Mac mini M4 pro vs mini M4 - for photo and video

[colmorley]

Hello. Apologies if this is a fairly often asked question.
I'm a photographer and now video creator and need a machine to replace old kit.

Does 1TB work better than 512gb. Is the extra £400 worth getting the M4pro for my needs?

My current machine when its not crashing is very slow. I want a machine where I can edit 200 images quickly, then render some footage and I can move onto the next project. I'm sick of waiting for images to appear and footage to catch up. The extra money laid out has to make a difference to my day. I need a machine that can keep up with me on a budget. If there's not much of a difference between the extra cores from option A-B including the memory, then let me know. Ive watched lots of Youtube videos explaining how one machine is better than another but not down to why one machine with 6 extra cores can knock off hours off waiting...

Thank you for any insight. Very, very much appreciated!
Cheers, Col.


Its either option A - £1800

• Apple M4 Pro chip with 12‑core CPU, 16‑core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine
• 48GB unified memory
• 512GB SSD storage

Or option B - £1400

• Apple M4 chip with 10‑core CPU, 10‑core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine
• 32GB unified memory
• 1TB SSD storage

 

[Basic75]

What are you currently using and how is the memory pressure on that machine while you are working?

 

[colmorley]

What are you currently using and how is the memory pressure on that machine while you are working?

Thanks for your reply, however I'm not sure how helpful this is with my question? I need a new machine, my old machine is very old and slow - macbook 2017. You may say, any machine is an improvement on this old spec which is true. However a better machine doesn't mean its the right machine. My new machine needs to run as freely as possible without spinning wheels, within my budget to make my business make profit and not spend my days waiting for things to happen. If budget was no issue, I'd buy a mac pro tower and fill it up with all the good stuff. Thanks anyway.

 

[Fishrrman]

Choose "option A".

Better CPU and more memory.
You will NEVER regret this choice.

IF POSSIBLE...
Scrounge up £200 more and "bump up" the SSD from 512gb to 1tb.
Then you'll be set...

 

[colmorley]

Choose "option A".

Better CPU and more memory.
You will NEVER regret this choice.

IF POSSIBLE...
Scrounge up £200 more and "bump up" the SSD from 512gb to 1tb.
Then you'll be set...

Thanks for the advice. Much appreciated. Just on the drive space, why pay Apple prices for a bigger hard drive when i can buy external cheaper. Does the extra internal drive improve speed of the machine? Thanks again.

 

[Basic75]

Option A because of the RAM. You can add external storage.

 

[Fishrrman]

"why pay Apple prices for a bigger hard drive when i can buy external cheaper. Does the extra internal drive improve speed of the machine?"

Yes. You'll appreciate this over time.

512gb today is probably "the bottom line" insofar as adequate storage goes.

1tb -- much better (and I believe the larger drives are significantly faster, as well).

To be blunt:
If you can afford £1800 for 512gb, you can afford to spend £200 more for the 1tb option.

 

[PaulD-UK]

@colmorley "Does the extra internal drive improve speed of the machine?

There is one use-case where it definitely does: Editing with FCP, or Logic, or any of Apple's Pro apps.
These by default use the ~User/Movies or /Music to save work-in-progress transient Project files, render cache, and Backup files, and, especially with long-form video, this can amount to hundreds of GBs during a day's editing.

If you put these short-term files are on anything other than the fastest external storage, then the whole interface of the program slows noticeably - not beachballs with M2/3/4 Macs, but a sluggish interface if you have a complex project.

That is instantly solved by leaving the storage paths to the default, internal SSD.
When work pressures relax, then most of the long-term files neded can be off-loaded to external storage.

So the difference between having 1TB (or 2TB if your work-flow is intensive) can make all the difference.
256GB is not enough!!!
512GB is enough to allow work to proceed, but the data will have to be offloaded sooner rather than later, which can be inconvenient.

Of course if you only work on 30" jingles or 60" Tik-Tok videos, then these data files will be too small to worry about... 😀

 

[phrehdd]

Typical photo editing can be done with the Mini M4 and your best best is to get as much RAM as you possibly can.
For video, Mini Pro is a better bet and again, more RAM is better. Also for both 512g SSD at minimum.

Last - don't have a lot of apps open while using your photo and video software (especially certain web pages) as they can eat up your RAM.

 

[Altis]

Keep in mind the M4 Pro is 8 performance and 4 efficiency cores, while the M4 is 4P/6E. Also TB5 for potentially faster external storage.

