Hands On: Apple Finally Updates the Mac Mini

Apple's 2022 Mac consequence was a big-fourth dimension catching-upwards, making-apology session.

The 2022 MacBook Air, which in essence was more in line with a 2022 laptop, saw near every attribute of it kicked into 2022 in a mega-overhauled new MacBook Air. The same with the long-neglected Mac mini: With this update, Apple essentially fast-forwarded matters by four years.

The Mac mini had not seen a major update in and then long (2014!) that many Mac watchers had assumed Apple's littlest desktop would just die quietly of neglect. Just not and then. This revision of the Mac mini doesn't wait equally radical on the exterior as the MacBook Air'southward hard reboot (it only comes in space gray and looks much like its predecessor), but it gets an oversize component upgrade beyond the board. Let'south dig in.

What'southward Inside the New Mac Mini?

More Cadre (and more-cadre) power is the large story here. In these days of eight-core/sixteen-thread mainstream CPUs like the Intel Core i9-9900K, gaudy core/thread counts on desktop PCs are not unusual. I wouldn't call the raw counts on the 2022 Mac mini quite that, but a 4-core minimum (in a lean Cadre i3 SKU that I doubtable about mini loyalists will bypass for the 6-cadre beefiness) and the option to bounciness that up is very promising for a motorcar of this size.

Apple did not specify which if any of the new chips (4-core or hexa-cadre) support Hyper-Threading, but gauging from the claims of upwards to "5x better performance," I volition hazard a guess that some, if not all, back up the thread-doubling tech.

In some of the demos I witnessed, the cadre-crunching ability was on full display. Apple's Logic Pro X music-creation software, according to a rep I spoke with, is among the Apple software most highly extensible to using all bachelor cores, and it managed a 100-plus-track song from Beck with aplomb.

This, of course, was a six-core model doing on-the-wing manipulation to maximum effect. In improver, some of Intel's belatedly additions to its recent-gen CPUs include specialized optimizations for video encoding, and then Apple is making claims of, in some cases, immense gains for conversion tasks such as HEVC encoding. Chalk that up to the new silicon.

One surprise, and a bit of a bummer, is the reliance, beyond the board, in the Mac mini on Intel's integrated graphics. The Mac minis upwardly and down the line lean on Intel's UHD Graphics 630 for their video acceleration. Now, for basic display-output purposes, this is a very capable solution. Information technology will power up to three 4K monitors (two over Thunderbolt 3 and one on HDMI 2.0), or one 5K panel (on Thunderbolt 3) and one 4K (on HDMI). But for applications that benefit from dedicated graphics silicon for GPU-accelerated performance, or for Mac gaming, Intel UHD anything is not a powerhouse.

That said, the Thunderbolt iii ports on the Mac mini support external graphics cards, or eGPUs, so the potential for better is there. Merely I rather expected to see an implementation of some kind of AMD Radeon RX graphics, at to the lowest degree as an pick on an upper SKU, like with the MacBook Pros. If a Mac laptop tin can practice it, I'd expect its latest mighty-mite desktop to, too. Plus, y'all can configure a Mac mini equally high as $four,199. (I did that, for kicks. That gets you a six-core Core i7, 64GB of RAM, a 2TB SSD, and 10-gigabit Ethernet.) Paying that much for a desktop with integrated graphics—integrated graphics!—seems wildly ludicrous.

Across the processor-muscle uptick and the decisions around graphics acceleration, the Mac mini is now getting ii,666MHz RAM. The standard complement is 8GB, upgradable at time of purchase to 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB, the latter a new ceiling for the Mac mini and a presumptive boon for renderers, demanding musicians, and media editors.

An Apple rep I spoke with noted that the RAM is technically non meant to exist user-upgradable, but Apple is implementing the RAM here as SO-DIMMs—that is, not soldered down. So it's conceivable that the usual-suspect aftermarket Mac-upgrade sellers like OWC or Crucial could sell kits and instructions that would allow for daring users to fissure the instance and heave the RAM if they need more later. (The memory itself is DDR4.)

The Storage Loadout

This is an interesting aspect of the 2022 Mac mini. Start off, Apple has gone total SSD. You can't get an internal two.five-inch supplemental platter bulldoze, and so this marks farewell to the long-running Apple Fusion Drive, its combined platter-and-wink solution that was available in the last Mac mini revision.

I'm in favor of the all-flash approach, especially every bit there is more-than-adequate port connectivity to drib an external platter bulldoze onto the unit for supplemental storage, and the Mini'south back-panel connectedness technologies (USB 3, Thunderbolt 3) are mighty fast. Plus, Apple has moved the internal SSDs, similar on its latest laptops, to the snappier PCI Limited jitney, supplanting Serial ATA.

The storage is not user-upgradable, and then you'll want to purchase the capacity you demand at fourth dimension of buy or resign yourself to external add-ons. The base of operations-model Mac mini starts at $799 and nets y'all a iv-cadre Cadre i3 and a rather meager 128GB of storage, while the footstep-upwards $one,099 model is a six-core Core i5 and 256GB of SSD. The time-of-purchase SSD upticks are to 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB. (Only they are love.)

Connectivity: Cardinal Points

A lot has inverse on the connectivity front end, to my eyes all for the ameliorate. You lot have support for gigabit Ethernet standard, with massively upticked x-gigabit (10Gb) Ethernet as a configuration selection. Indeed, Apple was showing off Final Cutting Pro rendering with stacked Mac minis acting as a mini return subcontract, connected to their respective networks via 10Gb interfaces. The ability to bring multiple Mac minis online for enervating render tasks brings a whole new face up to what a team equipped with these machines tin can do on the fly.

Beyond the Ethernet enhancements, you get four Thunderbolt 3/USB Type-C ports, every bit well as two USB Blazon-A ports (likely reserved for workaday devices like a keyboard and mouse) and an HDMI output. Note the lack of conventional DVI or DisplayPort video-outs; you'll use HDMI, Thunderbolt iii, or a dongle or two.

Ane nice detail for those trying to maintain minimalist workspaces? Notation the power connector at left. That leads to a directly Air-conditioning power cable, with no inline ability brick. Apple tree managed to incorporate the power supply for this machine into the chassis itself, which considering the size is a feat of its own and will exist overlooked by most buyers.

Around the Edges: Thermals and More than

One of my first questions nigh these fiddling Minis was how Apple was handling the core-upticked CPUs here in terms of cooling. Information technology'southward notwithstanding an active cooling scheme, merely 1 that, even as I watched several Minis do their stuff, including some harsh rendering tasks, ran very serenity. I likewise puzzled over how Apple pulled this off without a litany of ventilation grilles effectually the sides.

If you lot flip the Mac mini over, you'll note a plastic disc that serves as its base. Removing it should give you lot access to a hatch that goes to the internals. (At my demo, Apple declared this verboten, just give us the chance...) Effectually the perimeter of the disc is a gap that allows for gratuitous airflow in and out. I didn't note a rush of air effectually the edges of the Mini as it cranked away, but Apple assured us that at that place is a directed, agile fan over the core silicon.

Here at PCMag, nosotros wait to get our mitts on one of the Mac mini SKUs in the near time to come. Stay tuned for a total review of the machine.