. For example, when I ran our HandBrake benchmark on version 1.0.7 of the app (which was developed for Intel systems), it encoded our 4K test video in 4 minutes and 44 seconds.

With an M1-optimized version of the app, this was possible in almost half the time. If you stick to Apple's own apps for most of your work, the performance is probably even better. Not everyone likes Apple's similar impact on their ecosystem, but hardware and software performance is one area where it really works.

There may be some apps that just don't work for some reason. When I first got the Mac Mini, Google Backup and Sync, which allows me to move work documents between my different devices, refused to load. It didn't end up being too bothersome – I switched to Dropbox, and a few weeks later, Google updated its app to fix the problem – but it's worth keeping in mind that you might have some app compatibility issues.

For the most part, however, I didn't have any problems with it. Google Backup and Sync was the only app I tried that didn't work right away.

Our opinion

The M1 Mac Mini is one of the most affordable desktop PCs money can buy right now. The performance is mind-boggling for a computer this small and affordable, and while it's not a gaming rig, it's nearly perfect for everything else.

Are there alternatives?

Some other companies offer miniature desktop PCs. There is the Intel NUC 10 with processor options from Intel i3 to i7. If you're looking for games, other companies like HP and Asus also have small PCs that might suit your needs.

Note, however, that all alternatives will run Windows. If you've got your heart on a tiny desktop computer running macOS, the Mac Mini is your only option.

How long it will take?

We're at the beginning of the Apple Silicon roadmap, so support for this Mac Mini will last for many years to come. Given the good performance compared to other items in the mount (and compared to devices way above the mount), it will be a long time before you notice that it is slowing down.

Apple doesn't update the Mac Mini as often as its MacBooks, but only one Apple Silicon Mac Mini model is currently available. So, Apple may bring out another option this year. That doesn't mean you will be disappointed if you buy this M1 Mac Mini, just that an even better model may be in the works.

Should you buy it?

Yes absolutely. The price-performance ratio is breathtaking. If you are looking for a desktop rather than a laptop in the market, the Mac Mini should be at the top of your list.

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