I'd be inclined to go with option A between those and it'll work very well. Here's a video to show how it could be pushed in terms of video and photo suites at the same time:

Having said that, the base M4 Mini does a heck of a job. I do need to use 1/4 resolution playback if there are heavy colour grading or effects, but not for cutting even with 10-bit 4:2:2 H265 (no proxies). The GPU just isn't very powerful. I'll probably change it for the base M4 Max Studio when that comes out since it's not much more than a spec'd Mini Pro.

 

[colmorley]

@colmorley "Does the extra internal drive improve speed of the machine?

There is one use-case where it definitely does: Editing with FCP, or Logic, or any of Apple's Pro apps.
These by default use the ~User/Movies or /Music to save work-in-progress transient Project files, render cache, and Backup files, and, especially with long-form video, this can amount to hundreds of GBs during a day's editing.

If you put these short-term files are on anything other than the fastest external storage, then the whole interface of the program slows noticeably - not beachballs with M2/3/4 Macs, but a sluggish interface if you have a complex project.

That is instantly solved by leaving the storage paths to the default, internal SSD.
When work pressures relax, then most of the long-term files neded can be off-loaded to external storage.

So the difference between having 1TB (or 2TB if your work-flow is intensive) can make all the difference.
256GB is not enough!!!
512GB is enough to allow work to proceed, but the data will have to be offloaded sooner rather than later, which can be inconvenient.

Of course if you only work on 30" jingles or 60" Tik-Tok videos, then these data files will be too small to worry about... 😀

Great feedback thank you. Very much appreciated!

 

[colmorley]

"why pay Apple prices for a bigger hard drive when i can buy external cheaper. Does the extra internal drive improve speed of the machine?"

Yes. You'll appreciate this over time.

512gb today is probably "the bottom line" insofar as adequate storage goes.

1tb -- much better (and I believe the larger drives are significantly faster, as well).

To be blunt:
If you can afford £1800 for 512gb, you can afford to spend £200 more for the 1tb option.

Fair enough. The option was between more memory or more storage, so 48mem and 1tb storage might be my £2000 absolute max compromise.

 

[colmorley]

Typical photo editing can be done with the Mini M4 and your best best is to get as much RAM as you possibly can.
For video, Mini Pro is a better bet and again, more RAM is better. Also for both 512g SSD at minimum.

Last - don't have a lot of apps open while using your photo and video software (especially certain web pages) as they can eat up your RAM.

Thank you for making the time to give your feedback. I think its a great tip regarding browsing windows and programs working at the same time. I need to be more focused on one task at a time.

 

[colmorley]

Keep in mind the M4 Pro is 8 performance and 4 efficiency cores, while the M4 is 4P/6E. Also TB5 for potentially faster external storage.

I'd be inclined to go with option A between those and it'll work very well. Here's a video to show how it could be pushed in terms of video and photo suites at the same time:

Having said that, the base M4 Mini does a heck of a job. I do need to use 1/4 resolution playback if there are heavy colour grading or effects, but not for cutting even with 10-bit 4:2:2 H265 (no proxies). The GPU just isn't very powerful. I'll probably change it for the base M4 Max Studio when that comes out since it's not much more than a spec'd Mini Pro.

Thank you for this, ill watch it straight away!

 

[Guy Mancuso]

Let me start with I am a working Pro photographer that shoots Sony 61mpx cams. I had a Mac Studio with a ton of ram and 1TB hard drive and been doing this for decades. I always buy at least 1TB Hard drives than but very fast external drives to offload everything to them. I shoot very heavy and some gigs maybe 20k images in a few days and im pressed to Process my raws very fast and upload them for sale. I decided since I travel a lot to get the Mac mini Pro with 48gb of Ram and 1 Tb hard drive plus I did grab the 100 dollar ethernet option. Plus I did bump up the Processor as well. I spent 2300 total . Now for some that's expensive but I also saved a boat load of Money not upgrading the Hard drive to 2 or 4 TB and need to realize I had a Mac Studio with 96gb of Ramm which is a ton and not really needed that high but I never underpowered my machines and want plenty of power. I use Capture One to process my Raw files which likes a lot of Processing power. After the last gig with this box im really impressed it kept up to my old Mac M2 Studio quite well and found very little lag anywhere and in many cases beat the M2 up with speed. Frankly I would never buy the Non Pro version it's just not enough. You coil even do the Base Mac M4 mini Pro in a basic config and do well . Im really happy with this unit and do not miss my M2 Studio at all. Im using the Apple display and travel with both. I also have a M3 14inch laptop. My theory is always buy a little more than you need than you don't think about not getting enough

