Many people are focusing on individual specs and missing the point on Price to Performance. First I need to mention that all the PCs in this video are base models. There are no cheaper spec versions of the mini PCs. Now let me use this analogy: Imagine you have two vacuum cleaners to choose from: one with a 12-amp motor that costs $600 and another with a 24-amp motor priced at $1,000. Despite having a smaller motor, the 12-amp model cleans twice as efficiently, consistently picking up more dirt in half the time. Which is the better value? Are you still going for the more expensive one with the bigger motor, or would you choose the model that’s proven to be faster and more effective? Does anyone even care about the motor?
You can spend $350 on a ryzen 7735hs mini pc with 32gb ram and 1tb storage. You can't even buy that on the mac mini at $1400 so the question becomes is that chip worth 4x more of a capable system? Not for anything I'm doing.
In this analogy, I need to empty the bag/dust bin for the more efficient vacuum 3 times as often, and whilst it's great at cleaning the majority of my house. There's one specific carpet (gaming) that it just doesn't like, and doesn't really work on.
Hi. The important thing is that you were the only one who noticed mini computers other than Mac mini and compared them. This already makes your video valuable for viewers.
unfortunately for those who know about it, nothing comes close to a Beelink SER8 (8845hs) and SER9 (hx370) on windows, taking a Miniforum or Geekom is a bit sad, these brands make machines that heat up and do much more noise than Beelink while they sell their products more expensive, no one should give them visibility
@@iPixelPandah Not being sarcastic. Other companies just blatantly copy Apple. When Apple introduced the Mac mini now everything looks like Mac mini. Intel even encouraged the laptop manufacturers to copy Apple. We had suddenly lots of plastic imitations of the MacBook lineup. Now it doesn’t matter because Apple uses its own silicon and others can’t match that. Times were different when Apple also used Intels processors. That backstabbing from Intel we will never forget.
Well crap! This is why I need an editor. Thanks. I'll pin this comment for the info. I did quote the correct specs later in the video. Not sure if that helped.
@@ElevatedSystems It's all good. Mistakes are always going to happen. LTT has a bunch of editors, a community fact checking program and millions of dollars, and they can't talk about something like Thunderbolt for more than 20 seconds before getting something wrong.
@@randomcommenterurl wow, I completely forgot about that. That is really incredibly impressive. If I didn't have a MacBook Pro, I would have snapped it up long ago. Without thinking twice. What an offer from Apple
There are Thunderbolt 5 External ssd enclosures now which claim up to 6000 read and write speeds if I’m not mistaken. I could imagine gen 5 drives coming soon for Thunderbolt 5 connections as well.
If you are buying this to use the Apple AI features, note that Apple will only run the AI features on data stored on the internal drive. This is because the are making claims to keep your AI data secure, and only they only view the internal drive as secure.
Wait what? .... the point of such a device is to have a small compact computer which does not take up much space and you want to add external clutter to make it work? O_o
My Mac Mini base setup (it's the only way to do it if you value your bank account): Mac Mini Base, got a $50 discount from Best Buy= $550, External Thunderbolt 4 enclosure from OWC= $100 (there are cheaper ones, I like the best and don't mind paying for it), 4TB Crucial T5 NVMe SSD, got on sale= $280. This is it, nothing else. And this is a very powerful, very future-proofed setup. This is the best deal in a desktop PC in 2024, and I'm a very dedicated PC gamer. I simply use said PC only for gaming now, nothing else. This is better everywhere else. Great comparison, you got a new sub.
Same here! PC gamer with a 13900k/4090 but wanted something quieter and portable incase I want to take it on a trip. Base Mac Mini for $499 with student discount, TB4 enclosure for $100 and a 2TB 990 Pro (had it laying around but was $189) and this thing is a properly fast spacious daily driver. The integration with my iPhone and iPad is awesome. PC only gets used for gaming now.
Exactly. Pretty much the exact setup I recommend for all my clients. Unless they don't need really fast storage, I give them the option for a $30 USB C 10 GB/s case. $70 savings.
It's easy to make sense of the power button position. It runs UNIX. You don't shut it down, you let it manage its own power. I can't remember the last time any of my apple machines were powered off.
@@ElevatedSystems It would be interesting to compare M4 Pro Mini with Regular desktop like i7-4770 with Nvidia RTX-4060 Ti (16GB). They would be in the same price category. Can you please compare either base M4 mini or your Mac Studio with any PC with an Nvidia GPU for some professional work.
@@danabc322 no, i keep everything I buy or donate it to those in my community who may be in need. I have every Mac I ever bought except the M2 Pro Mac mini which I gave to a local family.
True. I have a mac for the best productivity experience... and it just works. I have a Xbox Series X for the best gaming experience that just works. It's fantastic. I built custom PCs for over a decade then got sick of all the babying and fiddling to keep the hardware and OS running smoothly. I went to mac in 2015 and will never go back to a windows based PC again.
What about the noise of the fans and the temperature? Those are the only 2 reasons I use a Mac Mini, all the Windows mini pc's are loud as a fighter jet and get very hot, but I still prefer Windows.
What an incredibly well-done video my friend. Your conclusion suggesting a solution based on what an individual needs is absolutely appreciated, and I wish more people kept an open mind vs. subjecting the audience solely to their own worldview. Subscribed and will keep tabs on your channel!
I think what’s truly amazing and usually not stressed enough in these comparisons with other mini machines, is the fact that the mac mini doesn’t require a seperate bulky power adapter under your table. So despite the PSU occupying about half of the size of the case, it still manages to beat the shit out of its competitors, and even using less energy. And all this for that price. At this point competitors might just give up and produce kitchen machines.
With Mac Mini you need bulky external SSDs, USB adapters, card readers which are not free. $600 MacMini + $200 external SSD + $50 USB adapter + $50 card reader. How much is Mac keyboard and mouse? You will end up paying at least $1000.
@@FirstLast-nr6gf So what? And this is highly manipulative. You might already have or you might not need an external SSD, USB adapter and card reader. You might or you might not already have a keyboard and mouse. You might or might not need specifically the Mac keyboard and mouse (I have Logitech MX Master 3 and MX keys)
Excellent review. I’ve been waiting for a reviewer to compare the M4 performance with the AMD and Intel offering and this is the first one. In summary, get a PC if you want to game, get a Mac for everything other use case.
Gaming is what will keep x86 alive for a while. In every other aspect, x86 was a living dead when the M1 came out. It just carries too much historic ballast. Similar to Windows. For Intel and Microsoft it is all about milking the cash cow as long as possible while riding on backwards compatibility and vendor lock-in.
What a ridiculous claim. You can't just "get a Mac for everything other use case". Unless you're also prepared to pay through the teeth. As soon as you need anything more than the base model, Apple's advantage quickly disappears.
@ ok I’ll correct it to “You get a Mac for nearly every use case” Let’s face it, x86 is the past, not the future. Case in point Intel just laid off a whole design team and killed another project.
@@jackchen5290 Look, don't get me wrong. I love Apple products. I have a 2012 Macbook Pro that I still use every day. But the pricing on the M series macs is insane. I regularly work on projects that require 64GB of RAM or more, and I'll be damned if I pay the Apple premium for that :). x86 might be dead, but that doesn't matter, all other OSes run on Arm as well (maybe I missed your point about this)
@@jackchen5290 I dont think x86 is being replaced in desktops or things that allow users upgradable things anytime soon. It will be preferred in mobile parts or things that require smaller space for the processors like laptops, something in your car or the airplane tv or consoles in the near future.
It's sad that Ryzen HX 370 can't still shows its real 50 TOPS of computational power. The 40% faster NPU of the chip can't be used by any software, right now, and we have to blame Microsoft for that! They focused only on Snapdragon X Elite while the Ryzen is objectively the most promising in all AI task even upon Apple M4's 38 TOPS
Great video. As somebody shopping for a new video editing PC, it’s be really useful to get some metrics on noise, minimising fan noise etc from the PC is a constant struggle for me. I guess all of these will be way better than my ancient laptop in that regard but yeah, even anecdotal stuff like “it was very quiet while working in Davinci” would be useful to know
Go with the laptop. MacBook Pro has amazing power and absolutely fantastic battery performance up to 24 hours and it doesn’t throttle down! Then hook that up with a big displays. Apple Silicon is just astonishing 🎉
@ Steve Jobs would have absolutely loved this. When he introduced the Lisa. He said that this computer costs 10000 dollars and he wants to bring the price down to 1000 dollars. Steve said that computer is like bicycle for the mind. He wanted that everyone has bicycle for their mind. Now Tim Cook is delivering all those things that Steve dreamed off us all to have. This is Apple. Apple makes certain choices for us, but Apple doesn’t want to limit anyone. It is completely the other way around. Apple doesn’t want people to “upgrade” the machines because that limits things what they can do. For example unified memory. It is on the chip. Computing is all about steps and when you can reduce the steps per clock “pulse” then you make it faster. Now what Apple wants you to do is that you go and buy a new one because that is what you want and then you sell your old one. Someone somewhere is delighted to have a Mac that suits their budget. It is stupid to sell it separately when there are companies that take care of it. It is perfectly working computer for example student. And you get upgraded everything. Win win win because now somebody just bought their first Mac. Apple is very careful with its partners because Apple knows that ecosystem is everything.
Great video. Actually first video that says something about real experience in Davinci Resolve. And as I thought it's not fully smooth in full resolution :(. Thanks.
It is always disappointing that Apple will make such wonderful entry level machines and ruin that advantage with ridiculous upgrade prices. They could be killing it across the board. But as soon as you need to upgrade to a 1TB hard drive (which if you are storing a lot of photos and doing any editing, you need), it just changes they value quickly.
