- Over the past few months,
the M1 Mac mini has quickly become my M1 and only
because the impact it's had on my video editing
and streaming workflow has been anything but mini.
(mellow music)
And as you probably know,
I'm typically not a computer review channel,
I don't really make computer related videos.
But the fact that this little thing right here,
this is the least expensive computer I've ever purchased.
And it's also the most powerful computer
I've ever purchased.
I'm not gonna do a technical computer review,
cause there are people who are just pros at that.
The reason that I'm making this video is because the effect
that this thing has had on my workflow is ridiculous.
And if you have a similar workflow to me,
you do a lot of video editing, streaming,
that sort of stuff.
And you're kinda wondering,
are those new M1 computers worth it?
The answer is absolutely yes.
And this is the base base model,
the cheapest Apple computer you can buy.
It's the 256 gigabyte hard drive, eight gigabytes of RAM.
And the stuff that I've been able to do with this
is a whole frigging desktop computer.
It's ridiculous.
The stuff that I have been able
to do with this is it's unreal.
So we'll kinda show you some examples of that,
tell you about it,
and also explain why I got it in the first place.
Because as you might know,
the 16-inch MacBook Pro has been my main computer
since its release.
And this is the most expensive
and was the most powerful computer I'd ever had.
But the problem with it is that it is very loud.
And over the past year
since my entire job is switched to being, you know,
teaching my classes on Zoom,
I've been doing so many more podcasts and streams.
Literally, as soon as I open the Zoom app,
the fans start going crazy on this computer,
it sounds like it's gonna launch itself into orbit.
I'll show you right now.
So we'll go in here,
I'm not playing with the audio or anything,
I will open up Zoom.
And this is my typical setup when I'm teaching my classes
or doing a stream is I have Ecamm Live open
and it's usually running through Zoom.
Alright, so it's been about a minute,
I hadn't used this computer at all today.
So it was cold.
Once I've got Zoom and Ecamm open, it's starting to warm up,
the fans are turning on.
So now pretty much no matter
what I'm doing throughout the day,
the computer is going to be revving up its fans.
Sometimes they're not super, super loud.
And sometimes it's ridiculous.
I've literally been in a different room.
And my wife, Heather and I look at each other,
like what's that sound.
And we realize it's just
the computer like running the screensaver.
And that can be really frustrating
when I'm trying to do anything that involves audio,
it got to the point where I just have my external display.
And then I would just hide my computer under the desk to try
to block out some of the noise.
But that's not super practical.
And so after almost a year of working from home
with this sound happening constantly.
When this is what you do all day, every day,
it just got frustrating.
So I thought my solution was,
why don't I just get the cheapest Mac mini.
And this can be my streaming computer
because it's supposed to be much quieter.
So I can use this for all my streams.
And then this
which is more powerful can be my editing computer.
Well, it took about less than a week
for this just to become my main computer.
And I actually feel guilty for how little I use this one.
So let's shut it down and turn off this fan noise here.
Even this mat right now
where the MacBook was is like super warm.
This thing always stays completely cool to the touch.
I know the fans on cause there's a vent in the back
and if I reach my hand behind it, I can feel air coming out,
but you cannot hear it
and one of the benefits you might know is
that the Mac mini has a few more ports
than the current M1 MacBooks.
So you've got Gigabit Ethernet, two Thunderbolt,
four USB C ports and HDMI port, two USB Type A ports
and a 3.5 millimeter output.
It's not the largest amount of IO ever,
but I don't see a problem with it.
It works pretty well.
What I typically have is my external display connected
via one of the Thunderbolt ports,
I have a hub connected into the other.
And then I've got the road caster
and the 810 Mini plugged into the USB A ports.
I've got speakers or headphones obviously going out
of the headphone jack.
There is a built in speaker but it's really bad.
It's like the quality of a cell phone from 12 years ago,
but sometimes I'll still need
to connect other things like hard drives.
And so I got this guy here which you might have seen
these docks that are made for the Mac mini.
This is a brand called Hagibis, I think and I had this
for a while now and it works really well.
So a couple things about it's a totally ridiculous name.
The new Hagibis, did you hear Tom has the new Hagibis?
like a 2021 Hagibis, yeah.
They do make a silver version that matches the Mac mini,
but it was out of stock.
So I just got the space gray one.
And the idea is that it sits right on top of the Mac mini.
And then you've got two more USB A ports,
you've got two USB 3.0 ports,
you've got an SD card slot and a micro SD card slot.
And then under it, there's a little port
where you can install an internal SSD.
And I think this costs about $70,
it kind of goes in and out of stock on Amazon.
