Definitive Guide to Buying a Mac mini (and NOT wasting money)

Summary

In "Definitive Guide to Buying a Mac mini (and NOT wasting money)," Pete Matheson discusses the intricacies of purchasing a Mac Mini. He provides a detailed analysis of the various configurations available, focusing on memory, storage, and CPU options. Pete offers his personal insights and experiences, warning against unnecessary upgrades while emphasizing cost-effective solutions using external SSDs and smart shopping strategies. He also reviews the accessories he uses, providing a comprehensive guide for potential buyers to avoid overspending.

Highlights

• Pete emphasizes that the base model Mac Mini is often enough for general tasks. 🛍️
• Avoid Apple's pricey storage and memory upgrades; consider third-party alternatives. 🔄
• The M4 Pro's Thunderbolt 5 allows for extremely fast connections with compatible drives. ⚡
• Most users won't notice a performance boost just by adding more CPU cores. 📈
• Using accessories like the C digit ts4 dock can expand your Mac Mini's capabilities. 🔗

Key Takeaways

• The base M4 Mac Mini with 16GB is sufficient for most users unless engaging in intensive tasks like video editing. 💻
• Avoid overspending on Apple's storage upgrades; opt for third-party external SSDs for better value. 💰
• The M4 Pro Mac Mini offers Thunderbolt 5 for faster external storage connections. 🔌
• Higher CPU and GPU upgrades may not show noticeable differences in performance for most users. 🧠
• A good setup involves balancing local and external storage while utilizing smart accessories for expansion. 🖥️

Overview

The video kicks off by breaking down the Mac Mini models available, explaining the configurations and what each might suit best. Pete shares his personal journey in choosing the right model, emphasizing that Apple’s M4 Mac Mini configurations should align with what tasks you're planning to undertake. The conversation dives deep into memory needs, recommending that 16GB suffices for average usage but detailing when higher capacities might be worth the investment.

Pete critiques Apple's pricing strategy on storage and urges viewers to consider third-party SSDs, particularly for anyone considering significant storage upgrades. He shares experiences from his own setup, highlighting how he manages storage effectively without shelling out excessive money on Apple’s upgrades. He also dispels myths about needing the most powerful CPUs for everyday tasks, separating needs from wants.

Concluding, Pete walks through his own setups both at home and the studio, explaining decisions like Ethernet upgrades or sticking with the base model. He underscores the importance of balancing gadgets and accessories, reinforcing how accessories like docks can significantly extend the machine's utility. Pete wraps up with some personal tech mishaps, reinforcing the importance of dependable backups and rational purchases.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to Mac Mini The chapter provides a buyer's guide for the M4 Mac Mini, evaluating it as both one of the best and worst in terms of value. It guides on which upgrades are worth considering based on individual needs and budget, which to skip, or undertake personally, and discusses the accessories used with the Mac Mini.
• 01:00 - 03:00: M4 Mac Mini Configurations and Memory Options The chapter discusses the M4 Mac Mini configurations and memory options, with the speaker explaining their decision to delay reviews until after the Black Friday discounts to avoid bias. They request viewers consider subscribing while addressing a comment about YouTubers' wealth.
• 03:00 - 05:00: Memory Considerations for Different Tasks The chapter discusses various memory configurations available for the M4 Mac Mini models as advertised on Apple's website. It mentions that there are three popular configurations for the M4 Mac Mini and one configuration for the M4 Pro Mac Mini. The chapter briefly explains the base model of M4 Mac Mini featuring 16GB of unified memory and a 256GB SSD.
• 05:00 - 07:00: Storage Options and Considerations This chapter discusses the storage options and considerations for the M4 Mac Mini. It compares upgrades such as a 512 GB SSD and the benefits of upgrading to 24 GB of unified memory. It also introduces the M4 Pro Mac Mini, which comes with a more powerful M4 Pro chip, 24 GB of unified memory, a 512 GB SSD, and Thunderbolt 5, an upgrade from Thunderbolt 4. The chapter emphasizes the importance of these upgrades in enhancing the performance and capabilities of the M4 Mac Mini, while also suggesting that these considerations are relevant across all Mac products.
• 07:00 - 09:00: External Storage Solutions The chapter discusses external storage solutions, focusing on the consideration of memory size in purchasing decisions. It highlights common overspending on memory due to fear of future inadequacy. The base M4 Mac Mini with 16GB of memory is presented as sufficient for most home users, as exemplified by the author's personal use for web browsing and email.
• 09:00 - 11:00: CPU Considerations and Ethernet Upgrade The chapter discusses the adequacy of 16 GB of memory for basic tasks on Macs, such as document writing and gaming. It mentions using VMware to run virtual machines on a Mac Mini, illustrating the capability of these machines even with just 16 GB of memory. The speaker hints at discussing their specific use case later in the chapter and notes the potential needs for video editing and graphic tasks.
• 11:00 - 13:00: User Experiences and Purchases This chapter discusses various configurations and memory requirements related to tasks such as design and coding, particularly focusing on when it might be necessary to upgrade memory capacity. It highlights that for more intensive tasks like multi-track audio and video editing using applications such as the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite, higher amounts of memory are needed. Specifically, it mentions that 32 GB of unified memory is the maximum for the base M4 model, and anything beyond this requires an upgrade to the M4 Pro Mac Mini.
• 13:00 - 15:00: Conclusion and Recommendations In this chapter, the focus is on the practicality and cost-effectiveness of upgrading memory and storage in Apple products. The recommendation is to avoid upgrading memory unnecessarily because the additional costs are steep and often not justified for most users. The chapter advises saving money on memory upgrades unless there is a specific, justifiable need for extra memory. Emphasis is placed on the extortionate pricing Apple places on memory and storage upgrades, suggesting that these costs do not reflect the actual benefits for average users.