This is deliberate choice from the Apple. Apple never prices their products the cheapest way. They go in the middle. They leave space under and over their price line. That is to make their partners lives easier. As a customer if I need something that works right now then I go and buy Apple. Otherwise I buy accessories from the other vendors. Also Apple always keeps the price points steady and in that way makes the second hand market for Macs work perfectly. You want more power? Then you go and buy the power and sell the old Mac in the second hand market. There are plenty of people who are happy to get those in their hands. (Think students.)
Thank you so much for the real world performance tests, I think it's very useful for anyone looking to shop around Black Friday deals, and maybe into the holiday season as well. Seeing the numbers from Ryzen Strix Point, I do wish that Intel partners would have released some Lunar Lake Mini PCs by now... 12th gen Intel is just too far behind the M4 gen of Apple Silicon =/, but unfortunately it doesn't look like we'll be able to purchase them for a while longer.
To be fair, I was investigating with an work colleague the market, and many of these MiniPCs are a better deal for 1 or 2 UPGRADES you can do on top of higher specs. So BeLink SER9 in your test is: 32 GB + 1 TB. Assumming that you want the same specs but a better CPU and MacOS, the prices go from 599 (or 499 as a student) to 1,619.00 (at least in Europe), so price to performance will switch very fast into the MiniPC side. As a side note, I just bought a MiniPC with Ryzen 8840HS (which are not top of the line) that are today discounted at around 750 EUR (with 32 GB and 1 TB) and I can upgrade them up to ... 96 GB with less than 300 EURO, or to 64 GB with less than 200 EUR. Would MacMini beat it? Sure, it will, in synthetic benchmarks. But want to do some real work, like working with large projects in video editing, RAW photo editing, and alike... a 1000-ish upgraded mini PC (with 96 GB RAM) will be untouchable at any price point of MacMini. But if you want 64 GB of RAM, you can buy a Ryzen 5800H/U (or alke) with DDR4, and with the price of MacMini you can have a mini PC that cost like: 350 USD base system + 32GB x 2 DDR4 SODIMM 110 USD =
If you would like to run virtual machines on this mini PCs, you will definitely need more than 16G memory. All the x86 mini pcs have 32G while Mac mini only has 16. Upgrading mac mini to 32G would cost you $400, or $999 in total. Additionally, since many Linux distributions do not support ARM64 yet, your choice of OS will be limited.
He didn’t do that or more extensive gaming experience because the M4 would get horrible results. AMD’s HX 370 is a fabulous chip and runs everything! W11 is getting so good these days, that it’s coming very close to macOS in design but has much less shortcomings. In 2/3 years I may change definitely. The same happens with iOS, I’m getting tired of so many shortcomings…
Regular versions of Windows can't run on M-series chips because they're based on ARM and not Intel anymore. Microsoft recently released a version that runs on ARM but it's not officially compatible with Mac. Apple stopped supporting Boot Camp with M1 but said they might bring it back later if Microsoft decides to allow it. The only other official way to run it would be in a VM like Parallels or maybe VMware or another open source program.
Probably the most useful review I've seen, especially both the fact you used other mini PCs on the market with similar form factor, as well as the productivity-based benchmarks like Office and multimedia tools like After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Davinci Resolve (which I mainly intend to use in my toolchain for multimedia, as I transition away from Microsoft Windows, until they fix the glaring issues with Windows 11 and future releases; also GNU/Linux for multimedia isn't for me, as I've tried it recently and a lot of work still needs to be done). The inclusion of your project files, and overview of power efficiency are also nice bonuses. Thank you very much.
well, I see expensive PC with 2tb of storage compared to the mini with 256gb, it is a bit unfair when we know the outstanding price of option of the mini and the impossibility to expand it. a 4to ssd on PC is 200/300$ it is the price of the 512 option for the m4, same for RAM 64 gb on PC cost less that the 24 gb option..... You have to take this in account
Good review and comparisons. I was thinking of doing the same comparison but you saved me the trouble. You did not go into the heat and noise for the NUCs, which would be an issue for me. I like quiet operation. Overall the specs are good for the M4 Mac mini but the 16Gb RAM and 256Gb SSD are the two black marks against what should be the best without caveats. If you add 32Gb RAM and 1Tb SSD (US$$1,399) the Bangs for Bucks takes a dive on the Mac mini... just the way Apple designed it to be. The base model is a bargain, but for my purposes I'd have to get a M4 Mac min Pro to get 24Gb RAM, 512Gb SSD and Thunderbolt 5. Still lower specs for the RAM and SSD, but usable for Pro work. The price doubles though (US$$1,399) and it is not the cheapest anymore. To get a Pro with 48Gb RAM (next step up) and 1Tb SSD that would be US$1,999 which is very pricey considering you still have to get all the peripherals.
@@mojoblues66 Phone, yes (because it has a way better camera), but I also have several Macs, 2 PCs, an iPad, a Linux desktop and a Chromebook. I love macOS, but not Apple which screws its customers, and forces users in to bad choices with its designs and price gouging. You are talking about Apple, when you accuse them of being cheap for putting in 8gb or 16gb RAM and 256 Gb SSDs and then locking them down, so you can't simply swap their M.2 cards.
@@peterbreis5407 I can't imagine anyone outside Apple defending their RAM and storage pricing. Yet people do buy their products. Have you ever wondered why? Perhaps pricing isn't everything?
@@mojoblues66 Of course it isn't. My wife and I bought my M1 Macbook Pro Pro because for the first time in 10 years Apple wasn't selling a Mac that didn't suck or have major problems. I really wanted an M1 5k iMac but Apple says I can't have what _I_ want.
Great Comparison, Really thank you But I notice that there is some reflection in the video when you are facing the camera 12:48 🙂 If you can improve it
Funny how PC games almost always fall back to gaming as one of their main and important criteria when most other tasks lean towards a Mac 😂. I couldn’t care less about games and happily use my Mac.
That's fair enough, but as an avid Mac user, you have to objectively admit that it's an area where a Mac loses out. Someone looking to buy a "does everything" machine for both work and gaming will probably overlook a Mac for that reason. A few years back Apple tried to bolster the Mac's gaming credentials by teaming up with Valve to port their Source engine games to Mac. But they seemed to lose interest and now you can't run any of those games on a Mac anymore, and there's apparently no intention to rectify that situation. If I want to play TF2 or Portal, I can't do it on a Mac anymore.
There are loads of advantages to using a PC with Linux or Windows , you just don't know what they are . Where is Mac CUDA support ? All you need is a suitable Nvidia GPU. Ironically Nvidia are now a more valuable company than Apple . Ai and specifically CUDA is the future of computing , secondarily probably AMD/ROCM and not anything Apple think its users need.
I'm using MINISFORUM UM790 Pro. And it's great little machine with Radeon 780M GPU onboard, and fit my needs. I can easily play quite demanding titles on 1080p in medium settings. The one thing what I still don't like it's external power supply which often comes as a quite big brick. Also great thing is, I can easily extend Storage using two NVMe M.2 slots and RAM up to 64GB.
Power button position makes perfect sense when you consider the ultra low power cores that keep the mini in standby - just don’t turn it off. It’s more akin to the power button on a phone. You never really need it.
@chrisdistant9040 yup, because I only had 8gb of memory and did a lot of swap and writing on my hard drive. It is not normal that it dies after 3 years of use tho
Great review and comparison. I'd only add that you mentioned that Intel brought out a small form factor pc's in 2012 (in 2009 they introduced the idea of NUC or Next Unit of Computing which led to SFF PC's a couple of years later). The first Mac mini was introduced in Jan 2005 with a G4 processor and replaced it a year later with Intel Core Solo and Intel Core Duo cpu's.
real world perfomance ? try and stream in av1 encoding and open an youtube video ... will it even work -_-'' . this works fine on a 10 year old windows system
@@MJHiteshew I think there was sort of an implication (00:48) that Apple is newer to this form factor. In the video, Intel's NUC was offered as an early example of the mini PC form factor, dating to 2012. The first Mac mini predates the NUC by several years, however. Note that I could be misunderstanding both the video and the OP of this comment.
Price to performance seems to be a bit biased, picking most base mac mini vs not so base other mini pcs. They should be compared at equivalent ram, storage options :D
@ElevatedSystems The fact that you checked for most expensive ones like 8945hs. It is more or less equivalent to something like 7840hs or 8845hs. And these I could find mini pcs again 32gb ram 1tb, for 400, 500$ respectively. Yes the value of mac mini is not bad, but accepting 256gb of storage or 16gb of ram with insane upgrade costs is a lot of copium, especially in 2024. Phones come with 256GB of storage. What apple does here is price laddering, where you think of might as well pay a bit more for teeny more ram, might as well get a bit more storage and then you're nowhere near the price to performance.
Really great breakdown! So good to see someone who is largely agnostic when it comes to choosing hardware and operating systems - and reviewing them. There's a few things that could make the mac mini M4 even more desirable for those on the fence: SSD upgrade via a third party - unless Apple get nasty, if the mac mini M4 proves in sales just how popular it is, then there's money to be made providing an upgrade by 3rd parties. ARM based Windows - Microsoft dropped the arm windows 11 iso for download recently. The question, however, is whether anyone will create drivers to fully support the hardware. It's more likely that Linux enthusiasts will get there first. I have numerous PC's, windows, linux and mac running, but macOS has been my daily driver for over decade now. The OS to me is head and shoulders above anything else in terms of just keeping out of your way and in terms of reliability and slickness. Windows 11 is OK once you run debloater on it - except when it decides to run updates just at the point you want a quick 10 minute casual gaming break! Linux Desktop - come along in leaps and bounds, but still a bit klunky - feels 10 years out of date.
