Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Attractive starting price, expensive with useable storage!

iMas70

iMas70

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 4, 2012
1,454
210
MA
The entry level price of $799 is pretty good but who can get by with 128GB of storage? Add $400 for 512GB and $800 for 1TB. I understand it’s a SSD but still. 1TB and a few other upgrades bumps the Mini up to a huge price of $2K. Is it better to go with 128GB and an external drive?

I’m trying to decide between this for my teen kids or give them my full spec 2015 iMac then I buy a new one for myself. Actually, the new iMac might be a better choice for me. There will be a 5K screen for an extra few hundred. Decisions...
 
Yeah. I was just looking at the costs and for the base 27” 5k will be about the same as the mini after buying extra storage and all the other stuff. Trying to decide myself.
 
iMas70 said:
The entry level price of $799 is pretty good but who can get by with 128GB of storage? Add $400 for 512GB and $800 for 1TB. I understand it’s a SSD but still. 1TB and a few other upgrades bumps the Mini up to a huge price of $2K. Is it better to go with 128GB and an external drive?

I’m trying to decide between this for my teen kids or give them my full spec 2015 iMac then I buy a new one for myself. Actually, the new iMac might be a better choice for me. There will be a 5K screen for an extra few hundred. Decisions...
Click to expand...

Actually, given that they charge an arm and a leg for storage, I quite like that they're offering this low an option. That way one can use the internal ssd as a boot drive, and the get proper external storage for everything else without having to shell out the high markup that Apple charges for storage.
 
zen said:
That $799 is with an **i3**. That's just ridiculous. Move to i5 (ie, pretty much the baseline for modern computing) and it costs $1099. Holy smokes.
Click to expand...
$799 model should have the i5 and $1,099 model should have the i7. If Apple had done that, there wouldn't be much to complain about (other than maybe the lack of dGPU, but with the switch to desktop processors and possibility of eGPU is something I'm willing to forgive). The 128 GB SSD at the $799 price point is not a disappointment to me, but rather something I hoped for (and as other have pointed out, storage is upgradable, externally).

But like nearly all modern Apple products, it has to be $100 or $200 overpriced in some way...
 
Last edited:
redheeler said:
$799 model should have the i5 and $1,099 model should have the i7. If Apple had done that, there wouldn't be much to complain about (other than maybe the lack of dGPU, but with the switch to desktop processors and possibility of eGPU is something I'm willing to forgive).

But like nearly all modern Apple products, it has to be $100 or $200 overpriced in some way...
Click to expand...

Has literally become out of control with the pricing lately. My jaw hit the floor with the mini.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Zackmd1, greenmeanie and Mr. Retrofire
zen said:
That $799 is with an **i3**. That's just ridiculous. Move to i5 (ie, pretty much the baseline for modern computing) and it costs $1099. Holy smokes.
Click to expand...

You can upgrade the i3 model to i7 and it's $1099 also. That's a pretty good deal.

Just in case anyone is complaining about the price here's the 2012. It cost $1199 with a quad core i7, 8GB RAM, and 256GB SSD. Equivalent specs on the new one costs $1299.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130307214740/http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MD388LL/A
 
  • Like
Reactions: robotica, tpivette89, StellarVixen and 1 other person
MisterAndrew said:
You can upgrade the i3 model to i7 and it's $1099 also. That's a pretty good deal.

Just in case anyone is complaining about the price here's the 2012. It cost $1199 with a quad core i7, 8GB RAM, and 256GB SSD. Equivalent specs on the new one costs $1299.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130307214740/http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MD388LL/A
Click to expand...
The switch from mobile to desktop processors makes it more difficult to compare the 2018 Mac mini to older models. In actuality, Intel's desktop processors as found in the 2018 Mac mini are cheaper than Intel's mobile processors as found in the 2012 Mac mini, so you'd expect a higher-end processor at the same price point.

The costs of a 256 GB SSD and 8 GB RAM in 2012 are not comparable to the costs of those things in 2018.
 
iMas70 said:
The entry level price of $799 is pretty good but who can get by with 128GB of storage? Add $400 for 512GB and $800 for 1TB. I understand it’s a SSD but still. 1TB and a few other upgrades bumps the Mini up to a huge price of $2K. Is it better to go with 128GB and an external drive?

I’m trying to decide between this for my teen kids or give them my full spec 2015 iMac then I buy a new one for myself. Actually, the new iMac might be a better choice for me. There will be a 5K screen for an extra few hundred. Decisions...
Click to expand...

The upgrade costs for storage are outrageous IMO - you can get a 1TB NVMe SSD with comparable performance for less than half the price Apple are charging to go from 128GB to 1TB (an 1TB Evo 970 is £258 on Amazon and Apple want £720 for the upgrade)
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: drlunanerd
Yeah, I'd like to know if a regular NVMe SSD can be installed in it. It looks like it's some proprietary design though and maybe soldered to the logic board.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: !!!
  • Like
Reactions: tpivette89 and MisterAndrew
LaloG said:
Yeah. I was just looking at the costs and for the base 27” 5k will be about the same as the mini after buying extra storage and all the other stuff. Trying to decide myself.
Click to expand...

In my case, I have a 4K monitor that has an unused HDMI port, so I can plug the Mini into it and switch on monitor between Mac and Windows as needed. If the Mini hadn't been upgraded, or had just been a minor spec bump, I would probably have got a 21" 5K iMac. Then had to worry about where to put it.

