How do the 2014 core i5 Mac Minis perform in day to day use?

[mossme89]

I know new ones are on the way, but I'm considering getting a 2014 core i5 Mac Mini (either the 1.4Ghz or the 2.6Ghz) for my dad.

He's still using a 2010 Core 2 Duo Mac Mini that is borderline unusable to say the least.

I don't need bells and whistles for him. What I do need is a Mac that isn't a total lag fest and that doesn't freeze constantly.

 

[David58117]

I have the 2.6, - it does fine.

You’ll get some beach balling due to the HDD, but for day to day casual use it does well.

Stay away from the 4GB version though.

 

[krause734]

Find a used one with an SSD on eBay. They're fine. Don't pay Apple full price for 4 year old hardware!

 

[Acronyc]

I've had the 2014 2.8 GHz i5 with 8GB of RAM and a 1TB fusion drive since the 2014 models were released. While a lot of people may not like this machine, it has held up fantastically for 4 years now. It has been on pretty much 24/7, only getting turned off when I moved a few times and once when the power went out.

It is the family/guest computer and gets used daily for basic computing and has been rock solid. Very few beachballs or slowdowns. It's been a great Mac and I'm looking forward to a new mini possibly being released at the end of this month.

 

[Easttime]

When my 2011 iMac died in 2016, I got a refurbished 2014 Mac mini with 2.8GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 (Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz) with 3MB on-chip shared L3 cache, 8GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 memory, Intel Iris Graphics and a fusion hard drive (1 TB spinner and 128 SSD). The hard drive converted to APFS when I upgraded to Mojave. I run two large low res monitors on the mini.

This setup is perfectly satisfactory for me. No slowdowns or beach balls. I am in a professional role (business not IT). I keep multiple apps open all the time, including Office, a banking app, Safari, email, messaging and multiple personal information apps. Periodically I make graphics or edit family videos. Three attached external hard drives manage backups, and the mini backs up to a cloud service in the background. I run a few useful menu bar and other third party utilities.

And my Apple Watch logs me in when the mini goes to sleep.