"Apple Silicone" I know this is a nitpick on the pronunciation, but... Silicon and Silicone are different. Silicon is a naturally-occurring element. It's a metalloid and semiconductor. Silicones (polysiloxanes) are polymers, many of which are colorless oils used for lubrication and others that are rubber-like used as a sealant/insulation.
Very nice review, with a lot of subjects touched. 13:40 However, talking about price/performance while ignoring specifications like RAM and storage, and not bringing them to same specs as others is not OK. Mac Mini with 32Gb and 1Tb (so specced like some of mini PC, AMD 370 I think) costs 1399USD! That is 400USD more than 999USD mini PC. You can have 64Gb/4Tb or even more for that price. And no, external storage can not be counted, because then the same can be applied to others. So, if you were using that official price for the same specs, price/performance score would be 6.49, lowest of them all. MiniPCs with 8845HS usually go for 500USD, so they would have better price/perf score too (around 12). To put things in perspective, that Baldurs Gate 3 you showed needs around 130Gb (Steam even says 150Gb ) of disk space. That is just ONE game. Storage size is important, and Apple is not being nice about it. RAM is important too. When you are running just one application, it usually does not matter. But when you keep your tabs open in browser, have two three other applications open, things change. And that is real life usage for majority. Suddenly 16Gb are filled and computer is caching on disk. Things start to be slower. I hope you understand why I mentioned this and why it is actually important.
Generally true when all things are equal. In this case, many things are not equal, though. That 16gb on the M4 is doing as much real-life work as 24 or 32 on a Win11 machine. Storage is a bummer, but external nvme storage and a TB4 enclosure is just a reality for this.
Its not lost on anyone. Basic knowledge. But *Plenty* of reviews showing how RAM works different/more efficent on macs... ever since M1 chip was announced. multiple tabs, multiple apps, etc, all running and switching smooth. My last intel mac had 128 GBs of ram... and I still got page outs and swap. And just like you state "8845 usually go for less" -- minis and mini pros do as well. base mini is $50 off everywhere, mini pro is $70 off
It's crazy how many people believe that 16 >= 32 😂. Or spout things like "RAM works different/more efficent on macs". RAM is RAM, you either have enough or you don't. And if you don't the OS will swap to disk. And people keep forgetting that the RAM on M series macs is shared with the GPU, so you get even less.
If you ever wanted to jump into a the Apple Ecosystem? This is one heck of a great way to do it. If you have kids? It is a NO BRAINER for a desktop computer for anyone who has kids will understand how fast they seem to break portable devices.
Looking forward to the next video comparing it to the M1…I still have the base model from 2020. I don’t really feel like I need to upgrade, but I honestly may do so just because I want to…lol😂
The $600 price is a mirage. Let's compare to the mini PC I bought in August: $580 got me an Aoostar Gem12 (8 core, 16 thread 8845hs clocked at 5.1gHz) with 32 gigs of DDR5 (5600), a nice fast gen4 1tb ssd, two 2.5 gbit ethernet ports, a very competent 780m iGPU, and an honest to god oculink port for 64gbit direct pcie4 x4 connection (I retrofitted an old thunderbolt 3 eGPU enclosure into an oculink box, and it screams through 4K gaming with an rx 7800xt). To upgrade the mac to similar specs (forget the eGPU), let's see.... 1TB ssd: +$400 (even though that caliber of drive can be had for under $80). 32GB memory: +$400 (again, should be like $100, but Apple needs to do the extortion game). Any network port faster than 1gbit: +$100. Now you're at $1500. Price to performance king, my sweet ass. No thanks.
I mean the upgrade prices are a problem but I just buy the base model and use it for what it is and do gaming on an actual gaming desktop. So yeah it's pretty good at $500 but at $1000 I would buy something else unless they are an artist and use a lot of apple programs
To be fair you should look at discounted prices. PCs normally get 20+% discounts. Macs get 10+% discounts. One plus with the Mac mini is it is small enough to put in the bag when travelling overseas so I get an additional 10% discount. But the same applies to the PC NUCs
It might be worth buying this Mac Mini to live stream your console or console PC games assuming you have a Elgato capture card. Also it is possible to play and Stream from the Mac Mini.
Have they figured out how to get x86/64 games running on Apple silicon yet? I know this isn’t exactly for AAA gaming, but wasn’t sure if they sorted that out.
Can't wait until the new Mac Studio M4 Max/Ultra comes out in Jan/Feb - If the GPU would deliver close to the Nvidia 4090 it would be a game changer for games on the Mac. The M4 is already at the price point where I could consider it as my daily driver replacing my 2018 Mac mini with eGPU (6900 XT) but I would need more real-life wine/game port/crossover data for games as this is a huge part of my daily driver machine - having access to games .
This is most likely one of the best reviews comparing performance with other mini pcs. Another aspect that hasn't been mentioned is fan noise which most likely the mac mini is the winner too.
Actually the Mac gets just as Loud as the SER9 just not as frequently. I it didn't include it because the battery was dead in my sound level meter and I didn't have a spare. 😞
I like you pointing out many reviewers being shocked how small, or saying we weren't asking for it to be smaller. The Mac Mini has been giant for a good while now. We did want it to be smaller! :D I'm really hoping we see some Intel Lunar Lake mini-PCs soon. MacOS just isn't for me.
The two value standouts in desktop personal computers these days are the base model Mac mini and the various mini-PCs with the Intel N100 processor that can be had for under $150. Get the Mac if you can afford it. Get an N100 if your needs are basic and your budget is small.
Why wasn’t the Mac Mini M4 Pro also included in the analysis? The way Apple is developing Apple Silicon is that your base model Mac is just as powerful as your top of the line Intel and AMD chips. Apple is slowly but surely is turning the Mac’s into the best value devices on the market. Yes, you can cheaper devices than a Mac, but they will lack the power. To get the same power of Mac in Intel and AMD world, means you have to spend money than what you have do on a Mac. Game developers need to wake up and realise that the Mac market share continues to grow.
Software dev on Mac is ass. On Linux, you just make build or build script and be done. On windows, you click a button on your IDE. On Apple silicon, you have to buy a mac, since macOS can't be shipped in a Docker container like Windows or Linux can, and then you have to fork $100 as a fee to Apple. Then you have to get Xcode to behave. Then you can compile. The only devs developing for Apple desktops are big AAA studios, who can afford the upfront cost. However, PC gaming is mainly dominated by the indie scene these days. Asking indie devs to fork over at least $600 to develop a game released on Steam for $5 is a very big ask. Most don't bother, releasing for at most x86 Windows and Linux.
@ The way XCode works now is that Apple has made it easier to out programs/apps/games across its three major platforms, iOS, iPadOS and macOS. Apple basically leads the smartphone and tablet market, the iPhone is the stand out choice for teenagers. What $600 compared to missing out on additional revenue? Apple is making it easier to migrate games to their ecosystem.
A value analysis should cover more than one lifecycle and include costs for failed components if they are likely to need replacing earlier. How much is a replacement SSD? When do you think 16G RAM will no longer be adequate and what does it cost to overcome that? Are you going to want a second system for gaming? Are we likely to get something like a new version of AV1 encoding which doesn't have a built-in accelerator? Does it cope with triple 4k screens? Its cool, I'd like one, but its difficult to think of a use case which isn't better served by something else.
For $599, why worry about lifecycle? It's half the price of a phone that many people replace every 2-3 years. This will easily last 2X that, if not more.
@@MJHiteshew This is a comparison video. Running through more than one lifecycle gives you a more accurate picture of the cost. If you do lots of video editing, the internal SSD dies and it costs two hundred dollars to replace, that negatively affects the $599 value proposition. If it lasts longer than the other systems because its high single-core performance keeps it viable for longer, that positively affects the value proposition. If the resale value after 4 years is very low because no-one wants to risk replacing the expensive proprietary SSD, that might be different cost proposition than a more expensive unit for which the SSD can be replaced cheaply. Or the cheaper, less capable unit might be better if you want to replace it frequently, relying on tech improvements in the future to provide better compute for the same overall money.
It's a real shame the software hasn't caught up just yet, I'd love a Mac Mini but knowing I can only really run OS X or a barely working version of Linux is pretty limiting.
Outside of limited games to play and mediocre SSD write speeds, the base M4 destroys the competition. You can even boost up the RAM to 24GB, and still have a great price to performance. $800 without the student discount. $700 with it. Add a $20 dongle for any missing ports, and a light user has all they need.
@ It’s as easy as downloading Steam. Crossover is $79 for a year of updates. You can still use it afterwards and it often goes on sale particularly around Black Friday. I scored it for 20 bucks. Besides it’s not as if maintaining a Windows PC is hassle free
@@ElevatedSystems dont compare 32gb and 2tb ram with its price to 256gb and 16gb ram, your opinion is skewed towards Apple, and you forgot to add another 600-1200$ to the base price if you like 2tb and 32gb with M4. So you should compare 999$ from Mini Pc, to 1400-1600$ for M4 with the same RAM/SSD amounts!!!!!!!!!!!!
Best Value, Best *Price to Performance Per Watt* Ratios under $600: $550 new M4 Mac Mini 16 GB (discount) $325 used M1 Mac Mini 16 GB (60% slower than M4 Mac Mini) $200 new N300 mini PC 16 GB (reformat with Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC for free, or Linux, or ChromeOS Flex) $100 new N100 mini PC 16 GB (reformat with Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC for free, or Linux, or ChromeOS Flex) Everything but M1 can decode AV1 with ease for youtube (M4 and Intel Quick Sync). Nothing else really compares to them for under 600.