It would have been nice if it was cheaper. Even nicer if Apple had paid me to accept one.

Some people have complained about how much more it is than some of the Intel NUCs. If I was wanting to build a new Windows or Linux box, that would probably be how I would go, but I decided I was tired of spending time on keeping a Hackintosh working. And these NUCs appear to be even harder to keep working than my Skylake system was.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ElectronGuru
My current Mini uses a 4 TB external hard drive for data, so I really don't need to max out the SSD in the machine itself. 128GB is too small, going to go with at least 256GB anyway with the higher model. Might even do 512 GB. Anymore would be overkill for my purposes.
 
To me the sweet spot looks like 16 GB of RAM (since it appears to be upgradeable don't need more yet), a 6-core i7, a 256 GB storage device (also have a 500 GB Samsung T5 I can repurpose). With four very fast I/O ports, you really don't need to pay the Apple Tax on too much internal storage. I already have an eGPU with Radeon RX580, too. It works pretty well even with the TB1 on my 2012 Mini, so I'd imagine even better here.
 
"Is it better to go with 128GB and an external drive?"

I'd "pay the price" for 256gb, and then add external storage as required.
128gb is just a little on the small side. It can work, but it could be "tight".

USB-c and USB3.1 gen 2 should yield speeds that are "fast enough" for most users.
Something like a Samsung t5 or Sandisk Extreme USB3 SSD would do fine.

But... remember... if you add a second (external) drive, you have to keep that one backed up, too.
 
  • Like
Reactions: redfirebird08 and ElectronGuru
My current Mini has an external drive for data, and a second external drive backing up both the internal drive and external drive via Time Machine.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ElectronGuru
What people are forgetting is the i3 in the Mac mini is an 8th generation quad-core processor and provides similar levels of performance in synthetic benchmarks to the 7th generation 3.4 GHz i5-7500 in the base 27-inch iMac. The i3 processor doesn't have Turbo Boost, but it's a quad-core chip and most pro apps are multithreaded and will take advantage of all four cores.

I don't like how little storage is offered on both models and I've also noticed they've removed the SD card slot and reduced the selection of USB-A ports to just two (I struggle with just four ports on the iMac), but the i3 quad-core processor is very reasonable for a starting configuration and as a software engineer, the base model would serve me perfectly well.

On storage, we all know how much more expensive they are than a traditional hard drive and we all demanded SSDs in updated Mac minis and clearly Apple delivered. They wanted to hit a certain price point on the entry configuration, I understand that.

I was hoping for discrete graphics in the new Mac mini but eGPUs open up that possibility down the line, but eGPUs are still not a very economical way to increase the GPU power of a Mac. And I doubt ever will be.

Overall, it's a very pro-focused update and for the most part, it's exactly what I think a lot of us wanted. If I were to buy a Mac mini, I would need to buy a Thunderbolt 3 hub due to the lack of SD card slot and reduced set of USB-A ports, and upgrade to a 512 GB SSD. It does make a Mac mini purchase more expensive than I would have liked.
 
Last edited:
bbnck said:
What people are forgetting is the i3 in the Mac mini is an 8th generation quad-core processor and provides similar levels of performance in synthetic benchmarks to the 7th generation 3.4 GHz i5-7500 in the base 27-inch iMac.
Click to expand...

People seem trained. Trained to think of i3 as inferior and trained to expect better processors at higher prices points. The pro mini adds a bunch of things to the base but this looks like paying more for less. Things will get easier as reports come in showing how amazing the minimal configuration is.

bbnck said:
I don't like little storage is offered on both models and I've also noticed they've removed the SD card slot and reduced the selection of USB-A ports to just two (I struggle with just four ports on the iMac)
Click to expand...
I always pay the $200 to delete the HDD and would have done so here. So in a sense, my configuration is built in. But I also understand retail and think they should have tried harder to keep a $600 price point. Even a slow SSD+dual core, assuming intel even makes one in this family.

Ports are a transitional problem. In 5 years, usbc will be so ubiquitous you’ll wish there were more. And usbc can power usba but not the other way around. They clearly put as many ports as would fit, and also put effort into not changing the case (larger or smaller). In the meantime, quality hubs don’t cost that much.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06ZZ7NDTG/


bbnck said:
I was hoping for discrete graphics in the new Mac mini but eGPUs open up that possibility down the line, but eGPUs are still not a very economical way to increase the GPU power of a Mac. And I doubt ever will be.
Click to expand...
If I were Apple I would allow usbC to really change the dynamic. Look at bringing back displays and including GPUs in them. GPUs wouldn’t need cases and wouldn’t need more than that display’s power so should cost less. And could then offer GPUless versions of most Macs.
 
Last edited:
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
iMas70 said:
The entry level price of $799 is pretty good but who can get by with 128GB of storage?
Click to expand...
A lot of people, myself included. I don't want more than 128GB, it would be a complete waste of money.

Screen Shot 2018-11-02 at 5.15.38 AM.png

All of those photos are saved in the iCloud, they are only taking space on my MBA because there is room.

I see so many people complaining about the base model 128GB SSD being too small. But it's definitely not too small for everyone, especially as we move more and more into cloud computing.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: redfirebird08 and ElectronGuru
How is $800 an attractive starting price when the Mini retailed for $500 previously?!?!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back