I'm looking at either a Mini M2 Pro(10 Core/16 Core) with 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD or a Studio M2 Max(12 Core/30Core) with 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD. It's $300 more for the Studio but I'm sure is worth the difference in price.
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Mac Mini M2 Pro or Mac Studio?
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It's well worth the difference, but only if you actually run software that takes advantage of the power the Studio offers, and/or the two extra Thunderbolt/USB-C ports.
If you're not sure, then you probably don't need the Studio and you should use that $300 to upgrade to the faster processor, 2TB storage, or the 10 GB Ethernet, etc. Or maybe you need a new mouse/keyboard combo, etc. OR, heaven forbid, keep that money in your pocket! 😎
If you're not sure, then you probably don't need the Studio and you should use that $300 to upgrade to the faster processor, 2TB storage, or the 10 GB Ethernet, etc. Or maybe you need a new mouse/keyboard combo, etc. OR, heaven forbid, keep that money in your pocket! 😎
If you want 32GB, IMO get the Studio. The MAX has double the memory-bandwidth of the PRO. And even if you do not need the extra CPU and GPU cores today, they will extend the usable life of your machine. And you get two extra USB-C ports up front, which can be convenient.
I'll most likely get the Studio. It seems to be worth the $300 more.
I don't consider the problem to be redundancy. But rather pricing. The higher CPU core Pro chip should be the standard model (at $1299?), which would make the Mac Mini M2 Pro chip an attractive option.
Of course. And the Mac Studio has better graphics performance too.
I'm waiting to see what deals pop up in the next couple of weeks leading up to Black Friday. I'm going for the Studio.
Hey what Mac are you coming from? I have the 2018 mini and am thinking about the M1 Max studio Refurbished.
I would like to jump in here. I am in the same choice predicament, but in the UK, pricing is such that only base Mac Mini M2 Pro (10 core) vs base Mac Studio M2 Max makes sense as a comparison, albeit one which is 600 pounds difference.
My main heavy use, besides file serving via built in SMB and using either machine in a headless configuration, would be the use of the open source Tesseract OCR engine, which is CPU-intensive, but little else. It does not have stable GPU support. It runs fine on my M1 Pro Macbook Pro 16" with 16GB RAM, but that comes with all cores being pegged at 100% and some minor sluggishness of other open apps. I would like to dedicate the new machine more to OCR tasks.
I am therefore wondering whether its worth springing for the Mac Studio, when comparing the 10 core M2 Pro to the M2 Max, particularly when it comes to the cooling over intensive CPU tasks. Of course the rest of the extras (32GB Ram, 10 Gbe Ethernet) don't hurt either, particularly when connecting the Macbook to the Studio via my home LAN.
Grateful for any advice, particularly taking the price differential in mind!
My main heavy use, besides file serving via built in SMB and using either machine in a headless configuration, would be the use of the open source Tesseract OCR engine, which is CPU-intensive, but little else. It does not have stable GPU support. It runs fine on my M1 Pro Macbook Pro 16" with 16GB RAM, but that comes with all cores being pegged at 100% and some minor sluggishness of other open apps. I would like to dedicate the new machine more to OCR tasks.
I am therefore wondering whether its worth springing for the Mac Studio, when comparing the 10 core M2 Pro to the M2 Max, particularly when it comes to the cooling over intensive CPU tasks. Of course the rest of the extras (32GB Ram, 10 Gbe Ethernet) don't hurt either, particularly when connecting the Macbook to the Studio via my home LAN.
Grateful for any advice, particularly taking the price differential in mind!
I ended up springing for the base Mac Studio with 32gb and 512 ssd. With my educator discount it was $1799. The commensurate mac mini pro with 12 cores would have been $1919 and have less gpu cores. It was not a tough decision. Now I just have to hook it up and hope that there are no monitor issues.
I found a used M1 max studio on eBay for 1850 with 32 gigs and 2 TB.
It’s very quiet and very fast, and will do all I need to do for quite a while!
It’s very quiet and very fast, and will do all I need to do for quite a while!
Bump - I am pretty looking at the same idea - going from my M1 MacBook Pro to either an M2 Pro Mini or M1 Max Studio (pretty much only use Ableton music software for music production and the occasional bit of game emulation) - Has anyone anything further to add as if there is not much in it would it be better to have hardware a year newer or are they both pretty bulletproof ?
As a rule of thumb if 16 Gb ram is sufficient go for the pro, if you need 32 Gb go for the max.
Anyway a moot point now as just got an M2 Pro Mini for 875 pounds and pristine so its all good.