its an entirely new experience for me. As someone who always worked on maxed out intel iMacs and currently a Mac studio M2 Max at work I'm blown away by how powerful and useful this mini m4 is. I did not feel this way about the mini m2 I used previously at home. it would choke doing raw photo editing where the m4 cuts through them like butter
Part of this is due to Apple's greed when it comes to base specs. We've had 8gb ram for over a decade, the 16gb base ram is going to upend the mac mini resale value with unupgradable memory, particularly the Apple Silicon models. Why would you buy a base M1/M2 mini at this point unless it was heavily discounted well below $300?
Agreed, we're going to see some really cheap used M1/M2 minis now. The bump to 16 GB is a game changer for this model and the first good value base model Apple has put out since 2012. We even got a redesign on top of that.
I'm honestly shocked how good the base M4 mini is. Due to Apple's exorbitant storage upgrade prices, I actually believe this Mini will lower the ASP (avg sale price) for the mini line by reducing the amount of BTO orders (I usually customize my macs). Why would I drop $400 to get just an extra 768gb of SSD, when I can get a TB4 NVME enclosure and put a 4TB SSD in it for almost half price?
It didn’t need a mini, I have a multi slot 16 TB storage which can be expanded to 32 TB. I never pay more than a 1 TB for storage. It’s cheaper to build once and use external storage.
This takes me back to the 2012 Mac mini when things like RAM and storage could be upgraded and that's what made it a good value. Although the 16 GB is still soldered it should be roughly equivalent to having 8 GB in 2012-2013, which was enough for everyday computing tasks for some time afterward. But the advances in machine learning make this somewhat less certain and predictable than it otherwise would be.
Just sold my m2 base mini for 400 CHF, did not take too long to go, less than a week.
That's the conundrum. Since there's no mass market case for a 5K display other than Mac users, the pickings are slim and dated. I almost got a studio display for $1299 shipped on Prime Day, but the 60hz just kills it for me. I've gotten used to my fast OLEDs and promotion on my iOS devices that I can't get myself to spend over $1000 for a 60hz display.
I hope no body would take a worse deal than that, but normal people don't give discounts. They create their listing and maybe check other listings from time to time, but I don't think prices will drop now with the M4 Mac mini even though they should. Normal Joes don't care and don't see why they should get less for their old machine just because some corporation decided to release something better for a lower price. And I somehow get it, my 2017 MBP was around 1700€ refurbished from Apple, standard 13" Touch Bar. The new M4 is 1900€ and the M3 MacBook Air is 1300€ and itself a much much better Mac. Macs might not be made to retain resale value for long now with M chips and steady upgrades, but people still want money out of their investment.
What displays are people using with their Mac mini? Are large 4K displays a good match?
That’s why I ended up converting my iMac instead of buying a new display. The display market for Mac users (or just anyone who‘s used to greater than 4K iMacs, even on another OS, and doesn’t want to downgrade their experience) has been in a weird limbo for years now.
They work but they offer less screen resolution for retina usage. 5K display for retina resolution is 2560 x 1440, a 4K retina resolution is 1920 x 1080. A good cheaper 4K display is the Acer Nitro XV275K P3 mentioned in the linked article, prices are lower now. But then you have the new Asus 5K display see this post of mine.
Is the MacBook going to magically jump out of my bag and teleport to my home office and also connect itself? There are some valid arguments for those who go with the single most powerful laptop approach, but in my experience I think it's better to go with two machines if possible even if it means taking a small performance hit. There is something to be said for having a dedicated desktop you can offload tasks like video editing to without having to worry about battery degradation over time as well. An M4 Mac mini will be right there on and ready to go as soon as you unlock the desktop with Touch ID. Everything synced perfectly the vast majority of the time. It simply doesn't get much better than that in terms of convenience at around the same price you would pay for an entry level MBP.
Yes, but by percentages, the base Mac Mini won't lose a ton of $ dollar for dollar, maybe a couple hundred bucks.