My office started transitioning from Windows to Mac since the introduction of the M1 chip, and now we’re 100% Mac. One of the biggest benefits is that Macs come with most of the essential applications pre-installed, like Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. If you need anything else, you can often find it for free on the App Store. Plus, Apple provides creative tools like GarageBand and iMovie for free, which are great for productivity and creativity. On the other hand, Windows doesn’t even include a basic PDF viewer by default. Personally, I’ve always been more of a Windows person, but I’m starting to see the appeal of Macs. While they’re not ideal for gaming, for almost everything else, Macs just make sense. This is also why many people who own iPhones eventually transition to Macs-it’s all part of the seamless ecosystem.
For all the nay sayers out there: SyNthEtic BenChMarK: the whole goal of geekbench 6 is to not be a synthetic benchmark and memic how most real application works usually the less synthetic the benchmark is the more M4 gets an edge. OnLy 16gB rAm: First of all macos uses ram entirely differently from windows making it an apples to oranges comparison (pun intended) the only real and fair comparison is base model to base model offerings. Also the vast majority of users will never need more than 16gb. The only real downsides to a mac is the low storage which can be alleviated with external storage and the lack of game compatibility. Another point to apple is that there is a student discount of 100$ making it a 499$ machine i dont think we've ever seen such an excellent bargain from apple.
it is still a synthetic benchmark. and 16gb is bad regardless. i use linux, which uses less ram than a mac, and my pc doesn't have to share it with the GPU, and i still run out of vRAM sometimes even though i have 32gbs. 16gb is okay if you're only doing basic crap, but... i'm not. plus my 2011 pc had 16gb of ram. come on. it's usable, but it's the bare minimum, specially considering it's shared with the gpu. the biggest appeal of these macs to me is the ability to have 64gb of "vram", but that comes with an insane price tag.
@GraveUypo im still using an m1 8gb to code. Compiling large projects and browsing dozens of tabs is no problem. Macos caches, compress and decompress large amount of memory. The only advantage of more ram is on software that uses more ram and in these software m4 with 16gb seems to beat all other processors.
@@GraveUypo just another remark running out of ram means next to nothing if performance is unaffected. My machine with 64 gb uses 30gb more than when it had 16gb running the exact same applications with the exact same performance.
@@walidoutaleb7121in general I agree, but when you put really strong pressure on memory, the M1/2/3/4 chips too will slow to a crawl. For me working with 8GB was very limiting. 16GB is a very different story though
Self hosted streaming options like Parsec or Moonlight are going to help bridge the gaming gap, it's still not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction.
The classic Mac argument is to pretend that everyone uses Photoshop and does video editing on a regular basis. This drags the prices of the Mini PCs higher to match the needs of this customer. My problem is that most customers do not use Photoshop or do video editing. Just as most people with Smartphones are not videographers. And so when you remove this customer from the mix -- -- you discover you can get a hell of a Mini PC from basically ANYONE for half the price and sometimes less. So if you have 3 kids and you want to give each of them a desktop PC? $900 for all 3. Or less. But it gets worse. Because, you see, Apple always tries to make you pay $200 or more to get more RAM or storage than their PC cousins. Most $300 Mini PCs include 16GBs of RAM and 512 SSD storage. The Mac Mini charges you $200 more to double the storage to 512. So to get those 3 kids those Macs with similar storage and RAM is $1400 more. And did I mention extended warranty? The good news is that greedy Apple just surprised me by dropping their 3 year price to only $99. The bad news is you can get your $300 Mini PC similarly covered for $40. So $1525 more for 3 Mac Minis with warranty for kids. Imagine if this was a business and it needed 20 workstations? A savings of over 10K. What if it was a school system that needed 2000 minis? Savings of $1,000,000.
Just buy a used office PC for 100 dollars if it's the same thing. Maybe it will be more powerful than a new cheap mini PC, and the GPU can be upgraded. Mac mini is a different category, it's a top of the line CPU in a small/silent package.
why does half the game footage say 60fps but chug like 25fps? Are the frametimes choppy? Is your recording setup doing something weird with these minis? The BG3 footage never looks smooth, despite you claiming it several times.
OBS is recording at 60 FPS but this video is edited and renders down to 29.97 FPS. Obviously a lot of frames are lost in that process. The recording is also being upscaled from 1080p to 4k. Then TH-cam does it's compression thing and it's output at whatever resolution, framerate, and bitrate your device is set to. The gameplay footage isn't meant to provide a perfect representation of the visual fidelity of the gameplay. It just a clip to support the narrative, provide some variation from a bunch of charts, and so you don't have to look at my dorky talking head as much as possible.
@@ElevatedSystems Thanks, but it's incredibly misleading and I can't tell if you have a flawed methodology, bad eyes or just a mistake in the pipeline. The rest of your footage outside of games is smooth and clear and it would be greatly appreciated if the narrative matched the visuals on screen, or at least enabled more data in the HUD to show that the frametimes are stable in spite of the choppy end result in the recording. Is it choppy in your local playback too?
01:32 isn't fair to have the Geekom A8 / GT1 mega and the beelink with lower ram and storage to so it can compete on price as well what makes the mac mini so appealing is it price and its quite pointless to me at least to have something higher in price and say its better
Gaming is just not a consideration of mine when shopping Mac. I have consoles for that. I use Macs for creativity, rendering, writing, music.. the barrier to entry on incredible performance has become so low now.
Many people are focusing on individual specs and missing the point on Price to Performance. First I need to mention that all the PCs in this video are base models. There are no cheaper spec versions of the mini PCs. Now let me use this analogy: Imagine you have two vacuum cleaners to choose from: one with a 12-amp motor that costs $600 and another with a 24-amp motor priced at $1,000. Despite having a smaller motor, the 12-amp model cleans twice as efficiently, consistently picking up more dirt in half the time. Which is the better value? Are you still going for the more expensive one with the bigger motor, or would you choose the model that’s proven to be faster and more effective? Does anyone even care about the motor?
BiGeR iS bEtTEr!!! 😂
You can spend $350 on a ryzen 7735hs mini pc with 32gb ram and 1tb storage. You can't even buy that on the mac mini at $1400 so the question becomes is that chip worth 4x more of a capable system? Not for anything I'm doing.
In this analogy, I need to empty the bag/dust bin for the more efficient vacuum 3 times as often, and whilst it's great at cleaning the majority of my house. There's one specific carpet (gaming) that it just doesn't like, and doesn't really work on.
@ none of the vacuums were made for that carpet. You should look at shop vacs for that one.
mac mini 4 sucks. i just using it today. my intel it 32mb memory latop blew mac mini 4. This is not even typing letters fast
Hi. The important thing is that you were the only one who noticed mini computers other than Mac mini and compared them. This already makes your video valuable for viewers.
Yeah, sure. He's the only one.
unfortunately for those who know about it, nothing comes close to a Beelink SER8 (8845hs) and SER9 (hx370) on windows, taking a Miniforum or Geekom is a bit sad, these brands make machines that heat up and do much more noise than Beelink while they sell their products more expensive, no one should give them visibility
Amazing how other companies just blatantly copies Apple 🙄
@@verttikoo2052not sure if youre being sarcastic or..
@@iPixelPandah Not being sarcastic. Other companies just blatantly copy Apple. When Apple introduced the Mac mini now everything looks like Mac mini. Intel even encouraged the laptop manufacturers to copy Apple. We had suddenly lots of plastic imitations of the MacBook lineup.
Now it doesn’t matter because Apple uses its own silicon and others can’t match that. Times were different when Apple also used Intels processors. That backstabbing from Intel we will never forget.
Your table has M4 Mac Mini as having Wifi7. It actually has 6e.
Well crap! This is why I need an editor. Thanks. I'll pin this comment for the info. I did quote the correct specs later in the video. Not sure if that helped.
@@ElevatedSystems It's all good. Mistakes are always going to happen. LTT has a bunch of editors, a community fact checking program and millions of dollars, and they can't talk about something like Thunderbolt for more than 20 seconds before getting something wrong.
literally unwatchable
@@ElevatedSystems Also, BT 5.3, not 5.4
@@BowlineDandy 3kliksphilip did not foresee this becoming a widespread meme
It’s actually insane how tiny mac mini is, especially considering the power supply is integrated
That’s a good point I forgot. Do all the other computers have power bricks hanging off the back of them?
@@tomcollins6989 yeah, he shows them at 2:00
@@randomcommenterurl wow, I completely forgot about that. That is really incredibly impressive. If I didn't have a MacBook Pro, I would have snapped it up long ago. Without thinking twice. What an offer from Apple
well you see.... apple didn't do much actually the old mac mini had a ton off unused space so they just removed the air
I recently had my birthday and I got the base M4 Mac Mini. I haven't used it fully, but I freaking love it!
Your boyfriend sounds like a great guy! 👍
@@tumslucks9781did you just assume her their gender…
@@ameerhamza4046 its a pretty good guess
Me to
Just buy the 256gb storage model and use thunderbolt/usb 4 nvme adapters for extra storage.
There are Thunderbolt 5 External ssd enclosures now which claim up to 6000 read and write speeds if I’m not mistaken.
I could imagine gen 5 drives coming soon for Thunderbolt 5 connections as well.
If you are buying this to use the Apple AI features, note that Apple will only run the AI features on data stored on the internal drive. This is because the are making claims to keep your AI data secure, and only they only view the internal drive as secure.
@@GlobalWave1 there is no Thunderbolt 5 external units what so ever at this point.
@ just type in Thunderbolt external ssd in the TH-cam search above.
Wait what? .... the point of such a device is to have a small compact computer which does not take up much space and you want to add external clutter to make it work? O_o
My Mac Mini base setup (it's the only way to do it if you value your bank account):
Mac Mini Base, got a $50 discount from Best Buy= $550, External Thunderbolt 4 enclosure from OWC= $100 (there are cheaper ones, I like the best and don't mind paying for it), 4TB Crucial T5 NVMe SSD, got on sale= $280. This is it, nothing else. And this is a very powerful, very future-proofed setup. This is the best deal in a desktop PC in 2024, and I'm a very dedicated PC gamer. I simply use said PC only for gaming now, nothing else. This is better everywhere else. Great comparison, you got a new sub.