So the price fluctuates as well.
So I just put a SanDisk SSD in there,
this is a one terabyte is about $100.
But this made a lot more sense to me than upgrading
the memory in the computer, the eight gigs of RAM
has been more than enough for me, which is crazy,
'cause that computer, my MacBook Pro is 16 gigs of RAM.
And I always thought well my next computer
is gonna be at least 32 if not 64.
Nope, it was eight.
And if you have the budget for the 16 gigs of RAM,
it's probably worth it.
But as you'll see in a second,
the stuff that the eight gigabyte can handle like
it's more than any reasonable human who's buying a Mac mini
would probably need of course, your money is your money,
your budgets is your budget,
but I found it was a lot cheaper to just do this.
And then I just basically edit off of this
the only stuff that lives on my computer's hard drive,
our applications and a few super important files,
this just shows up,
it's a little hard drive on the desktop,
when you wake the computer, it's right there,
it works super well.
Let me put this bottom part back on
so I don't lose all these little screws.
Now there are only two problems
I've had with this thing so far.
One of them is very minor on the back,
there's the USB C port that connects to the computer.
Maybe like three times in the past two and a half months
that I've had this computer,
it has just not shown up when I wake the computer
from sleep.
And the solution is just to unplug it, plug it back in,
and then it shows up right away.
The other issue is just I don't like having it on top
of the Mac mini.
I don't know, for some reason, I just don't.
And so my thought was, well, I'll put it under the Mac mini
and then everything is fine.
But the back of the Mac mini here is plastic.
And that's where I think there's some antenna signals
and things happening.
And then the bottom of it also has this plastic circle.
And I think this is also where some like the WiFi antenna,
the Bluetooth antenna, stuff like that is.
When you put that like this,
I've noticed it can cause some interference.
I haven't had any of the Bluetooth connection issues
with the Mac mini that some people have talked about.
But I've noticed when I had the Mac mini on here,
my mouse would start like being jumpy and laggy and weird.
It stayed connected, but it was just like slow and jittery.
And then as soon as I separated these, it was fine
and then put it back and it happened again.
So I think the metal
from this enclosure interferes with this.
And anyway, I just keep them side by side on my desk now
and it's fine.
So what I wanna do right now is basically just try
and overload this computer in a way that you would probably
never really do in real life.
We'll start a screen recording
which I always takes extra memory on my MacBook.
Whenever I do screen recordings, the fans kick in.
And then if I'm doing a voiceover with the screen recording,
it just messes everything up.
It's really frustrating.
Alright, so I've got Ecamm up,
I've got a screen recording going,
I'm gonna open up Final Cut Pro.
And again, I just rebooted the computer so nothing
is pre-loaded.
I'm gonna open up Chrome 'cause I always have Chrome open
with a whole bunch of tabs.
Let's see open Zoom because again Ecamm and Zoom
are my main combos and the camera's
running into the 810 mini into Zoom.
So now I have started a Zoom meeting.
Zooms recording.
Let's why not record with Ecamm Live also.
So Ecamm is gonna be recording Zoom is recording,
we've got 14 Chrome tabs open.
I'm doing a screen recording and QuickTime.
Everything so far seems to be working well.
Let's open up Final Cut.
Let's start a new project.
I'm gonna call this project ridiculous
because this is ridiculous and we'll make it 4k.
So we're gonna do a 4k project.
Boom got my timeline up.
Now I do have a little bit of 4k footage
on my external drive.
So let's bring some of that in, this is all native 4k.
This is what 24 clips just gonna drag them straight
to the timeline.
And now as you can see, these clips are just playing
completely smoothly, there's no lag or anything.
It's ridiculous.
But let's add some color correction.
So I'm gonna go to my little...
The lot that I tend to add to all my stuff
and we'll just add that there.
So there we go.
As Final Cut is processing a lot
that's being added to 4k footage,
it's still playing back perfectly smoothly
while Ecamm is recording and Zoom is hosting a meeting
that it is also recording. But you know what?
I think this Final Cut project is looking pretty good.
How long is it?
It's 15 minutes long 4k footage,
well, let's just copy and paste it
and make that a nice hour.
So now we've got an hour of 4k footage here.
I think I'm ready to export that.
There we go.
So now I've got a 4k export happening.
While that's exporting, I'm gonna do the thing
you should never do and still just double check
some of my footage, which is still rendering
is still playing totally smoothly.
But now for that video, I should probably work
on a thumbnail.
Let's open up some Photoshop real quick.
Photoshop is one of the only things
that I've seen little bits of lag pop up here and there.
