Nope, the title is not clickbait.
I got this brand new, 2020 Mac Mini,
with an M1 chip,
8GB or RAM, and a 256 GB solid state drive,
directly from Apple Canada,
and it only cost me 300 canadian dollars,
thats roughly 250 US dollars.
I’m going to show you exactly how I did it in this video.
Hey guys, whats up.
My name is Serge, and welcome to my channel.
Before I get into how I got this Mac Mini for only 300 Canadian dollars,
I’ll go through a bit of my back story,
and tell you why I got it, what I use it for,
and why I decided to go with the cheapest model.
If you want to go straight to how I got it so cheap,
fast forward to this part of the video.
Ok, for those of you who decided to watch the full video,
especially if you’re new to my channel, I make video editing tutorials.
I post at least one video every week,
so needless to say, I spend a lot of time at my computer.
My current setup is actually two setups.
At home, I have a 16” MacBook Pro,
connected to an external display and a NAS drive at my desk.
This is my main computer, and the setup is awesome for editing video.
The only issue is, I travel for work quite a bit,
so I end up doing a lot of my editing while away from home.
Now, I could just take my 16” MBP with,
but disconnecting everything
and then hooking everything up when I’m back can be a bit of a hassle.
So, for editing on the go, I have another MacBook Pro.
To be more specific, for travelling, I have a 2015, 15” model.
This stays in my bag, along with the charger, and whatever else I need.
Whenever I import footage into Final Cut Pro, I make proxies of all my files.
There’s two reasons for this.
One, is my 2015 MacBook Pro, is getting a bit older,
and editing proxy files is much easier on it.
The main reason I make proxies though, is file sizes.
The proxy files are quite a bit smaller,
so whenever I need to edit on the road,
I just make a proxy only library, put it on my portable drive,
and take it with me.
So, instead of having to take the laptop I use at home,
all the dongles, and the charger,
all I have to do is toss this portable drive in my bag,
and I’m ready to go.
But, like I mentioned before, my 2015 MacBook is getting old,
and it’s starting to slow me down, so it’s time for an upgrade.
Instead of spending money on another laptop,
since one of my computers never leaves my desk,
the Mac mini is the most logical choice.
I already have a monitor, keyboard and a trackpad,
so this is kinda of a no brainer.
The one I decided to go with, is the base model,
with a 256GB SSD and 8 GB of RAM.
First, let’s talk about storage.
This will never leave my desk,
so it will always be connected to my network dive.
And when editing my videos,
I always keep my footage on an external drive.
I don’t think it’s as much of an issue as it used to be,
but back in the mechanical drive days,
you always wanted to keep your footage
on a different drive than the operating system.
This is what I’ve been doing from the start,
I have a good media management system in place,
and external storage is much cheaper than internal storage.
I also chose to go with only 8GB of RAM,
because I really wanted to see if this base model,
without any upgrades, would be good enough for what I need it for.
Basically all this will be used for is editing 4K and HD video.
Nothing crazy like 8K or files with extremely high bit rates.
The heaviest lifting this Mac Mini will have to do,
at least for a while,
is the 4K HEVC files from my iPhone.
And according to my research, this shouldn’t be a problem at all.
Over the next week or two, I’m going to do some extensive testing,
just to make sure this base model
is sufficient for what I need it for.
Worst case scenario, I have to return it,
but I really don’t think that will be the case.
So, how did I get this for only 300 Canadian dollars?
Let’s go to Apple’s website, and I’ll show you.
And keep in mind, this is Apple Canada,
so all the prices are in Canadian dollars.
I’ll navigate to the Mac Mini,
and select the base model.
Now before adding this to our bag,
let’s take a look at Apple’s Trade in Program.
In my case, after purchasing this mac mini,
I had a 2015 15” MacBook Pro, that I really didn’t need anymore.
I could of sold it privately, but this was so much easier.
All I had to do was enter my serial number,
answer a few easy questions, and that was it.
Apple makes this process so easy.
They send you a box, with everything you need included.
You get a prepaid shipping label,
instructions on how to package your return,
you even get tape to seal your box.
And, once your package is received,
you get a refund for whatever your return is worth.
Mine was 600 dollars, so after that,
my new Mac Mini, only cost me just over 300 dollars.
Over the next couple weeks,
I’m going to be doing a lot of testing with this Mac Mini,
especially using Final Cut Pro.
I expect it to perform quite a bit better than my 2015 MacBook Pro,
and maybe even comparable to my 16”,
but I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
I’ll post my results on this channel.
If you have any questions about the 2020 Mac Mini,
or have anything you want me to test,
let me know in the comments below,
and I’ll do my best to help you out.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you back here nest week.