Looking to get a new Mac Mini, but unsure whether to get i3 or i5. All help is greatly appreciated!

[testudoaubreii]

Pretty much what the title states. I will be doing school work, using Garageband for some audio projects and using programs for web, design and development projects (basically Adobe Creative Suite). And, of course, media consumption and general web usage.

I believe that the i3 is a quad-core now and the i5 is a 6 core. I am just wondering if anyone has any advice, help or suggestions that would steer me in the right direction. Will the i3 be good enough for what I mentioned? The price point is pretty good for me right now and I will upgrade the RAM at a later time.

Thank you in advance for all of your responses!

 

[Boyd01]

Sure sounds like the i3 should be fine. Consider that it has the same geekbench rating as the quad core 2012 mini, and until about a month ago that was still the fastest Mini that Apple ever made (the 2012 quad is about 50% faster than the top of the line 2014 Mini). But the 2018 gives you a better selection of ports, better graphics a faster SSD and other advantages.

My 2012 quad is dedicated for video/audio editing with Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro. Still happy with it and plan to continue using it for another year at least. I was all ready to pull the trigger on the base i3 2018 mini as a christmas gift for my daughter's family (to replace their 2012 mini that died recently). However they decided they wanted a laptop, so Santa's elves will soon deliver a 2018 Macbook Air instead.

 

[Sun Baked]

A good question would be what equipment do you have now, and what is the performance characteristic you most want to improve?

Geekbench has most of the models on their site, so you can get a general idea of where you current equipment is, and how much faster the i3 and i5 Mini is compared to you equipment in both single and multicore rankings.

 

[redheeler]

Apple shouldn't have put a low-end i3 processor in an $800 computer to begin with. But since the i5 is $100 more than i3 + 256 GB, I think it's worthwhile to get the i5.