Definitive Guide to Buying a Mac mini (and NOT wasting money) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] the M4 Mac Mini is one of the best Macs you can buy right now and it's both one of the best but also worst when it comes to Value so today I want to run through a bit of a buyers guide for the Mac Mini and run through which upgrades are worth it depending on your needs and when factoring your budget which upgrades are worth either skipping or maybe just doing yourself and also taking that into account I wanted to look at the actual access I choose to use with my own Mac
• 00:30 - 01:00 minis now I want to wait until the whole like Black Friday thing was over because I just didn't want it to come over as just a you know Shilling whatever was the best discounts that week so I'll cover those Products off as well now quick request before we starts according to YouTube 95% of people that watch these videos aren't actually subscribed to the channel so if you do enjoy this if it's useful to you in any way uh please do consider subscribing actually someone literally commented on the last video saying they are not subscribing because apparently YouTubers are rich enough already but this December uh I
• 01:00 - 01:30 currently only have one video sponsored by a brand but I still have to pay you know everyone's salary here so yeah it really can help and thank you very much so firstly listed on Apple's own website there are four different configurations of the M4 Mac Mini you got three M4 Mac Minis and one M4 Pro Mac Mini now those three M4 Mac minis are just the most popular configurations of the Mac Mini I've said Mac Mini far too many times already in this video there is the Bas spec with 16 gig of unified memory and a 256 gig SSD then there's one with with
• 01:30 - 02:00 an upgrade to a 512 gig SSD and then there's the next one which is a 512 gig SSD but also an upgrade to 24 gig of unified memory and then lastly there is the M4 Pro Mac Mini which in addition to the more powerful M4 Pro chip starts with 24 gig of unified memory a 512 gig SSD and you also get Thunderbolt 5 on this model as well over the Thunderbolt 4 from the basic M4 so to get you started and this really applies to any Mac but of course we're focusing on the M4 Mac Mini here in this video so let's
• 02:00 - 02:30 start with the memory because that is an area that many people often overs spend on like vastly overspend on because you know because it's sold it on we all worry that by not getting enough now we're going to make it really difficult for us later on when we realize we actually should have bought more memory now the basec M4 Mac Mini now comes with 16 gig of memory and for most home users this is just fine but it's actually what I went for with my M4 Mac Mini which I keep at home I do uh web browsing email
• 02:30 - 03:00 writing documents even some like gaming as much as you can do on a Mac basically if you don't ever dive into anything outside of those basic tasks you don't really need more than 16 gig of memory I'm even using VMware to run a virtual machine on my home M4 Mac Mini which runs my home assistant like home automation system so they really are like really capable machines at just 16 gig of memory now I'm going to run into my actual specific use case later on so maybe just stick around to hear how that works as well now if you sometimes Dabble in some uh video editing graphic
• 03:00 - 03:30 design maybe coding then that's when you want to consider bumping this up to 24 gig and then for 32 gig this is really if you're wanting to do you know lots of multi-track editing so you know loads of audio tracks loads of video tracks going on uh apps like the Creative Cloud Suite which can often consume a lot more memory with large files now 32 gig is the maximum amount of unified memory you can get on the base m4 model and to get above that you have to then upgrade to the M4 Pro Mac Mini and really for
• 03:30 - 04:00 anything over 32 gig my advice to most people is that you just don't need it particularly because the memory upgrades don't come anywhere near as cheap like as always Apple's upgrade pricing for both both memory and storage is to a certain extent absolutely extortioner so honestly just save your money on unnecessarily upgrading your memory because it's a vastly expensive upgrade that most people won't even notice unless I'll carry out that you know that you need that extra memory I think if you're start they going M I'm not sure
• 04:00 - 04:30 if I really do if you know because the know the apps and tools you're using need the extra memory then you know that you're going to pay the extra for it maybe you're running like multiple virtual machines and need to allocate memory to each of them maybe you're running like a video production company and you spend the entire day in Final Cut Pro or premere or maybe doing development work where again you know it will eat through memory I think if you need more than 32 gig of memory you will already know and then have your reasons why if you know why you'll need more than 32 G but myice for again most
