The M2 Mac Mini: Is it Worth Saving Your Money?

I bought the cheapest Mac Mini off the Apple website and unlike most other Macs that have all you need all bundled in one, the Mac Mini is more, BYOT. Bring your own Tech. And so if you have existing gear it’s cheap, and if you don’t it’s a more expensive computer because you have all these missing parts you need to buy. The Mac Mini is just the heart and brain of your computer and everything else is the limbs and the eyes and the ears. But when the day comes where you need to surgically remove the Mac Mini out from the mess of cables and place in a new mac mini, studio, pro or even a windows pc. You don’t have to worry about buying new peripherals or replacing all of them like you would if you replaced an all in one like the iMac.

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M2 Mac Mini Base Model:

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That being said, the peripherals you reuse or purchase to go with your Mac Mini affects your experience using the device tremendously, if you have bad accessories with it, the experience is bad if you have great accessories your experience is great. With something like a macbook or an imac, all that’s decided for you, and they’re all decent to great. There’s a nice pseudo modularity to the Mac Mini, and that’s something you can’t say about a lot of the apple lineup of products, of course that’s only in terms of accessories for it, inside, well, like most macs, it can’t be upgraded at all.

Next to discuss is more on the YouTube side of things, Photo and video editing. These are more bursty tasks that pushes the system but not all the time. It’s kind of like HIIT exercises, something I need to get into, where there will be bursts of high intensity exercise and short periods of rest in between. So the M2 chip in the Mac Mini is at full load for some time then there’s some time for it to rest a bit in between. So for these tasks, the Mac Mini handles it all fine. I primarily do photo editing for YouTube thumbnails, so I work with smaller photos but I’ve played with multiple 61MP RAW images on it and it starts to chug a little importing them and navigating them in Affinity Photos, something I never saw on my Mac Studio. Obviously that’s a massive file, but not uncommon for pro-level camera bodies so just be aware there. So I can’t help much there. But 24MP JPEGs coming out of my A7C are edited smoothly in Affinity Photo. For video editing, I edit 4K h.264 XAVC S 10bit 4:2:2 footage out of my Sony A7Siii that I’m recording with right here. It handles the compressed codec perfectly fine, even in scenarios when I have 3-4 different timeline layers in FCPX and some color grading. I know Premiere and Davinci Resolve are a bit more intensive on the system so your mileage may vary on that front. I don’t actively use those, but for FCPX at least, it works the way I expect. Smooth but more intense tasks do take a little longer compared to my Mac Studio.

Lastly, gaming. I’ve talked alot about Mac gaming in the past, so I’ll just summarize it here. On Apple silicon macs, it hasn’t been good. There’s not a ton of native support, games you can run are limited, because developers don’t really develop for Mac. And playing a lot of games requires hacky work arounds when you can have a better experience with less tinkering with an equivalent 500$ console or gaming PC. You can play iPhone and iPad games through the app store, but Macs don’t have touchscreens and mobile apps are designed for a touchscreen. So your experience varies there too. Overall gaming is possible on the Mac and it does run most games, when it supports them, okay. But actually getting it to play the games you actually want to play is not a fun experience and it can be done much easier on other non Mac devices. Apple has recently taken numerous steps to try to improve this aspect of the Mac like the game porting toolkit, and developers are making some console quality games for the iphone which share the same types of chips as the Mac.

This is Apple’s cheapest, and the best value mac they sell. And the performance you get from it is great for your everyday tasks, productivity tasks, streaming content and light photo, and video editing. I also think it makes a great family computer because it’s value oriented, and if anything breaks because kids are being kids, you pay a much lower price than if you get something like the iMac and it needs repairs.

[PeterBondeVillain]

I almost got the 16gb ram, 512 gb model of the M2, but I sat myself down and reminded myself that I basically only do spreadsheets and watch youtube videos on my computer. I'm very happy with my base model M2 Mac Mini now, and I'm grateful that I didn't overextend my wallet for no reason. Thanks for a good video

[blueeyedtech]

I recently got a refurbished M2 Mac Mini and I absolutely love it

[PowerHouseWash]

I've been viewing reviews on the Mac mini with the M2 for about a week now and yours is the best.
Thank you for taking the time to gather and explain the information in a way that makes sense to people actually looking to possibly buy it.
Personally, I'm thinking about switching from Windows to Mac because of security, privacy, and honestly I'm just sick of Microsoft reducing functionality of the apps it updates.