Will the Crucial SSD be plug and play for the base model Mac mini?
Yes but for gaming not sure if anyone uses a mini pc like this. Minimum is Mini Itx which is way bigger than it sounds.
Same here! PC gamer with a 13900k/4090 but wanted something quieter and portable incase I want to take it on a trip. Base Mac Mini for $499 with student discount, TB4 enclosure for $100 and a 2TB 990 Pro (had it laying around but was $189) and this thing is a properly fast spacious daily driver. The integration with my iPhone and iPad is awesome. PC only gets used for gaming now.
Exactly. Pretty much the exact setup I recommend for all my clients. Unless they don't need really fast storage, I give them the option for a $30 USB C 10 GB/s case. $70 savings.
@@ajd1439 plug where? No internal NVMe slots. Externally, ANY drive works.
It's easy to make sense of the power button position. It runs UNIX. You don't shut it down, you let it manage its own power. I can't remember the last time any of my apple machines were powered off.
I'd love to see the M4 Pro version in these tests.
Sorry, I can only afford the base model.
@@ElevatedSystems real
@@ElevatedSystems It would be interesting to compare M4 Pro Mini with Regular desktop like i7-4770 with Nvidia RTX-4060 Ti (16GB). They would be in the same price category. Can you please compare either base M4 mini or your Mac Studio with any PC with an Nvidia GPU for some professional work.
@@ElevatedSystems I just assumed all TH-cam reviewers just bought them, ran the benchmarks and then sent them back during the return window!
@@danabc322 no, i keep everything I buy or donate it to those in my community who may be in need. I have every Mac I ever bought except the M2 Pro Mac mini which I gave to a local family.
You can get an entire ps5 for gaming with the price difference.
True. I have a mac for the best productivity experience... and it just works. I have a Xbox Series X for the best gaming experience that just works. It's fantastic. I built custom PCs for over a decade then got sick of all the babying and fiddling to keep the hardware and OS running smoothly. I went to mac in 2015 and will never go back to a windows based PC again.
I’m the opposite. I have been mac based since 2005 but maintain one 4090 RYx beast game rig with joystick and throttle etc for my gaming needs.
Exactly
@@77dris Sure you did
Huh, but why would I choose game console over actual computer? 🫠
Really appreciate the time and effort you put into this comparison video. I am glad this was suggested in my feed. Well done !
I always believe you should buy the computer, PC or Mac, that makes you the most comfortable and productive
It’s genuinely a little beast. The m4 chips in the studios are going to be insane.
What about the noise of the fans and the temperature? Those are the only 2 reasons I use a Mac Mini, all the Windows mini pc's are loud as a fighter jet and get very hot, but I still prefer Windows.
Very quite fans on the base m4, the m4 pro gets a bit louder though
What an incredibly well-done video my friend. Your conclusion suggesting a solution based on what an individual needs is absolutely appreciated, and I wish more people kept an open mind vs. subjecting the audience solely to their own worldview. Subscribed and will keep tabs on your channel!
Dont worry about not being able to play modern games, you wouldnt have harddrive space to install them anyway.
hah, true. there are some games that literally don't fit in that entire ssd
Like someone already said, with the money you save you can just buy a ps5. I’d rather have a Mac mini and a ps5 than a mini pc with more storage lol
I think what’s truly amazing and usually not stressed enough in these comparisons with other mini machines, is the fact that the mac mini doesn’t require a seperate bulky power adapter under your table. So despite the PSU occupying about half of the size of the case, it still manages to beat the shit out of its competitors, and even using less energy. And all this for that price. At this point competitors might just give up and produce kitchen machines.
I was looking for this comment. A fair comparison would be to show the mini PCs WITH their power supplies.
With Mac Mini you need bulky external SSDs, USB adapters, card readers which are not free. $600 MacMini + $200 external SSD + $50 USB adapter + $50 card reader. How much is Mac keyboard and mouse? You will end up paying at least $1000.
Your response is spot on!
@@FirstLast-nr6gf So what? And this is highly manipulative. You might already have or you might not need an external SSD, USB adapter and card reader. You might or you might not already have a keyboard and mouse. You might or might not need specifically the Mac keyboard and mouse (I have Logitech MX Master 3 and MX keys)
Excellent review. I’ve been waiting for a reviewer to compare the M4 performance with the AMD and Intel offering and this is the first one.
In summary, get a PC if you want to game, get a Mac for everything other use case.
Gaming is what will keep x86 alive for a while. In every other aspect, x86 was a living dead when the M1 came out. It just carries too much historic ballast. Similar to Windows. For Intel and Microsoft it is all about milking the cash cow as long as possible while riding on backwards compatibility and vendor lock-in.
What a ridiculous claim. You can't just "get a Mac for everything other use case". Unless you're also prepared to pay through the teeth. As soon as you need anything more than the base model, Apple's advantage quickly disappears.
@ ok I’ll correct it to “You get a Mac for nearly every use case”
Let’s face it, x86 is the past, not the future. Case in point Intel just laid off a whole design team and killed another project.
@@jackchen5290 Look, don't get me wrong. I love Apple products. I have a 2012 Macbook Pro that I still use every day. But the pricing on the M series macs is insane. I regularly work on projects that require 64GB of RAM or more, and I'll be damned if I pay the Apple premium for that :). x86 might be dead, but that doesn't matter, all other OSes run on Arm as well (maybe I missed your point about this)
@@jackchen5290 I dont think x86 is being replaced in desktops or things that allow users upgradable things anytime soon. It will be preferred in mobile parts or things that require smaller space for the processors like laptops, something in your car or the airplane tv or consoles in the near future.
It's sad that Ryzen HX 370 can't still shows its real 50 TOPS of computational power. The 40% faster NPU of the chip can't be used by any software, right now, and we have to blame Microsoft for that! They focused only on Snapdragon X Elite while the Ryzen is objectively the most promising in all AI task even upon Apple M4's 38 TOPS
Such a great, balanced review. I own a GMKTek K8 and the M4 Mac Mini. My experience is the same as yours. Well done.
Great video. As somebody shopping for a new video editing PC, it’s be really useful to get some metrics on noise, minimising fan noise etc from the PC is a constant struggle for me. I guess all of these will be way better than my ancient laptop in that regard but yeah, even anecdotal stuff like “it was very quiet while working in Davinci” would be useful to know
Go with the laptop. MacBook Pro has amazing power and absolutely fantastic battery performance up to 24 hours and it doesn’t throttle down!
Then hook that up with a big displays. Apple Silicon is just astonishing 🎉
@ i’m mostly editing 720p though (retro games), I feel like the mac mini should be more than good enough and it’s crazy cheap
@ Steve Jobs would have absolutely loved this. When he introduced the Lisa. He said that this computer costs 10000 dollars and he wants to bring the price down to 1000 dollars. Steve said that computer is like bicycle for the mind. He wanted that everyone has bicycle for their mind. Now Tim Cook is delivering all those things that Steve dreamed off us all to have. This is Apple. Apple makes certain choices for us, but Apple doesn’t want to limit anyone. It is completely the other way around. Apple doesn’t want people to “upgrade” the machines because that limits things what they can do. For example unified memory. It is on the chip. Computing is all about steps and when you can reduce the steps per clock “pulse” then you make it faster. Now what Apple wants you to do is that you go and buy a new one because that is what you want and then you sell your old one. Someone somewhere is delighted to have a Mac that suits their budget. It is stupid to sell it separately when there are companies that take care of it. It is perfectly working computer for example student. And you get upgraded everything. Win win win because now somebody just bought their first Mac. Apple is very careful with its partners because Apple knows that ecosystem is everything.
Great video.
Actually first video that says something about real experience in Davinci Resolve. And as I thought it's not fully smooth in full resolution :(.
Thanks.
It is always disappointing that Apple will make such wonderful entry level machines and ruin that advantage with ridiculous upgrade prices. They could be killing it across the board. But as soon as you need to upgrade to a 1TB hard drive (which if you are storing a lot of photos and doing any editing, you need), it just changes they value quickly.
This is deliberate choice from the Apple. Apple never prices their products the cheapest way. They go in the middle. They leave space under and over their price line. That is to make their partners lives easier. As a customer if I need something that works right now then I go and buy Apple. Otherwise I buy accessories from the other vendors.
Also Apple always keeps the price points steady and in that way makes the second hand market for Macs work perfectly. You want more power? Then you go and buy the power and sell the old Mac in the second hand market. There are plenty of people who are happy to get those in their hands. (Think students.)
Great review! Your channel is as good as people with millions of subs! You deserve to be there!
Now test the M4 Pro against this same crop of machines. Yes, a bit more expensive, but you're competing higher core counts against higher core counts.
M4 Pro obliterates them all. We’re talking about raw GPU performance between a 4060 and 4060ti
There's no point. The M4 is destroying them itself and the M4 Pro is way faster than that
I didn’t even know those other mini pc exist…
Thank you so much for the real world performance tests, I think it's very useful for anyone looking to shop around Black Friday deals, and maybe into the holiday season as well. Seeing the numbers from Ryzen Strix Point, I do wish that Intel partners would have released some Lunar Lake Mini PCs by now... 12th gen Intel is just too far behind the M4 gen of Apple Silicon =/, but unfortunately it doesn't look like we'll be able to purchase them for a while longer.
I would love a noise comparison followup but otherwise a fantastic video
To be fair, I was investigating with an work colleague the market, and many of these MiniPCs are a better deal for 1 or 2 UPGRADES you can do on top of higher specs. So BeLink SER9 in your test is: 32 GB + 1 TB.
