Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
For all the comparison shoppers out there -

The mini now makes zero sense to add too many BTO options:

Mac mini 14c20c/64GB/2TB/10Gb - $2899
Mac Studio 16c40c/64GB/1TB/10Gb - $2899

Thats only zero sense if you don't want a substantially smaller device and you only want half the ssd space. Perhaps you forgot to add 'to me' at the end of your statement.
 
Thats only zero sense if you don't want a substantially smaller device and you only want half the ssd space. Perhaps you forgot to add 'to me' at the end of your statement.
No, I didn’t forget the ‘to me’ part of the statement. And as SO many people here clatter in about, why would I spend another $400 on an extra 1TB of space when I can get a fast SSD for much cheaper and in a larger capacity. Also, if I’m editing bideo on the Studio rig, I’m using external storage and either 1 or 2TB is the Mac I would put in it anyways.

As for size, we’re talking mini versus a Studio, not a mini versus a Mac Pro. Dollar for dollar the BTO options in the mini make zero sense as of yesterday.

I still love the mini, but it’s bang for the buck on the higher end just got annihilated by the Studio.
 
No, I didn’t forget the ‘to me’ part of the statement. And as SO many people here clatter in about, why would I spend another $400 on an extra 1TB of space when I can get a fast SSD for much cheaper and in a larger capacity. Also, if I’m editing bideo on the Studio rig, I’m using external storage and either 1 or 2TB is the Mac I would put in it anyways.

As for size, we’re talking mini versus a Studio, not a mini versus a Mac Pro. Dollar for dollar the BTO options in the mini make zero sense as of yesterday.

I still love the mini, but it’s bang for the buck on the higher end just got annihilated by the Studio.
Youre not spending extra money though, you put a like for like price. For the same price you can either have better specs and a studio, or a double sized ssd and a smaller system. It's entirely a decision based on what you need. You dont like it and thats fine. But its not necessarily the same for another person. Theyre both highly specced, with compromises depending on what you want. The bang for buck on the higher end was never good compared to the studio.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Tagbert and Wolfpup
Co
Youre not spending extra money though, you put a like for like price. For the same price you can either have better specs and a studio, or a double sized ssd and a smaller system. It's entirely a decision based on what you need. You dont like it and thats fine. But it’s not necessarily the same for another person. Theyre both highly specced, with compromises depending on what you want. The bang for buck on the higher end was never good compared to the studio.
Consider it a PSA then…a lot of people bought higher end mini’s when it first came out. At this point, unless you really need something that small, it makes zero sense to upgrade the mini that far, no matter how cute it is.
 
  • Like
Reactions: drrich2 and Biro
Thats only zero sense if you don't want a substantially smaller device and you only want half the ssd space. Perhaps you forgot to add 'to me' at the end of your statement.
My high school English teachers all taught us to leave that out, in wither written or spoken statements. To whom, after all would we be referring?
 
My high school English teachers all taught us to leave that out, in wither written or spoken statements. To whom, after all would we be referring?
The op was making a blanket statement. Without adding a quantifier, then the assumption is that they were implying ‘everyone’. Not to mention they implicitly stated ‘to all the comparison shoppers out there’. Their statement was in part accurate but suggesting it makes ‘zero sense’ only applies to themselves. Hence, adding ‘to me’ at the end would make that clear and is therefore a necessity. As it stood, they implied and then argued that their statement was applicable to all. But it’s not applicable to all, as I pointed out. If the ‘to me’ quantifier was added, then it wouldn’t have needed addressing in the first place.
 
I'm in the MINI camp - Coming from a $12,000 2019 Mac Pro

1) It was first and I needed a computer
2) Never will spend $10,000+ on a computer again
3) This was $3,000 with Apple Care
4) It's OVER TWICE the power of my 2019 (which I never maxed out)
 
This is helpful to see all the specs detailed. I realize most folks that need a higher end machine know this but it’s still a good article.
 
If you need and can make use of 10Gb Ethernet then you should get the Studio just for that. When you option the M4 Mini Pro with the 10Gb option it is very close in price to the Studio.
 
Check out 15% of all new Macs, including both Mac Studio Models (M4 Max and M3 Ultra) and the new M4 Macbook Air at Micro Center (www.microcenter.com) if you have one of those Micro Center computer stores near you. This morning they just added the new Mac Studio models and the M4 MacBook Air. With 15% off the Apple list price, you can get a M4 Max Mac Studio base model for $1699 vs $1,999 ($300 Savings), an M3 Ultra Mac Studio base model for $3,399 vs $3,999 ($600 Savings), or the new base model M4 MacBook Air for $849 vs $999 ($150 Savings). For all those considering upgrading, this should be 15% off vs. Apple Educational discount of 10% off, plus you get an extra 3% off all purchases with the Micro Center credit card. Hope this saves you some money $$$ and makes the new Mac Studio models more competitively priced against the M4 Pro Mac mini models:
Screenshot 2025-03-13 at 7.09.45 AM.png
Screenshot 2025-03-13 at 7.21.34 AM.png
 
I'm in the MINI camp - Coming from a $12,000 2019 Mac Pro

1) It was first and I needed a computer
2) Never will spend $10,000+ on a computer again
3) This was $3,000 with Apple Care
4) It's OVER TWICE the power of my 2019 (which I never maxed out)
Damn. 12k on a computer that’s considered redundant so quickly. Surely the Pro is still useable? What did you do with it?
 