• 04:30 - 05:00 people here generalizing here is 16 gig is great 24 gig is if you start to dabble more uh into like intense memory consuming apps and then 32 gig for you know power users I would say but I would even classify myself as a power user and I'm using 16 gig so just take that as you will now speaking of saving money let's talk storage now here is where you can potentially save a lot of money with unnecessary upgrades but sometimes unfortunately it is needed so the base
• 05:00 - 05:30 M4 comes with 256 gig of onboard storage and you can upgrade to a maximum of 2 TB of onboard storage now again most people 256 gig will be probably fine like again on my home Mac Mini I went for 256 gig but do I regret it maybe well take the 256 gig SSD and reduce that to 245 gig of actual usable storage that's available to you then you need to remove 20 gig for the oper ating
• 05:30 - 06:00 system another 24 gig for the system data another 30 gig in my situation here for applications and so I'm actually left with around about 170 gig of you know actual usable space that I can choose to do something with so again if you have anything that's over 170 gig in size and that must reside on the local SSD then you do kind of have to upgrade the local SSD and pay the Apple rates now for me that is my home assistant virtual machine which must sit on the
• 06:00 - 06:30 local SSD because when the Mac restarts it does try to boot home assistant but if it is on the SSD it can't boot it because it runs before the Mac realizes the ssds are connected so it just kind of fails to boot and then doesn't really retry it from there now my other constraint is in my photos Library which is over 100 Gig in size by now if I want to download everything onto my Mac like locally now again you can move this onto an external SSD but when doing so you lose the ability to search your Library
• 06:30 - 07:00 using spotlights which I don't think I've ever done before but it's just worth mentioning that because that tells you kind of it pops up when you try and do that now the other thing I will kind of mention here comes after I was chatting with uh Daniel from zone of tech during a recent trip to Amsterdam now apparently Apple intelligence features can be restricted if you store your photo library on an external drive now I'm not running any of the the beta software on my Maxs right now so I can't actually test this but I can use the cleanup tool to erase things from photo and I can still search by just you know
• 07:00 - 07:30 describing the images but just be aware that when moving your photos library to an external drive it may cause issues further down the line with apple intelligence now having said that I have the 256 gig SSD in my home Mac I have quite a few apps installed I have my photo stored in iCloud I have all of my documents stored in iCloud uh there's Google drive there too for my work stuff I even have that virtual machine running which I managed to make a bit smaller after I realized I needed to make it smaller to make it fit and I still have now just under 100 Gig of free space
• 07:30 - 08:00 left so I do think that 256 gig is achievable for most people but again it might also require a bit of effort to you know stop yourself from going over that limit and then if you up for the M4 Pro then you're starting at 512 gig anyway so you know that's even better but if you look at Apple's upgrade pricing here in the UK to go from 256 gig to 512 cost £200 whereas a quick look on Amazon and you can pick up a crucial X10 Pro 2 TB SSD for the less
• 08:00 - 08:30 which is silly for less than Apple's 512 gig storage like a third a third do maths properly a quarter of the storage and at almost half of that price if you wait for uh Black Friday or like Prime Day discounts and those ssds they're fast they're as fast as the internal SSD on the Mac Mini it's not like you're getting slower performance or anything you can even pick up a 2 TB M2 Chip which might look scary but if you pop one inside of an enclosure like one of these ug green or a Cas enclosures I'll
• 08:30 - 09:00 link them down below then you can get even faster storage at a fraction of the cost and then if you are on a M4 Pro Mac Mini then you also get support for Thunderbolt 5 which means you can hook up even faster drives now there aren't many available yet this is quite a new thing that's coming out but OWC currently have a 2 tbte and a 4 tab drive and considering 4 terabytes of onboard like Mac Mini Storage is priced at a whopping 12,200 British pounds 8 terabytes it's the price of a car it's