Assumming that you want the same specs but a better CPU and MacOS, the prices go from 599 (or 499 as a student) to 1,619.00 (at least in Europe), so price to performance will switch very fast into the MiniPC side.
As a side note, I just bought a MiniPC with Ryzen 8840HS (which are not top of the line) that are today discounted at around 750 EUR (with 32 GB and 1 TB) and I can upgrade them up to ... 96 GB with less than 300 EURO, or to 64 GB with less than 200 EUR. Would MacMini beat it? Sure, it will, in synthetic benchmarks. But want to do some real work, like working with large projects in video editing, RAW photo editing, and alike... a 1000-ish upgraded mini PC (with 96 GB RAM) will be untouchable at any price point of MacMini.
But if you want 64 GB of RAM, you can buy a Ryzen 5800H/U (or alke) with DDR4, and with the price of MacMini you can have a mini PC that cost like: 350 USD base system + 32GB x 2 DDR4 SODIMM 110 USD =
If you would like to run virtual machines on this mini PCs, you will definitely need more than 16G memory. All the x86 mini pcs have 32G while Mac mini only has 16. Upgrading mac mini to 32G would cost you $400, or $999 in total.
Additionally, since many Linux distributions do not support ARM64 yet, your choice of OS will be limited.
The urge to buy an M4 Mac Mini is overwhelming but I *must not*
You should've tested some real job scenarios like Autocad, lumion, vray, or twinmotion instead of video editing and gaming.
I can tell you when trying that out on a Mac, it all turns to s#!t
He didn’t do that or more extensive gaming experience because the M4 would get horrible results. AMD’s HX 370 is a fabulous chip and runs everything!
W11 is getting so good these days, that it’s coming very close to macOS in design but has much less shortcomings. In 2/3 years I may change definitely. The same happens with iOS, I’m getting tired of so many shortcomings…
I have not bought into M chip macs yet. One question. Can I run Windows? Or did bootcamp get dropped?
Regular versions of Windows can't run on M-series chips because they're based on ARM and not Intel anymore. Microsoft recently released a version that runs on ARM but it's not officially compatible with Mac. Apple stopped supporting Boot Camp with M1 but said they might bring it back later if Microsoft decides to allow it.
The only other official way to run it would be in a VM like Parallels or maybe VMware or another open source program.
MacOS sucks balls.
Probably the most useful review I've seen, especially both the fact you used other mini PCs on the market with similar form factor, as well as the productivity-based benchmarks like Office and multimedia tools like After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Davinci Resolve (which I mainly intend to use in my toolchain for multimedia, as I transition away from Microsoft Windows, until they fix the glaring issues with Windows 11 and future releases; also GNU/Linux for multimedia isn't for me, as I've tried it recently and a lot of work still needs to be done). The inclusion of your project files, and overview of power efficiency are also nice bonuses. Thank you very much.
Perfect presentation and comparison. Thank you.
Helpful video. By the way, silicone is the thing phone cases are made of, silicon is the chemical element used in the production of semiconductors.
Your chart shows the M4 as having WiFi 7 & BT 5.4. I think you say (and their website shows) WiFi 6E and BT 5.3… not a big deal
Thanks, I already pinned this correction.
well, I see expensive PC with 2tb of storage compared to the mini with 256gb, it is a bit unfair when we know the outstanding price of option of the mini and the impossibility to expand it.
a 4to ssd on PC is 200/300$ it is the price of the 512 option for the m4, same for RAM 64 gb on PC cost less that the 24 gb option..... You have to take this in account
But are you accounting for RAM speed and power draw? Also theres nothing stopping you from using external storage for a comparable price
You can add any PC SSD to the Mac Mini by using a Thunderbolt adapter. Easy and pretty cheap.
Good review and comparisons. I was thinking of doing the same comparison but you saved me the trouble. You did not go into the heat and noise for the NUCs, which would be an issue for me. I like quiet operation.
Overall the specs are good for the M4 Mac mini but the 16Gb RAM and 256Gb SSD are the two black marks against what should be the best without caveats. If you add 32Gb RAM and 1Tb SSD (US$$1,399) the Bangs for Bucks takes a dive on the Mac mini... just the way Apple designed it to be.
The base model is a bargain, but for my purposes I'd have to get a M4 Mac min Pro to get 24Gb RAM, 512Gb SSD and Thunderbolt 5. Still lower specs for the RAM and SSD, but usable for Pro work. The price doubles though (US$$1,399) and it is not the cheapest anymore. To get a Pro with 48Gb RAM (next step up) and 1Tb SSD that would be US$1,999 which is very pricey considering you still have to get all the peripherals.
Cheapness. Yup. Cheapness. Very important. For cheap people. I guess you're using an Android, correct?
@@mojoblues66 Phone, yes (because it has a way better camera), but I also have several Macs, 2 PCs, an iPad, a Linux desktop and a Chromebook.
I love macOS, but not Apple which screws its customers, and forces users in to bad choices with its designs and price gouging.
You are talking about Apple, when you accuse them of being cheap for putting in 8gb or 16gb RAM and 256 Gb SSDs and then locking them down, so you can't simply swap their M.2 cards.
@@peterbreis5407 I can't imagine anyone outside Apple defending their RAM and storage pricing. Yet people do buy their products. Have you ever wondered why? Perhaps pricing isn't everything?
@@mojoblues66 Of course it isn't. My wife and I bought my M1 Macbook Pro Pro because for the first time in 10 years Apple wasn't selling a Mac that didn't suck or have major problems. I really wanted an M1 5k iMac but Apple says I can't have what _I_ want.
Great Comparison, Really thank you
But I notice that there is some reflection in the video when you are facing the camera 12:48 🙂 If you can improve it
Funny how PC games almost always fall back to gaming as one of their main and important criteria when most other tasks lean towards a Mac 😂. I couldn’t care less about games and happily use my Mac.
That's fair enough, but as an avid Mac user, you have to objectively admit that it's an area where a Mac loses out. Someone looking to buy a "does everything" machine for both work and gaming will probably overlook a Mac for that reason.
A few years back Apple tried to bolster the Mac's gaming credentials by teaming up with Valve to port their Source engine games to Mac. But they seemed to lose interest and now you can't run any of those games on a Mac anymore, and there's apparently no intention to rectify that situation.
If I want to play TF2 or Portal, I can't do it on a Mac anymore.
There are loads of advantages to using a PC with Linux or Windows , you just don't know what they are . Where is Mac CUDA support ? All you need is a suitable Nvidia GPU. Ironically Nvidia are now a more valuable company than Apple . Ai and specifically CUDA is the future of computing , secondarily probably AMD/ROCM and not anything Apple think its users need.
I'm using MINISFORUM UM790 Pro. And it's great little machine with Radeon 780M GPU onboard, and fit my needs. I can easily play quite demanding titles on 1080p in medium settings. The one thing what I still don't like it's external power supply which often comes as a quite big brick. Also great thing is, I can easily extend Storage using two NVMe M.2 slots and RAM up to 64GB.
Power button position makes perfect sense when you consider the ultra low power cores that keep the mini in standby - just don’t turn it off. It’s more akin to the power button on a phone. You never really need it.
No…no excuses…that button position is just dumb…
Just because of this non upgradable ssd i would choose any other mini pc.
My mac M1 ssd already died and apple ask me 700$ to replace it...
Oof really?
@chrisdistant9040 yup, because I only had 8gb of memory and did a lot of swap and writing on my hard drive. It is not normal that it dies after 3 years of use tho
Τhe mac mini does have upgradeble ssd
Is it that dead that you can't even start the mini to boot from an external SSD?
@@svenlakemeier exactly, can't even boot
Great channel, man. I'm updating my office mini machines, very helpful.
Great review and comparison. I'd only add that you mentioned that Intel brought out a small form factor pc's in 2012 (in 2009 they introduced the idea of NUC or Next Unit of Computing which led to SFF PC's a couple of years later). The first Mac mini was introduced in Jan 2005 with a G4 processor and replaced it a year later with Intel Core Solo and Intel Core Duo cpu's.
real world perfomance ? try and stream in av1 encoding and open an youtube video ... will it even work -_-'' . this works fine on a 10 year old windows system
I'm wondering if you used the default "Balanced" power setting or changed it to "Performance" for the AMD mini PC.
Performance, except for the Geekom A8 as it makes the performance worse due to throttling.
to be fair the Mac mini has been around since 2005
Eh?
what do you mean by "to be fair"? Are you trying to say that all of these other boxes are "new" and therefore are at a disadvantage?
@@MJHiteshew I think there was sort of an implication (00:48) that Apple is newer to this form factor. In the video, Intel's NUC was offered as an early example of the mini PC form factor, dating to 2012. The first Mac mini predates the NUC by several years, however.
Note that I could be misunderstanding both the video and the OP of this comment.
Price to performance seems to be a bit biased, picking most base mac mini vs not so base other mini pcs. They should be compared at equivalent ram, storage options :D
They are all base models. The PCs don’t have cheaper versions.
@ElevatedSystems The fact that you checked for most expensive ones like 8945hs. It is more or less equivalent to something like 7840hs or 8845hs. And these I could find mini pcs again 32gb ram 1tb, for 400, 500$ respectively. Yes the value of mac mini is not bad, but accepting 256gb of storage or 16gb of ram with insane upgrade costs is a lot of copium, especially in 2024. Phones come with 256GB of storage. What apple does here is price laddering, where you think of might as well pay a bit more for teeny more ram, might as well get a bit more storage and then you're nowhere near the price to performance.
Really great breakdown!
So good to see someone who is largely agnostic when it comes to choosing hardware and operating systems - and reviewing them.