I don't know that the $699 config is worth comparing to as with only 8 gigs of shared memory it really cannot do much other than light surfing, email and pages, numbers, etc.

A far more relevant comparison would be the $1099 config of the mini with 16 gigs. Then the extra $900 for a $1999 Studio Max you get 2 more cpu cores, 16 more gpu cores, 32 gigs of shared memory and the upgraded ethernet / wireless.

To me if you want/need an Apple desktop today then the studio at $1999 is a far better buy than $1099 for the mini in terms of how much mileage you will get from it. The $699 mini would truly be a throw away purchase except for the most basic user.
Long for the good old days when you could buy a tower with a minimum configuration and upgrade the memory and GPU at a later date based upon your work. Now you need to pay extra to future proof your purchase and probably purchase more costly Apple memory then you would ever need.
 
  • Like
Reactions: drrich2
I currently own a new Mac Mini M4, which I received as a gift purchased with points from my wife's employer. Unfortunately, I couldn’t configure it to meet my specific needs. Initially, I thought I could trade it in for a Mac Mini M4 Pro with a 1TB hard drive, but I was surprised to learn there’s no trade-in program for brand-new devices. Next, I considered waiting until the new Mac Studios are released to trade it in then, but it turns out the device would still be too new for that. Now I’m left debating when I’ll be able to trade it in and whether I should upgrade to the Mac Mini M4 Pro or go for the Studio M4 Max instead.
 
When the M1 Mini was out and the M1 Studio Max was out, the Studio carried the major distinction of supporting more than 16GB RAM. The Mini did not. Now that the current Mac Mini can be configured to 24, 32, or 64GB of RAM, the average user would almost have no reason to spend the extra money on a Studio. For those of us wanting a bit more headroom, the 16GB ceiling on the earlier Mac Minis was a major limitation and turnoff.
 
Until a new Mac Studio also has more than twice the single core speed of my M1 Ultra Mac Studio, I will keep my M1 Ultra. I also have a couple of M4 Pro Mac minis with 10Gb ethernet and 64GB ram. One has a 2 TB SSD for being a file server in my main office and the other has a 8 TB SSD for my summer office in the mountains with a shared new Nano Studio Display depending on location.

When traveling, my M4 Max 16" Mac Book Pro (128GB ram, nano display and 8 TB SSD) works as my mobile office. Several OWC Thunderbolt five drives work as both backups and file transfer devices for my setup.
 
My own metric is that I've been able to purchase the computer I need for $2,000 +/- $500, including monitor and everything else, for the past several decades. Now Apple is breaking this curve, and not in a good way.

How does this metric even make sense given how money and inflation works? I would hope your salary has increased in the past several decade even if you held the same job role.


This is the cheapest time in history to be in the MacOS ecosystem. A G4 Mac Mini from 2005 started at about $499 which is $835 today and that was an absolute dog in performance for the time and didn't even have a superdrive. You used to have to spend spend thousands to get a decent desktop performance for the time.

Today the complaint shouldn't be inflation but deflation performance of their gear.....in other-words how many times have you heard a Mac Studio Ultra owner complain that a Mac Mini/Macbook Pro is just going to outdo it in 1 year for certain tasks. We live in a world where some dude who spent $600 on his 2024 Mini has better single core over someone with a 2023 24 core Mac Studio that they spent 5 grand on the year before. Yes there is certain things that Apple charges a lot on like if you want to be silly and max out storage for no reason but we are at a time where the performance for the money is unparalleled. This isn't just limited to the Apple word but other things like still and video cameras for example. Most people can't tell the difference blindly from a $100,000 ARRI and a $2,000 Panasonic. Sme thing will be the case if you sat a random person down with a $600 Mini and ask them to blindly compare it with the most expensive Mac you can build. They wouldn't even be able to tell which machine is which.

The upper end and the lower end continues to merge.
 
If the image appears in half the speed of the eye blink, how will I tell that the faster machine did it in a quarter of a blink of the eye? We rapidly reaching the performance point where the question is can the human operating the equipment see the difference?

I can discern the difference in the single core work on the M1 Ultra and the M4 Pro mini. The grunt power of the Ultra keeps it relevant as compared to the mini in some photo work.
 
If the image appears in half the speed of the eye blink, how will I tell that the faster machine did it in a quarter of a blink of the eye? We rapidly reaching the performance point where the question is can the human operating the equipment see the difference?

I can discern the difference in the single core work on the M1 Ultra and the M4 Pro mini. The grunt power of the Ultra keeps it relevant as compared to the mini in some photo work.

People don't spend the money on newer generation Apple processors to get web page images to load more quickly. They spend the money on newer generation Apple processors so that if they are doing something that makes them money, like rendering videos, image editing, etc. are done in less than half the time as the equipment they have now.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tagbert
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.