• 09:00 - 09:30 like £2,400 here compared to owc's migga I mean it still feels expensive but migga $600 or around that's like £480 for 4 terab you could buy two of the 4 tab OWC drives and still have over half of your money left over it's just insane the premium that Apple charged for these storage upgrades so that is the uh expensive upgrades out of the way now next is the CPU now for the base model it is what it is but for the M4 Pro you
• 09:30 - 10:00 do have an option to pay another £200 to get an extra two CPU calls and four GPU calls and from my experience so far as someone who owns both M4 Mac Pro Models here we've got two different models here and use them for video editing there is little to no difference between these two machines in our experience now in some cases the technically slower machine my machine that's the slower of the two actually rendered and exported videos faster than the other higher spec model with more memory and the higher
• 10:00 - 10:30 CPU so again unless you know that you need the upgraded CPU you really don't need to pay the extra like it's really really not noticeable and that's from someone who is using them every single day and doing some fairly intensive tasks on them and then like as we scroll to the bottom of the list of upgrades it's the one that most people will probably skip to be honest the upgrade from 1 gig to 10 gig ethernet now this is one that I needed for my studio where I have a I've got a NAS drive here which is basically a rack of hard diss which provide me with a huge amount of storage for all of my video footage that also
• 10:30 - 11:00 has a 10 gig connection and I actually thought we'd be able to edit directly from the NAS from my Mac minis 10 gig to the nas but it's not quite fast enough with the Nas and the particular Disc set that we've got here we're actually going to use the NAS drive but then use proxies locally which then may of course increase the amount of storage that we might want either locally or via SSD but that will fix our problem there so with that said which Max did we buy and why so like I said I actually bought all three models of Mac so just let me tell you what I bought why I bought them and
• 11:00 - 11:30 any regrets and changes I would make on those three Macs so Mac number one is the M4 Mac Mini now I bought the the base model the cheapest one no upgrades and that was replacing my existing M1 Mac Mini at home now this has been used for my uh my Plex Library movies videos photos uh it's also used to run home assistance now I use it when I work from home so you know email web social media YouTube just you know General work type stuff then I've also created accounts on there for my two kids so they have a
• 11:30 - 12:00 good machine to do their you know school work homework I'm also trying to teach them touch type at the moment which is pretty cool and and that all works really really well like I ended up running home assistant locally from the max SSD like I said and then hooked up two external ssds to store all the the photos the videos uh and actually one of those actually uh weirdly temporarily failed recently it's now working again but thankfully I actually had it all backed up to back Blaze this isn't like a sponsor thing this just actually happened so I thought I'd mention it um back to all my Mac Mini up to back Blaze
• 12:00 - 12:30 and was able to restore that to a new SSD that I got because the Old One's obviously on its way out and just got it working in about matter of like hours I think it was now I also have an APC UPS backup battery which gives my Mac around like 30 minutes of battery power if there's a power cut and it's hooked up to a Samsung M8 smart monitor which works great again no issues with that uh I also have it sat on this anchor desk shelf SL docking station thing just because I had it lying around just to give me a few extra USB ports wireless
• 12:30 - 13:00 charger and just a few extra you know just expansion on the Mac Mini because there's not many ports on the back there uh Logitech MX Keys Apple Magic Mouse 2 yes with the silly USBC charging port underneath thing and all in all I am very happy with this decision although I would potentially upgrade the base SSD from 256 to 512 gig in future if I bought it again now the next Mac Mini is the Bas speec M4 Pro Mac Mini with 10 gig of ethernet 1 TB of storage and this was one that I bought for
• 13:00 - 13:30 day-to-day work stuff here in the studio but I also wanted the pro chip in case I ever needed to do you know any video editing any audio editing work now since that's literally obviously what we do here that kind of makes sense and also just for Anytime my video editor needs to use this machine then I know that it's got a powerful enough chip to work on now I have this hooked up to the gigantic uh 57 in G9 Samsung screen via HDMI uh it's also hooked up into the Focus right Scarlet solo interface so I