There's a few things that could make the mac mini M4 even more desirable for those on the fence:
SSD upgrade via a third party - unless Apple get nasty, if the mac mini M4 proves in sales just how popular it is, then there's money to be made providing an upgrade by 3rd parties.
ARM based Windows - Microsoft dropped the arm windows 11 iso for download recently.
The question, however, is whether anyone will create drivers to fully support the hardware.
It's more likely that Linux enthusiasts will get there first.
I have numerous PC's, windows, linux and mac running, but macOS has been my daily driver for over decade now.
The OS to me is head and shoulders above anything else in terms of just keeping out of your way and in terms of reliability and slickness.
Windows 11 is OK once you run debloater on it - except when it decides to run updates just at the point you want a quick 10 minute casual gaming break!
Linux Desktop - come along in leaps and bounds, but still a bit klunky - feels 10 years out of date.
"Apple Silicone"
I know this is a nitpick on the pronunciation, but...
Silicon and Silicone are different.
Silicon is a naturally-occurring element. It's a metalloid and semiconductor.
Silicones (polysiloxanes) are polymers, many of which are colorless oils used for lubrication and others that are rubber-like used as a sealant/insulation.
Very nice review, with a lot of subjects touched.
13:40 However, talking about price/performance while ignoring specifications like RAM and storage, and not bringing them to same specs as others is not OK.
Mac Mini with 32Gb and 1Tb (so specced like some of mini PC, AMD 370 I think) costs 1399USD! That is 400USD more than 999USD mini PC. You can have 64Gb/4Tb or even more for that price.
And no, external storage can not be counted, because then the same can be applied to others.
So, if you were using that official price for the same specs, price/performance score would be 6.49, lowest of them all.
MiniPCs with 8845HS usually go for 500USD, so they would have better price/perf score too (around 12).
To put things in perspective, that Baldurs Gate 3 you showed needs around 130Gb (Steam even says 150Gb ) of disk space. That is just ONE game. Storage size is important, and Apple is not being nice about it.
RAM is important too. When you are running just one application, it usually does not matter. But when you keep your tabs open in browser, have two three other applications open, things change. And that is real life usage for majority. Suddenly 16Gb are filled and computer is caching on disk. Things start to be slower.
I hope you understand why I mentioned this and why it is actually important.
true!
Generally true when all things are equal. In this case, many things are not equal, though. That 16gb on the M4 is doing as much real-life work as 24 or 32 on a Win11 machine. Storage is a bummer, but external nvme storage and a TB4 enclosure is just a reality for this.
Its not lost on anyone. Basic knowledge. But *Plenty* of reviews showing how RAM works different/more efficent on macs... ever since M1 chip was announced. multiple tabs, multiple apps, etc, all running and switching smooth. My last intel mac had 128 GBs of ram... and I still got page outs and swap. And just like you state "8845 usually go for less" -- minis and mini pros do as well. base mini is $50 off everywhere, mini pro is $70 off
It's crazy how many people believe that 16 >= 32 😂. Or spout things like "RAM works different/more efficent on macs". RAM is RAM, you either have enough or you don't. And if you don't the OS will swap to disk. And people keep forgetting that the RAM on M series macs is shared with the GPU, so you get even less.
@@user-gn1fe8yv6x They love quoting the Apple marketing spiel; that's all they know. Cult marketing at work
I saw what you did there.. nice editing :)
If you ever wanted to jump into a the Apple Ecosystem? This is one heck of a great way to do it.
If you have kids? It is a NO BRAINER for a desktop computer for anyone who has kids will understand how fast they seem to break portable devices.
finally someone actually does the comparison that _matters_.
Where did you get that warp core?
th-cam.com/video/aC10Xu-y2Qg/w-d-xo.htmlsi=sdbMyT_cUl-MuiAg
Looking forward to the next video comparing it to the M1…I still have the base model from 2020. I don’t really feel like I need to upgrade, but I honestly may do so just because I want to…lol😂
Can it support 10 bit color monitor?
Yes.
I was looking for this type of comparison. Thx a lot
The $600 price is a mirage. Let's compare to the mini PC I bought in August: $580 got me an Aoostar Gem12 (8 core, 16 thread 8845hs clocked at 5.1gHz) with 32 gigs of DDR5 (5600), a nice fast gen4 1tb ssd, two 2.5 gbit ethernet ports, a very competent 780m iGPU, and an honest to god oculink port for 64gbit direct pcie4 x4 connection (I retrofitted an old thunderbolt 3 eGPU enclosure into an oculink box, and it screams through 4K gaming with an rx 7800xt). To upgrade the mac to similar specs (forget the eGPU), let's see.... 1TB ssd: +$400 (even though that caliber of drive can be had for under $80). 32GB memory: +$400 (again, should be like $100, but Apple needs to do the extortion game). Any network port faster than 1gbit: +$100. Now you're at $1500. Price to performance king, my sweet ass. No thanks.
For the price of doubling some mini specs, you could buy a whole other mini. So, what to do with 2 macs at once?
I mean the upgrade prices are a problem but I just buy the base model and use it for what it is and do gaming on an actual gaming desktop. So yeah it's pretty good at $500 but at $1000 I would buy something else unless they are an artist and use a lot of apple programs
Give it a couple of months and there will storage upgrade options available. Someone will reverse engineer them pretty quick.
To be fair you should look at discounted prices. PCs normally get 20+% discounts. Macs get 10+% discounts.
One plus with the Mac mini is it is small enough to put in the bag when travelling overseas so I get an additional 10% discount. But the same applies to the PC NUCs
My minisforum NAB9 is exactly same size as the mac
@@jimw7916 Plus the power brick.
@@peterbreis5407 true but my power brick is as small as a pack of cigarettes.
@@jimw7916 50 pack?
@@peterbreis5407 30 pack
It might be worth buying this Mac Mini to live stream your console or console PC games assuming you have a Elgato capture card. Also it is possible to play and Stream from the Mac Mini.
Have they figured out how to get x86/64 games running on Apple silicon yet? I know this isn’t exactly for AAA gaming, but wasn’t sure if they sorted that out.
Can't wait until the new Mac Studio M4 Max/Ultra comes out in Jan/Feb - If the GPU would deliver close to the Nvidia 4090 it would be a game changer for games on the Mac.
The M4 is already at the price point where I could consider it as my daily driver replacing my 2018 Mac mini with eGPU (6900 XT) but I would need more real-life wine/game port/crossover data for games as this is a huge part of my daily driver machine - having access to games .
This is most likely one of the best reviews comparing performance with other mini pcs. Another aspect that hasn't been mentioned is fan noise which most likely the mac mini is the winner too.
Actually the Mac gets just as Loud as the SER9 just not as frequently. I it didn't include it because the battery was dead in my sound level meter and I didn't have a spare. 😞
Can't wait to install 🍏Linux Mint 🍏 LMDE-6 on it. 🍏
the sound issue in tomb raider sounds like the game might have been set to surround sound or something in the audio options
No I checked. Didn't work on headphones either.
@ ah probably just a mac port being a mac port then lol
I like you pointing out many reviewers being shocked how small, or saying we weren't asking for it to be smaller. The Mac Mini has been giant for a good while now. We did want it to be smaller! :D
I'm really hoping we see some Intel Lunar Lake mini-PCs soon. MacOS just isn't for me.
Hi I see a lot of Geekbench test numbers and I was wondering what scores Timespy and passmark or G3D Mark showed for the mac mini m4?
The two value standouts in desktop personal computers these days are the base model Mac mini and the various mini-PCs with the Intel N100 processor that can be had for under $150. Get the Mac if you can afford it. Get an N100 if your needs are basic and your budget is small.
Why wasn’t the Mac Mini M4 Pro also included in the analysis?
The way Apple is developing Apple Silicon is that your base model Mac is just as powerful as your top of the line Intel and AMD chips. Apple is slowly but surely is turning the Mac’s into the best value devices on the market. Yes, you can cheaper devices than a Mac, but they will lack the power. To get the same power of Mac in Intel and AMD world, means you have to spend money than what you have do on a Mac. Game developers need to wake up and realise that the Mac market share continues to grow.
I'm not rich like that.
Software dev on Mac is ass. On Linux, you just make build or build script and be done. On windows, you click a button on your IDE. On Apple silicon, you have to buy a mac, since macOS can't be shipped in a Docker container like Windows or Linux can, and then you have to fork $100 as a fee to Apple. Then you have to get Xcode to behave. Then you can compile.
The only devs developing for Apple desktops are big AAA studios, who can afford the upfront cost. However, PC gaming is mainly dominated by the indie scene these days. Asking indie devs to fork over at least $600 to develop a game released on Steam for $5 is a very big ask. Most don't bother, releasing for at most x86 Windows and Linux.
@ The way XCode works now is that Apple has made it easier to out programs/apps/games across its three major platforms, iOS, iPadOS and macOS. Apple basically leads the smartphone and tablet market, the iPhone is the stand out choice for teenagers. What $600 compared to missing out on additional revenue? Apple is making it easier to migrate games to their ecosystem.
Bro didn’t even use Cyberpunk for gaming test💀💀💀
So sad they didn't do space gray option for mini m4.
A value analysis should cover more than one lifecycle and include costs for failed components if they are likely to need replacing earlier. How much is a replacement SSD? When do you think 16G RAM will no longer be adequate and what does it cost to overcome that? Are you going to want a second system for gaming? Are we likely to get something like a new version of AV1 encoding which doesn't have a built-in accelerator? Does it cope with triple 4k screens? Its cool, I'd like one, but its difficult to think of a use case which isn't better served by something else.
For $599, why worry about lifecycle? It's half the price of a phone that many people replace every 2-3 years. This will easily last 2X that, if not more.
