Hey hey everyone, its been awhile but I hope you’re doing well. A few years ago I did my
first review on the Mac Mini that Apple brought back to life and how enthusiastic I was to use it
The overall build, including storage and processor was ok to do basic work on it - writing emails,
basic coding, assignments and more This is also the computer I’ve been using
to develop videos for this channel. Yet in these past few years,
issues arose with this intel processor
Enter Apple Silicon M chip. In their press release, Apple says “M2
is optimized for Mac systems in which small size and power efficiency are critically important…
M2 combines numerous powerful technologies into a single chip, and features a unified
memory architecture for dramatically improved performance and efficiency. ”
The mini comes with the plug in cable and thats really it since its a plug and play computer.
Dont worry Ill talk about the features in a few minutes
The intel processor in my 2020 model slowed down in the last year
I found that thermal issues would raise the entire temperature of the machine
which caused a negative feedback loop of slowing down my workflow
Playing 4k videos on Chrome significantly made my computer sluggish
And developing and rending Final Cut Pro videos would take over an hour to do
Basically, this was the relationship between me and the Intel processor
So lets look at the the ports on this m2 mini Gigabit Ethernet
HDMI, 2 USB-A,
Two Thunderbolt 4 ports, headphone jack
Wait. Hold on. Didnt the 2020 Intel model have 4 thunderbolt ports?? Yes it did!
Those extra 2 ports were given to the Mini M2 Pro. Like seriously apple?? Why you do this?
Making videos for this channel,
I went with the M2 8 core CPU with 16 GB of memory and 512 GB of storage.
Basically double the power and storage of my intel mini
What makes the Mini such a popular computer is its power in such a compact body
Also its price point is such that its affordable for most people so it acts
as a low risk entry into the apple ecosystem What the mini is not is a gaming computer.
Later Ill show the benchmarks of the M2 processor compared to Intel, AMD and other Apple silicon
Just like previous mini’s you cant manually change and upgrade
the memory without voiding the warranty on it
Apple knows its customers pretty well so I think trying to modify
the hardware isnt worth it for a lot of users.
Plus, its known that Apple has hardware modification detection software can end
up locking you out of the computer if you try changing the parts yourself.
These are Canadian dollar prices. The hardware difference between the Mini and Mini Pro are the
number of ports and processor The mini that I own has 2
thunderbolt ports but the Pro Mini has four Also apple reserved the the 10 Core CPU and 16
Core GPU processors for the Pro model too. These are the only differences between these models
If youre a motion graphic artist using tools like After Effects,
Motion and very intense GPU software, its in your best interest to go for the Pro.
The most intense work on my mini has been Final Cut Pro but professionals will need processors
that go above and beyond and I think thats the market Apple is catering the m2 pro towards
What I like about Apple in general is how easy it is backup its OS and put it on a
new device using tools like Time Machine I found that FCP was backing up a lot
of past video files and that was actually eating up a lot of storage
Once I deleted them, I had a smaller backup meaning I could port my entire OS to the M2 faster
So I recommend you clean and organize your OS before porting it to the new machine
With Geekbench 6, I measure the M2 GPU performance and and it received a score of 26774.
This is better the Apple M1 but it is by no means better than the M1 Pro and Max processors
But thats to be expected since those versions are actually multiple M1 chips fused together.
Checking the performance with cinebench, I get a more detail idea of the M2
performance against other processors. The m2 single core chip outperforms
pretty much all single core Intel CPU processors However, when it comes to the multicore test,
I see that the M2 ranks number 7, with AMD Ryzen Threadripper taking number one spot.
To really test if M2 is as good as it seems, Im creating this video while running cinebench in
the background AND i have 8 chrome tabs open If I had even tried this on my intel mini,
I would have burnt my house down But you know what? The M2 held
it down really well. I didnt see any decline
in performance as i switched between programs If I had more complex workflow that involved Apple
Motion or After Effects, then I could give viewers a thorough perspective on how powerful it is.
But FCP is a beast on processors, so this test should be enough.
What I noticed about running these tests is that the machine did not heat up
And not once did the fan ever kick in If anything, just the opposite,
the mini really stayed cool to the touch under these heavy workloads
Thanks to apple’s amazing attention to detail and work on the processor, the m2 was seamlessly
reducing power consumption on background processes that I wasnt using at the time.
Im producing this video during the middle of a heat wave,
so having my computer AND environment cook me at the same time is no bueno.
Apple really knocked it out of the park when they decided to make their own processor
The issues that showed up with Intel got too annoying to handle and Im glad I made the upgrade
What I dont like is that Apple removed those 2 extra thunderbolt ports which I
use to connect my USBC devices to and decided to add them to the Mini Pro
Beyond that, not much has significantly changed in the Mini’s design.
Overall, Im looking forward to producing more content on
the m2 now that have a better processor, memory and storage.
If you found this video helpful, like, subscribe and share and Ill see you in the next episode.