• 13:30 - 14:00 can use a good microphone for video calls and those kind of things that is also hooked up to the edifier speakers I've got uh there's an insta 360 link to camera as my webcam and then I also have the latest C digit ts4 dock again just to give me a few more ports uh as well as the SD card slot since there's no SD card slot on the Mac Mini very very much overkill for you know why I have the dock here and I literally have it for the SD card slot and like one or two USB ports I actually recently upgraded from the cdit TS3 plus which I've actually been using since like 5 years ago now to
• 14:00 - 14:30 the ts4 which C digit sent over when I asked if they would be interested in sponsoring this video huge thank you for that now it is such a solid dock for those of you who need to expand the number of ports you get on well any device including the Mac Mini of course the ts4 gives you an additional 18 ports so a ton of usba USBC ports uh it hooks up to your Mac fire Thunderball 4 which can also charge your device if it's something like a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro and then gives you things like a display port to hook up an extra monitor
• 14:30 - 15:00 uh 2 and 1/2 gig ethernet for you if you wanted faster network connectivity and of course the front mounted SD and micro SD card slots you got headphone USB ports just giving you quick access to the essentials and so even though I said that this dock is probably overkill for my current use case it is such a reliable way for me to connect all of my extra accessories for my Mac you know my webcam my audio interface video streaming device wired keyboard uh Logitech USB dongle as well as connect my MacBook Pro up to power and display
• 15:00 - 15:30 Allin one cable so yeah this continues to be one of the best and the most reliable docs I've used and I'm a super happy customer and you can grab one using the link in the description down below uh Kyron K3 keyboard I think it is Logitech MX Master 3 Mouse totally happy absolutely happy with this purchase uh zero regrets whatsoever and then we have the third Mac Mini and this again is the higher spec uh but it's the higher of the spec M4 Pro Mac minis it's got a terab SSD uh 48 gig of unified memory
• 15:30 - 16:00 and 10 gig ethernet on that one and again this one I'm I would say I'm mostly happy with before that check out the latest U green Uno series of chargers which make a great gift during the holiday season with their cute emoji faces and screen the screen will show the real-time charging status with different Expressions which will make your charging experience more delightful from the 100 WT charger which fast charges everything you need to bring with you for dayto day or when traveling to the 15 Wat two-in-one magnetic
• 16:00 - 16:30 charger with their fun robot design and hassle-free charging ug green have you covered these will all be links down below along with a link to take par in ug Green's £34,000 giveaway and a huge thanks to ug green for sponsoring this portion of the video the third Mac Mini again it's for my videographer so you know he edits our short form content and I just kind of wanted to make sure that he has like the best machine possible outside of upgrading for a Mac Studio cuz that's kind of getting to being overkill for what we need we're not like a Hollywood studio production house even though like YouTubers use Mac Studios
• 16:30 - 17:00 all the time now cuz they're kind of affordable anyway I digress now he was already using the M1 Pro MacBook Pro and the M4 Pro Mac Mini it's a mouthful um is almost twice as fast when X bossing videos so that is a very very decent upgrades but I don't think I should have upgraded uh getting the uh CPU and GPU uh even the memory upgrade I'm questioning whether it's worth it after again doing some tests between R2 machines mine actually came out on top some the time so yeah I would have probably saved the money instead um but
• 17:00 - 17:30 his machine is hooked up to a Dell 40-in Thunderbolt screen really really nice it's got 2 and A2 gig ethernet in there just in case you wanted to skip the 10 gig upgrade which is still faster than 1 gig which also has the cow digit doc connected uh Logitech MX Keys MX Master 3 Mouse again Great Mouse great keyboard combination and aside from the CPU upgrade and memory mostly happy with that purchase now in terms of these storage upgrades I'm going to leave a link down below to my recommendations I've been testing like all of the currently available ssds recently
• 17:30 - 18:00 including some of them which have actually failed on me like I said um so yeah back Blaze it's like $9 a month for unlimited data online backup well well worth it and given a few of the ssds that I have been testing have actually recently failed very very grateful I had everything backed up to that service as well so with that said I hope this video was useful to you and I will see you in the next video cheers bye-bye