 

[colmorley]

Let me start with I am a working Pro photographer that shoots Sony 61mpx cams. I had a Mac Studio with a ton of ram and 1TB hard drive and been doing this for decades. I always buy at least 1TB Hard drives than but very fast external drives to offload everything to them. I shoot very heavy and some gigs maybe 20k images in a few days and im pressed to Process my raws very fast and upload them for sale. I decided since I travel a lot to get the Mac mini Pro with 48gb of Ram and 1 Tb hard drive plus I did grab the 100 dollar ethernet option. Plus I did bump up the Processor as well. I spent 2300 total . Now for some that's expensive but I also saved a boat load of Money not upgrading the Hard drive to 2 or 4 TB and need to realize I had a Mac Studio with 96gb of Ramm which is a ton and not really needed that high but I never underpowered my machines and want plenty of power. I use Capture One to process my Raw files which likes a lot of Processing power. After the last gig with this box im really impressed it kept up to my old Mac M2 Studio quite well and found very little lag anywhere and in many cases beat the M2 up with speed. Frankly I would never buy the Non Pro version it's just not enough. You coil even do the Base Mac M4 mini Pro in a basic config and do well . Im really happy with this unit and do not miss my M2 Studio at all. Im using the Apple display and travel with both. I also have a M3 14inch laptop. My theory is always buy a little more than you need than you don't think about not getting enough

Great review from a fellow photographer, just what i wanted. Thank you.

 

[OldITGeek]

I use photoshop and Lightroom with 46MP Nikon images, I would go with option A, I use an external SSD to store my photos on. I use an Satechi USB4 NVMe SSD Pro Enclosure.

 

[whitby]

Option A seems the better choice for you in my opinion. Memory is very useful for photo work, the increased number of performance processor cores with more GPU cores can be leveraged by applications such as Lightroom Classic and you can add very fast external SSD drives for relatively little (I added 4TB on a TB 5 drive for around $550: Trebleet TB 5 drive and a Samsung 4TB 990 Pro SSD).

I compared my M4 MBPro (1 TB, 24 GB memory) with my M4 Pro Mini (2TB, 64GB) on an LRc photo job that imported 1600 RAW photos from a Sony A7RV (60 Mp) and noted that the M4 Pro was 60% faster. Faster SSD speeds on the M4Pro (about double the speed) and TB 5 ports for the external drive which are double the speed of the TB 4 on the M4 model probably contributed somewhat. RAW processing uses CPU and GPU cores so the improved number of GPU cores and number of performance cores in the CPU no doubt helped here.

In general if you are doing anything that requires memory, faster disk speeds and faster I/O you should go with the M4 Pro. Memory bandwidth in the M4 Pro is double that of the M4. People also tend to forget just how much faster TB 5 is than TB 4 (80 Gb/s v 40 Gb/s: it makes such a difference on the number of peripherals and the speed advantage for devices that use TB 5 (mainly 2 x 5K monitors on one port or external drives with a TB 5 interface).

I have an OWC TB 5 Hub which allows me to put 2 5K 27" monitors on a single Mini TB 5 port (5K monitors need 28 Gb/s approx, so would not work on a single TB 4 port) allowing me plenty of bandwidth to also add slower speed USB peripherals like keyboard, external sound DAC, SSD card reader, old TB 2 peripherals using the USB C ports on the monitors for these peripherals. This left 2 TB 5 ports one of which is dedicated to a TB 5 external SSD (56 Gb/s) and a spare. Plus you have the two front USB C ports (10 Gb/s each). With the M4, the disk speeds would be 50% less (internal and external via the TB 4 ports), memory is half the speed and the number of performance cores is reduced. All contribute to the excellent M4 Pro performance and in my option is worth the investment if you are doing the sort of work you appear to be doing.

 

[colmorley]

I use photoshop and Lightroom with 46MP Nikon images, I would go with option A, I use an external SSD to store my photos on. I use an Satechi USB4 NVMe SSD Pro Enclosure.

Thank you!

 

[colmorley]

Hello. Apologies if this is a fairly often asked question.
I'm a photographer and now video creator and need a machine to replace old kit.

Does 1TB work better than 512gb. Is the extra £400 worth getting the M4pro for my needs?