And that probably is also because it's not native
for the M1 chip yet,
it's still running through Rosetta still runs faster
and better than anything on my old MacBook ever did.
But that is where I've seen some lag.
I'm noticing now just a little bit of lag.
I've never seen this lag before, Ecamm Live is,
I don't know, over here you can see Ecamm
is is not as smooth as it normally would be.
Photoshop had an issue opening, I had to force quit
and reopen but it opened really quick.
And now Ecamm is smooth.
I don't know where Zoom is.
Zoom is over here.
Zoom is pretty smooth, Final Cut is still exporting
and also playing back perfectly smooth.
And now I've got Photoshop up here,
I can work on a thumbnail for a video, add some layers,
I don't know, resize some things, zoom in and out,
move stuff around.
This is more than I would ever do at once.
Who's gonna like, do all of these things at once.
Plus, I'm also running a screen recording for this video.
But let's also open Adobe Audition,
because maybe I wanna edit something along the way,
why not?
Now I've got Adobe Audition,
I can add in some audio over here.
So Audition is processing some audio.
Now I will say even though this is working pretty well,
I definitely would not recommend running all this stuff
at once just because you will probably
have reliability issues.
And then also because if you're exporting footage
and doing other stuff, sometimes you can have errors.
I haven't had any yet on the M1, but every once in a while
on my other MacBook you get like a frame of green
or something would look kind of glitchy real quick.
So it's usually a good idea
when you're exporting your video, a real project,
let the computer do its thing.
Make sure it exports well and then jump back in.
Now we've got Adobe Audition up and running
in addition to Final Cut Pro in addition to Ecamm,
in addition to Zoom, which is recording,
in addition to running a screen capture and Photoshop
all at the same time.
And everything, as you can see is running like super smooth.
I mean, honestly, these programs, by themselves don't run
this smoothly on my 16-inch MacBook Pro.
Final Cut while exploiting, again,
is still playing back video just fine.
And if I go through the external drive,
open up some of these 4k clips,
I can press the space bar and preview them.
So now I can even playback other 4k footage.
This is eight gigabytes of RAM.
I mean, come on.
Oh, and also the computer
has not made a sound and it's literally cold to the touch.
Not just cool, not just room temperature,
but cold metal to the touch.
The only way I was able to make the video lag
for a few seconds was when I had all that stuff happening
and then I tried to open Photoshop.
That's one thing ground to a halt.
And Photoshop just didn't open.
So I forced quit it, reopened it.
It opened in about three seconds and then worked fine
and everything stopped lagging.
So that's the only hiccup I've had.
Cheapest computer I've ever bought.
And it can do all that. And that's the base model.
Again, eight gigs of RAM.
So sure, if you wanna spend the money on 16,
I don't think you'll regret it.
But are you realistically gonna do what I just did
on a regular basis?
Probably not,
which would mean that eight gigs is probably okay.
I didn't care when it was first announced.
I was like, I don't need a new computer, who cares?
And then I am absolutely sold on this so much
so actually that my wife Heather now has a matching
M1 Mac mini in her office, same base model specs,
and it has had the same effect on her workflow.
So we each have an M1 Mac mini,
we could call them our M and Ms.
So if you've been on the fence about whether or not
to invest in one of the M1 Macs,
and you have a workflow that's at all similar to mine,
I say go for it.
I did run Geekbench tests when I first got it
and the M1 Mac mini outperformed the 16-inch
in the computing tests.
But the 16-inch outperform the Mac mini in the graphic test,
which makes sense because it has a dedicated graphics card,
but I'm not even including that in this video
because I don't really care.
Because even though the 16-inch MacBook outperformed
the Mac mini in the graphics test,
I can tell you from using it, the M1 outperforms
the MacBook Pro, it beats it in literally every way
other than having a beautiful built in display
and that 16-inch screen is the nicest display I've ever had.
This is my old computer.
This is my 2013 13-inch MacBook Pro.
Barring the years of experience I had with this computer
working really well, I can easily say that the M1 Mac mini
is my favorite computer and I already did have a display,
I already had keyboard I already had mouse,
so I didn't have to spend money on that stuff.
I just spent money on the external dock,
the hard drive to go in the dock and that's it.
I didn't have to spend money on anything else.
So it really made sense financially for me,
and the amount of friction that it reduced in my workflow,
oh my gosh, it's so incredibly worth it.
So if you have a workflow like me,
I hope this showed you
just how powerful this M1 Mac mini is.
There is absolutely nothing mini about the massive power
in that Mac, Macssive power.
That's right, maximize the power.