M4 Mac Mini - M4 Pro Makes No Sense!

📦 Is Apple’s M4 Mac Mini base model all you REALLY need?

Today I share why I chose it over the pricier upgrades and how I’m making it work by pairing it with external SSDs instead of Apple’s costly storage options. I hope my rationale helps you in your decision, but also curious to hear if you think differently!

🎁 AND!! For a prize (a tech gadget from me) I’d love your input for my full review—drop your ideas for testing this Mac Mini, and I’ll feature the best ones in my review.

👕 The lovely shirts I wear in all my videos! (🆕 🍁 AW25 Collection!)
🛒 Use Code TECH20 for 20% OFF!

Can the base model handle serious tasks, or is an upgrade necessary? Let’s find out together!

#MacMini #M4MacMini #AppleMacMini #Apple #M4ProMacMini

✅ SUBSCRIBE FOR WEEKLY DOWN TO EARTH TECH VIDEOS

✅ 📺 WATCH MORE REVIEW VIDEOS HERE:

✅ SIGN UP TO MY NEWSLETTER 'BEHIND THE LENS'

✅ GEAR & TECH I LOVE RIGHT NOW!
✨Grab yourself a Sandmarc discount storewide with ALEXGTECH10

✅ DESK SETUP GEAR I LOVE

✅ AUDIO

✅ CURRENT FAVOURITE APPS

💪🏼 DISCLAIMER
When I choose to work with a company, it will always be because I actually use the product or service myself and genuinely trust the company to provide excellent customer service and support, or because I believe it is of interest to my audience.

[MDegenerate]

I would love to see how the base model M4 holds up with virtualization such as running Windows 11 through VM ware fusion or Windows games through Crossover. Is the base model CPU/GPU/RAM enough?

[rabichowdhury]

Every YouTuber stress tests the mac mini with photo/video editing softwares. We are not all photographers and videographers. I would love to see the base 16gb stressed to the max. Connect it as much accessories as possible like home pods, 3 monitors and stuff & see how many google tabs you can open, along with mirroring your phone on it. Would love to see that & would also love a tech hand me down 😅

[pavlvs_maximvs]

I have an M1 Mac mini with 16GB of RAM since 2020 and love it. I use it daily for very demanding software development and sometimes for multi track audio editing with an ultra wide monitor. This machine is a beast and covers what 95% of the people need. I have no idea why people always seem to need the most powerful and latest option that to be honest, is not such a big leap.

[goobfilmcast]

In regards to future proofing... I have a base M1 that I have been using as a daily driver for my 9 to 5 computer tasks. Upon the arrival of my M4, I will convert the M1 into a "Head unit" for Video/Audio streaming on my living room home theater. The 60hz 4K output is more than sufficient to drive my 5 year old mid-grade 1080p 65" TV while operating as an audio source for a Denon amp. Paired with it will be an ol' iPad Air 4 as a remote using Universal Control. The fact that I can repurpose these Apple products into what amounts to a tangible upgrade for my home theater is a real testament to the value of Apple products in general.

[Filosofuerza]

I am happily rocking a Mac mini M2 base model and still runs fantastic. Live streaming playing games running OBS recording at the same time light sound recording minimal video editing many word and Excel documents opened at the same time with heavy Excel sheets running on Wi-Fi connection.

It feels better than the first day. I can only imagine what the M4 can do.

[sa.t.]

Base model is good but it didn’t work good at all for any heavier photo/video editing. Just go pro if you need it and never look back.

[MrOrtmeier]

As a former IT Tech/Sysadmin my recommendation for testing the Mini is this:

Install Windows 11 in a VM like Parallels and try to play a game inside Windows. You decide which game, preferably a AAA title

Let’s see if the M4 with 16Gb RAM can handle running Windows AND a game at the same time.

[JilbertMejia]

i was actully contemplating whether to upgrade my 1080ti to rtx 4060 16 gb or Just buy mac mini m4. i want you to try LLMs, Gaming in Native Mac, and Virtualization. Awesome Insight.