@@MJHiteshew This is a comparison video. Running through more than one lifecycle gives you a more accurate picture of the cost. If you do lots of video editing, the internal SSD dies and it costs two hundred dollars to replace, that negatively affects the $599 value proposition. If it lasts longer than the other systems because its high single-core performance keeps it viable for longer, that positively affects the value proposition. If the resale value after 4 years is very low because no-one wants to risk replacing the expensive proprietary SSD, that might be different cost proposition than a more expensive unit for which the SSD can be replaced cheaply. Or the cheaper, less capable unit might be better if you want to replace it frequently, relying on tech improvements in the future to provide better compute for the same overall money.
@@fanshaw it's apple, anything that breaks down will probably cost as much as the base model to replace if not more for upgraded parts
@@fanshaw ok, I’ll play. What parts will most likely fail after 4 years?
FYI at 6:22, "silicone" is LA, "silicon" is SF (or Cupertino)
awesome review. I wonder how local llm models would do comparing between platforms? I only ask since AI is becoming more prevalent in our workflow
I want that warp core! Where did you find this? Soo coool
It's a real shame the software hasn't caught up just yet, I'd love a Mac Mini but knowing I can only really run OS X or a barely working version of Linux is pretty limiting.
Outside of limited games to play and mediocre SSD write speeds, the base M4 destroys the competition. You can even boost up the RAM to 24GB, and still have a great price to performance.
$800 without the student discount. $700 with it. Add a $20 dongle for any missing ports, and a light user has all they need.
actually you can play just about anything with crossover
@@chidorirasenganzBut most people don't want to do that, especially kids. They just want to download and play. Plus, Crossover costs $74 annually.
@ It’s as easy as downloading Steam. Crossover is $79 for a year of updates. You can still use it afterwards and it often goes on sale particularly around Black Friday. I scored it for 20 bucks. Besides it’s not as if maintaining a Windows PC is hassle free
It would be nice if the veterans and active duty military got the same level of discount as the students do
Software integration is an issue if you need plenty of open source software.
You've got to be kidding me. Base M4 Mini is like 1400 here.
Where is here? I assume it's somewhere with high tax, terrifs, or import duties.
In the USA 🇺🇸, it is selling for $600. With a student discount on Apple's website, it can sell as low as $500.
@@ElevatedSystems may be he's talking about m4 pro
@@ElevatedSystems dont compare 32gb and 2tb ram with its price to 256gb and 16gb ram, your opinion is skewed towards Apple, and you forgot to add another 600-1200$ to the base price if you like 2tb and 32gb with M4. So you should compare 999$ from Mini Pc, to 1400-1600$ for M4 with the same RAM/SSD amounts!!!!!!!!!!!!
@@GyoooppMac mini is way more expensive in europe
The problem the non-Mac PCs is that they cannot run the Mac OS
Best Value, Best *Price to Performance Per Watt* Ratios under $600:
$550 new M4 Mac Mini 16 GB (discount)
$325 used M1 Mac Mini 16 GB (60% slower than M4 Mac Mini)
$200 new N300 mini PC 16 GB (reformat with Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC for free, or Linux, or ChromeOS Flex)
$100 new N100 mini PC 16 GB (reformat with Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC for free, or Linux, or ChromeOS Flex)
Everything but M1 can decode AV1 with ease for youtube (M4 and Intel Quick Sync). Nothing else really compares to them for under 600.
can get a mini pc for gaming with an external gpu from occulink, usb 4, or even a pci-e riser on some
Not being able to upgrade storage is a mean-spirited decision by Apple.
@ElevatedSystems How do the power bricks compare in size?
The jarring this is, now people are going to think these companies copied Apple
The SER9 Beelink could have been better, if not limited to 4.3 GHz. No way to unleash it to promised 5.1 GHz. That might be a reason too.
The SER9 absolutely boosts to 5.1 GHz. You should watch my last video.
Nice video! But where did you get the Borg infected warp core standing in the background?? 😊
+1 for the C64 in the background
My office started transitioning from Windows to Mac since the introduction of the M1 chip, and now we’re 100% Mac. One of the biggest benefits is that Macs come with most of the essential applications pre-installed, like Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. If you need anything else, you can often find it for free on the App Store. Plus, Apple provides creative tools like GarageBand and iMovie for free, which are great for productivity and creativity.
On the other hand, Windows doesn’t even include a basic PDF viewer by default. Personally, I’ve always been more of a Windows person, but I’m starting to see the appeal of Macs. While they’re not ideal for gaming, for almost everything else, Macs just make sense. This is also why many people who own iPhones eventually transition to Macs-it’s all part of the seamless ecosystem.
For all the nay sayers out there:
SyNthEtic BenChMarK:
the whole goal of geekbench 6 is to not be a synthetic benchmark and memic how most real application works usually the less synthetic the benchmark is the more M4 gets an edge.
OnLy 16gB rAm:
First of all macos uses ram entirely differently from windows making it an apples to oranges comparison (pun intended) the only real and fair comparison is base model to base model offerings. Also the vast majority of users will never need more than 16gb.
The only real downsides to a mac is the low storage which can be alleviated with external storage and the lack of game compatibility. Another point to apple is that there is a student discount of 100$ making it a 499$ machine i dont think we've ever seen such an excellent bargain from apple.
it is still a synthetic benchmark.
and 16gb is bad regardless. i use linux, which uses less ram than a mac, and my pc doesn't have to share it with the GPU, and i still run out of vRAM sometimes even though i have 32gbs. 16gb is okay if you're only doing basic crap, but... i'm not. plus my 2011 pc had 16gb of ram. come on. it's usable, but it's the bare minimum, specially considering it's shared with the gpu. the biggest appeal of these macs to me is the ability to have 64gb of "vram", but that comes with an insane price tag.
@GraveUypo im still using an m1 8gb to code. Compiling large projects and browsing dozens of tabs is no problem. Macos caches, compress and decompress large amount of memory. The only advantage of more ram is on software that uses more ram and in these software m4 with 16gb seems to beat all other processors.
@@GraveUypo just another remark running out of ram means next to nothing if performance is unaffected. My machine with 64 gb uses 30gb more than when it had 16gb running the exact same applications with the exact same performance.
@@walidoutaleb7121in general I agree, but when you put really strong pressure on memory, the M1/2/3/4 chips too will slow to a crawl. For me working with 8GB was very limiting. 16GB is a very different story though
Self hosted streaming options like Parsec or Moonlight are going to help bridge the gaming gap, it's still not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction.
Interesting, this means the M4 is now faster than an RTX 3050 8GB if it's this much faster than a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 which is equal to an RTX 3050
The classic Mac argument is to pretend that everyone uses Photoshop and does video editing on a regular basis. This drags the prices of the Mini PCs higher to match the needs of this customer.
My problem is that most customers do not use Photoshop or do video editing. Just as most people with Smartphones are not videographers. And so when you remove this customer from the mix --
-- you discover you can get a hell of a Mini PC from basically ANYONE for half the price and sometimes less. So if you have 3 kids and you want to give each of them a desktop PC? $900 for all 3. Or less.
But it gets worse. Because, you see, Apple always tries to make you pay $200 or more to get more RAM or storage than their PC cousins. Most $300 Mini PCs include 16GBs of RAM and 512 SSD storage. The Mac Mini charges you $200 more to double the storage to 512.
So to get those 3 kids those Macs with similar storage and RAM is $1400 more.
And did I mention extended warranty? The good news is that greedy Apple just surprised me by dropping their 3 year price to only $99. The bad news is you can get your $300 Mini PC similarly covered for $40.
So $1525 more for 3 Mac Minis with warranty for kids. Imagine if this was a business and it needed 20 workstations? A savings of over 10K. What if it was a school system that needed 2000 minis? Savings of $1,000,000.
So what you're saying is this:
th-cam.com/video/Yp-AnPFpa7U/w-d-xo.html
make you pay… sure, blame the company and not the consumer
@@ElevatedSystems Yeah, but I'd bump up to AMDs SER5 ish models.
@@jjpp1993 Yes. I blame Apple for gauging on (in this case) storage. There's making a buck and there's being greedy little holes.
Just buy a used office PC for 100 dollars if it's the same thing. Maybe it will be more powerful than a new cheap mini PC, and the GPU can be upgraded.
Mac mini is a different category, it's a top of the line CPU in a small/silent package.
why does half the game footage say 60fps but chug like 25fps? Are the frametimes choppy? Is your recording setup doing something weird with these minis? The BG3 footage never looks smooth, despite you claiming it several times.
OBS is recording at 60 FPS but this video is edited and renders down to 29.97 FPS. Obviously a lot of frames are lost in that process. The recording is also being upscaled from 1080p to 4k. Then TH-cam does it's compression thing and it's output at whatever resolution, framerate, and bitrate your device is set to. The gameplay footage isn't meant to provide a perfect representation of the visual fidelity of the gameplay. It just a clip to support the narrative, provide some variation from a bunch of charts, and so you don't have to look at my dorky talking head as much as possible.
@@ElevatedSystems Thanks, but it's incredibly misleading and I can't tell if you have a flawed methodology, bad eyes or just a mistake in the pipeline. The rest of your footage outside of games is smooth and clear and it would be greatly appreciated if the narrative matched the visuals on screen, or at least enabled more data in the HUD to show that the frametimes are stable in spite of the choppy end result in the recording.
Is it choppy in your local playback too?
01:32 isn't fair to have the Geekom A8 / GT1 mega and the beelink with lower ram and storage to so it can compete on price as well
what makes the mac mini so appealing is it price and its quite pointless to me at least to have something higher in price and say its better
Looks like the Windows Competition has emulated Apple’s Hardware Design
Gaming is just not a consideration of mine when shopping Mac. I have consoles for that. I use Macs for creativity, rendering, writing, music.. the barrier to entry on incredible performance has become so low now.