[jrgarciab]

I have an M1 Mac Mini. It's great. Thanks, Jimmy, for the honest review.

[Chimpur]

I chose to get a base spec MacBook Air M2 instead of a Mini. This way I could use my PC's monitor, a Logitech mouse and keyboard that can switch between both and also a magic trackpad 2. I can have my Mac at the desk and on the go. This is a pricy way to go about this; but it allows me portability as well.

[quadsnipershotplvl]

"lets see if I have been buying too much computer for my own needs" *Jimmy's wife's ears perk up know she has evidence now to get you to not spend as much now.

[MiranDabare]

Hi Jimmy! Nice informative video as always! Its a solid choice to enter into the Apple's sphere. Cheers mate.

[cjc]

Thanks for the take. I use my M1mini as basically a TV/Streaming box, but with computer bonus things - like rudimentary video and photo editing. And it's great for that. I did add the dock you have, and a 2 slot Rocket Store drive toaster with two SSD drives for media storage. It's all plugged into my 65 " 4K TV with soundbar/subwoofer. All in all, I'm happy with it. Oh, yeah, do get the 16gb memory if you can. I have 8, and it's fine, but if you do any pro work, do the 16.

[davidbailey]

I just bought a cheapest $600 model myself. I was like yeah I love the iMac, but look at it's price, holly cow! So I bought the mac mini M2 8GB ram and 256GB SSD along with a cheap Monday deal only $200 for an LG 4K 27 inch monitor! 600 + 200 = 800. Much cheaper than the iMac!

[RichWithTech]

"Cheaper than their MacPro wheels- what a deal" 🤣🤣🤣

[jong.]

This was a helpful video… was debating whether to hold on for the M3, but who knows, that could be several months away and in the meantime BestBuy has a $100 off deal on the M2 base model so I suppose it’s a bit of a no-brainer, practically cheaper than a lot of lower-end PCs.

[hyperpedro]

Thanks for the video. It is a very good value product. Instead of buying crazy expensive upgrades right now you can buy another base model in 2 years for the price of a few upgrades if you want and you will be golden with the lastest chips on the road. Apple pricing is all about FOMO so they can charge you 10 times what it costs them for upgrades.

[ChosWeveR]

Satechi makes a version of that matching base hub you have with an NVME SSD slot, so what I’m thinking about doing is only shelling out the Apple Memory tax on the 16GB of RAM but leaving the internal SSD at 256gb. Then getting the SSD hub and putting a 1-2TB SSD in it and saving a LOT over speccing it out with 1TB SSD from Apple. Apps can be installed and run from external drives on Mac so there’s really not much limitation.

[smgumbycat]

Mac mini M2 Pro is the sweet spot! 16 GB Ram, 512 GB SSD and 4 Thunderbolt Ports

[timgarth]

Great review. Know what you need, know what you want. If this meets this (especially the need) the mini is a nice machine.

[LearningTech]

As someone who upgraded from a base 2012 unibody MacBook Pro to a M1 Pro in 2022, I think I’m going to try and sell my MacBook and get a M2 mini. There is so much unused horsepower that I will never touch in this machine and I don’t need the portability since I’ve finished school. This video was great for convincing me of that while not even being the main talking point

[welderlife]

so if you are a full grown adult, get a Mac mini 👌🏻

[rorywalters]

I just realised the M1/M2 Mac minis didn’t have an SD card slot. Never used it on my 2014 Mac mini though.

[oemraw]

I just bought it from Best Buy for $500 for the base model. I wanted it to replace my Apple TV and chromecast. It’s become the best home theatre pc

[Hachiro]

Just picked up an M2 Mini with the current gen of full-size keyboard with Touch ID, trackpad, and mouse for $550 :D
Works just fine, and I’m super happy with the find. (My first Mac too! Decided to switch last Friday, so I spent the weekend looking for deals)

Don’t plan on using the mouse, and I’ll trial the keyboard. But 100% going to use the trackpad. I’ve always liked Apple’s trackpads, the few times I’ve used a Mac in the past.
The keyboard might be okay. I don’t plan on gaming or a TON of typing. So I’ll try it out for a week or two, and likely will end up using it.