[tedd]

Same here! After four days of pondering what to upgrade, I decided to upgrade only the ram from the base m4 model.

[john_hind]

For the price of a baseline M4 Pro (24GB/512GB) you could take the M4 up to 32GB/1TB. Would be interesting to see the performance of those two machines at roughly the same price point.

[danielhuelse]

How is the SSD performance with 512GB on the M4?

[TheJonHolstein]

As soon as you start looking at getting more RAM or storage (you should really have at least 512GB, even if you will use external USB4/Thunderbolt drives), the price difference to the M4 Pro, gets relatively small.
And in that case I would absolutely recommend it.
Not all software is able to use both P-cores and E-cores at the same time, meaning that with the M4 standard, you might only get 4 cores to use for your software (the E-cores will do some background tasks of the OS).
In the macbooks, at least there is some chance that if the tasks you do only needs E-cores, you might be able to get more batterylife out of it (but I would be careful to draw any conclusion, because down the line, with software updates, suddenly a task that only used E-cores, will need the P-cores, and you will see a significant drop inte batterylife compared to what you had, so you are no longer getting that advantage).

The base configuration is not doing the M4 justice. Apple should have decided on a baseline of 512GB at least with one of the quicker SSDs on all their computers as well as at least 24GB (preferably 32GB), so that no matter what CPU you get you will be sure that you get the most out of the CPU for any typical task. While that would increase the price, reducing the number of configurations, will increase the margins on those, and thus make it possible for apple to have the same margins while selling at a lower price that the same configuration today. Few people today get a computer just for web-browsing and similar, so it doesn't make sense that the baseline M4 is basically configured for that task.

[chrismarlton]

Can you please attempt a video edit of a one hour long project with 8 video channels all at 4K. I have recently preordered the m4 pro 64gb, and will be editing approximately this arrangement, and want to see how the base model handles this workflow.

[JonS-jnwy]

Put it through a typical use case. Have about 8 applications open (safari, word, excel, exposure, mail, music, Final Cut Pro, & Gigapixel AI).

Play music, switch between safari, word, and excel, check nail.

Run long processing task with gigapixel AI, render footage with Final Cut Pro, and use exposure to edit a photo.

[kjvasquez]

Base model here, more than enough, I am still using my M1 MacBook pro, the monitor cracked after a fall, so I used connected to my monitor as a Desktop Mac Mini, still with 8GB RAM and runs very solid. So I will go with base model, storage is not an issue for me, all my work is in the cloud, I have used less than 100GB since 2020 haha

[ehhhhhh]

would love to see if you can test the base model m4 against the m4 pro or other silicon macs on different DAWs? ive been holding back on buying the base model because of it only having 4 performance cores vs the other pro models

[tbfromsd]

I actually think M4 Mini might be a great Dev computer. I am currently using a base 2018 iMac Pro for most of my work. I run Docker with usually a Node environment, a API, a Front End application, and a Mongo and/or Postgres database. It is not fun running stuff like this on a laptop for several reasons, mostly because they have to be plugged in all the time with the screen up. For the price I could buy 2 have one for the databases and API, and the other for the front end and coding, and nether should be breaking a sweat. Both would fit in a backpack, and while I wouldn't be happy if they were stolen, damaged, or lost, it wouldn't be as painful like losing some of the expensive spec'ed up laptops and desktops I have owned over the years.

[guillermoviera]

I'm curious to see the base model handel a Da Vinci Resolve denoising and color grade test. I saw a test in the M4 Pro but haven't seen a test to the base M4. I have the M1 and its great but always struggles with that specifically. Love your videos!

[dragonknight]

As a newcomer to the Mac world (I've been an iPhone user since day one), I'd love to see a daily use video, showing off the OS's tricks as well as pushing the base configuration to it's limits if possible. I don't do much editing, but that's because I never had a PC that I used for anything but gaming. I know it's boring to show what it can do day to day, but it's also VERY informative to us newbies. Great channel, btw, I've been watching your older vids and I like it here!

[dplj]

Smart idea, community engagement but also real world input that validates taking your exploration beyond.