My current machine when its not crashing is very slow. I want a machine where I can edit 200 images quickly, then render some footage and I can move onto the next project. I'm sick of waiting for images to appear and footage to catch up. The extra money laid out has to make a difference to my day. I need a machine that can keep up with me on a budget. If there's not much of a difference between the extra cores from option A-B including the memory, then let me know. Ive watched lots of Youtube videos explaining how one machine is better than another but not down to why one machine with 6 extra cores can knock off hours off waiting...

Thank you for any insight. Very, very much appreciated!
Cheers, Col.


Its either option A - £1800

• Apple M4 Pro chip with 12‑core CPU, 16‑core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine
• 48GB unified memory
• 512GB SSD storage

Or option B - £1400

• Apple M4 chip with 10‑core CPU, 10‑core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine
• 32GB unified memory
• 1TB SSD storage

This is a very useful video, great guy!

 

[colmorley]

Option A seems the better choice for you in my opinion. Memory is very useful for photo work, the increased number of performance processor cores with more GPU cores can be leveraged by applications such as Lightroom Classic and you can add very fast external SSD drives for relatively little (I added 4TB on a TB 5 drive for around $550: Trebleet TB 5 drive and a Samsung 4TB 990 Pro SSD).

I compared my M4 MBPro (1 TB, 24 GB memory) with my M4 Pro Mini (2TB, 64GB) on an LRc photo job that imported 1600 RAW photos from a Sony A7RV (60 Mp) and noted that the M4 Pro was 60% faster. Faster SSD speeds on the M4Pro (about double the speed) and TB 5 ports for the external drive which are double the speed of the TB 4 on the M4 model probably contributed somewhat. RAW processing uses CPU and GPU cores so the improved number of GPU cores and number of performance cores in the CPU no doubt helped here.

In general if you are doing anything that requires memory, faster disk speeds and faster I/O you should go with the M4 Pro. Memory bandwidth in the M4 Pro is double that of the M4. People also tend to forget just how much faster TB 5 is than TB 4 (80 Gb/s v 40 Gb/s: it makes such a difference on the number of peripherals and the speed advantage for devices that use TB 5 (mainly 2 x 5K monitors on one port or external drives with a TB 5 interface).

I have an OWC TB 5 Hub which allows me to put 2 5K 27" monitors on a single Mini TB 5 port (5K monitors need 28 Gb/s approx, so would not work on a single TB 4 port) allowing me plenty of bandwidth to also add slower speed USB peripherals like keyboard, external sound DAC, SSD card reader, old TB 2 peripherals using the USB C ports on the monitors for these peripherals. This left 2 TB 5 ports one of which is dedicated to a TB 5 external SSD (56 Gb/s) and a spare. Plus you have the two front USB C ports (10 Gb/s each). With the M4, the disk speeds would be 50% less (internal and external via the TB 4 ports), memory is half the speed and the number of performance cores is reduced. All contribute to the excellent M4 Pro performance and in my option is worth the investment if you are doing the sort of work you appear to be doing.

Thank you for the extensive experience, much appreciated!

 

[colmorley]

Thank you!

Those ssd's are very gooc!

 

[colmorley]

@colmorley "Does the extra internal drive improve speed of the machine?

There is one use-case where it definitely does: Editing with FCP, or Logic, or any of Apple's Pro apps.
These by default use the ~User/Movies or /Music to save work-in-progress transient Project files, render cache, and Backup files, and, especially with long-form video, this can amount to hundreds of GBs during a day's editing.

If you put these short-term files are on anything other than the fastest external storage, then the whole interface of the program slows noticeably - not beachballs with M2/3/4 Macs, but a sluggish interface if you have a complex project.

That is instantly solved by leaving the storage paths to the default, internal SSD.
When work pressures relax, then most of the long-term files neded can be off-loaded to external storage.

So the difference between having 1TB (or 2TB if your work-flow is intensive) can make all the difference.
256GB is not enough!!!
512GB is enough to allow work to proceed, but the data will have to be offloaded sooner rather than later, which can be inconvenient.

Of course if you only work on 30" jingles or 60" Tik-Tok videos, then these data files will be too small to worry about... 😀

Hello. I just saw this video and wondered what your thoughts were on that?

I'm thinking for the top budget i can pay right now, go max chip cores, max memory then when more money arrives, get the super fast drives shown in the video?
You mentioned - "These by default use the ~User/Movies or /Music to save work-in-progress transient Project files, render cache, and Backup files, and, especially with long-form video, this can amount to hundreds of GBs during a day's editing."
The way i work is to have fcp files on external drive anyway. So does this remove the issue you mentioned?
Thanks for your help.