Mac Mini with M2 2023 review

Kuala Lumpur: Apple unveiled the new Mac mini, powered by M2, and the all-new M2 Pro earlier this year, with models available to ship from 30 January 2023.

Here's a quick rundown of the models.

The basics

Compared to the previous-generation Mac mini, M2 and M2 Pro bring a faster next-generation CPU and GPU, much higher memory bandwidth, and a more powerful media engine to Mac mini.

This is able to deliver industry-leading power efficiency. Both models feature an advanced thermal system for exceptional sustained performance.

The promise

Apple says the new Mac mini M2 and M2 Pro offer faster performance, even more shared memory and advanced connectivity, including support for up to two displays on the M2 and up to three displays on the M2 Pro.

The topline promise is that Apple is committed to enabling users to run more powerful workflows than ever before, and to deliver that performance in such a compact design.

Mac mini with M2

The Mac mini with M2 features an 8-core CPU with four high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores, and a 10-core graphics processor. It retails for £2,499 with 256GB SSD storage and £3,299 with GB SSD storage.

The comparisons

Compared to the Mac mini with Intel Core i7, the Mac mini with M2 features:

Up to 22x faster machine learning (ML) image upscaling in Pixelmator Pro
9.8x faster complex timeline rendering in Final Cut Pro Compared to the previous-generation Mac mini with M1,1 the Mac mini with M2 offers
Up to 2.4x faster ProRes transcoding in Final Cut Pro
Up to 50% faster filter and feature performance in Adobe Photoshop
Up to 35% faster gameplay in Resident Evil Village

Compared to the previous-generation Mac mini with M1,1 Mac mini with M2 delivers:

Up to 2.4x faster ProRes transcode in Final Cut Pro
Up to 50 percent faster filter and function performance in Adobe Photoshop
Up to 35 percent faster gameplay in Resident Evil Village

Mac mini with M2 Pro

M2 Pro brings pro-level performance to Mac mini for the first time. Featuring up to a 12-core CPU with eight high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores, and up to a 19-core graphics processor, M2 Pro delivers 200GB/s of memory bandwidth - twice as much as M2 - and supports up to 32GB of memory. Mac mini with M2 Pro starts at RM5,599 with 512GB SSD storage.

The review The Apple M2 Pro is the next level chip after Apple's successful foray into chip manufacturing with the previously introduced Apple M1 chip. Those familiar with the M1 are already reporting exceptional performance in their machines, including the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. The M2 is the continuation of this extraordinary journey, delivering even faster performance - up to 2.6 times faster than the M1. In our review, we compared the Mac Mini with the M2 and 16GB of RAM to the MacBook Pro with the M1 Max and 64GB of RAM. The results are astonishing! Running up to ten applications including Final Cut Pro, several productivity applications including MS Teams and Cisco's Webex, both machines performed incredibly well. We did not expect the Mac Mini with M2 to outperform the M1 Max with 64GB, but it did. We were able to produce a 30-minute 1080p video without any lag. Exporting this 4.2GB file took less than a minute, which surprised the testers. Rendering animated content in Safari was faster on the M2 than the M1, in line with Apple's 5.5x promise. Productivity applications, such as Excel, were fairly similar between the M1 and M2. However, image upscaling was noticeably faster on the 16GB M2 compared to the 64GB M1. All in all, while the 16GB M2 Mac Mini gave a surprisingly good return, it still lags behind the performance of the M1 64GB in terms of photo editing, gaming and video editing in general. However, these lags are not as noticeable as first thought. The wins and fails The wins are clear. The most striking is the price. Even a fully loaded M1 with 24GB of unified memory on a 2TB SSD storage is still under RM7,300. That's a price that can't be matched by the mid-range MacBook Pros. The input/output option is also a clear winner for the Mac Mini, as it supports a wide range of I/Os.

There aren't many bugs, but cheaper non-Apple products offer comparable performance, although they don't offer the MacOS user experience and won't be part of the Apple ecosystem. Mobility is of course an issue as this is a desktop and will not be an easy option for our much laptop loving world.

The bottom line

The comparisons were made between an M1 Max machine and an M2 machine. There is a broad consensus that Apple's M1 chips are already industry-leading. To test an entry-level M2 against an M1 and still get close to the same results is a clear reason for any user to start their purchase journey. It should be an easy decision for the average user. Buy it just because it has an M2, is cheap and runs on MacOS, which belongs in the Apple ecosystem.