What I Wish I Knew Before Buying an M4 Mac Mini

After 30 days with Apple’s M4 Mac Mini, here’s everything I wish I knew before buying.

From its sleek, compact design to its jaw-dropping performance powered by the M4 chip, this video answers all your burning questions and helps you decide if it’s the right fit for your workflow.

We’ll explore:
- Design Overhaul
- Performance Boost
- Configuration Options
- Real-World Use Cases
- Alternatives & Recommendations
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📲 Products from today's video

Thinking about buying an M4 Mac Mini? Watch this video first to learn what I wish I knew before making the purchase. Get the scoop on the M4 Mac Mini Pro and make an informed decision!

Whether you’re upgrading from an Intel Mac, M1/M2 Mac Mini, or stepping into Apple’s ecosystem for the first time, I’ll break it all down. Let me know in the comments: Are you considering the M4 Mac Mini?

What configuration fits your needs?

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[Gogomkd]

You spoke very little about things that you wish you knew, and why you wish you knew them before buying. I clicked on the video just for that, and it was just the same as all the other people speaking about this product. Please do better.

[HoundDogMech]

Been Editing since 1982 started with Switcher/Titler and VSH VCR's last 4 years went from Premier to Davinci Studio. No fancy Edits Just Titles Cuts, Dissolves, And Fades to & From Black. Tried a Very Complex 10 minute Timeline with RED and a wkol bunch of Video types I no nothingabout. My ASUS 7 year old Laptop Really Struggled . CPU/GPU temps runing 95c to 98c .. and 2 days to render it said. M4 Mac Mini 24 Minutes and Fan never turned on. Only problem I have is the Samsung 990 EVO and the 40GB/s Enclosure gets HOT. But if need be I can place it between two bags of Frozen peas. It says it water & dust Proof.

[waisinglee]

Let's try 200 Chrome tabs. A lot of them are placeholders for future books to read.

[dhellis]

I didn't really get a choice, my kids all chipped in to get me the Mac Mini M4 base model with 16G Ram and 256G SSD. If
I had ordered it myself I probably would just opted for the 512GB. I am going to order a Thunderbolt 4 ssd case and 1 TB
NVmE SSD and move my home directory to the external disk.

[lgude]

Got the top spec M4 Pro with 24 Gb Ram and 1 tb SSD. I do photo editing and some video editing. So far it does typical super resolution runs in Pixelmator in less than 2 seconds, maybe 1! My M1 mini takes 10-15 seconds. My 2017 I5 mini with only Intel graphics 2 minutes plus. Side note: I paid more for the 2017 Mini. Happy, heck yeah.

[kericwilson]

Picked up standard M4 and upgraded ram and storage a bit!

[Gcnm]

how much ram would I need to run smoothly for programming? Gaming specifically (unreal engine 5)?

[domlabr]

I am still using my 27” iMac from 2019 with i9 processor and 40GB of RAM. I am strongly considering replacing it with a M4 Pro Mac mini. I use the computer largely for photography (Capture One and Photoshop) as well as graphic design work using Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. Right now I am often using all my RAM and thinking that 64GB might be the way to go. However all the reviews I’m reading tell me that it would be overkill. I edit 50MP-150MP 16bit files and when I have both Capture One and Photoshop open at the same time my RAM is essentially maxed out. Do you think that 64GB of RAM would be overkill?

[axoplanet]

I ordered today the Mac Mini M4 Pro / 1 tb / 64gb ram with the 14 core cpu. First I wanted the 48gb but it was just 200€ more to upgrade to 64gb so I did it. Came from the M1 / 16gb / 512 ram. I make music and I think this is a killer upgrade for music production.

[pantelistsiolas]

I got the base M4 with 16GB/ 2TB but thinking of returning it for probably 24 or 32 GB Ram (no video work but run VMs i.e windows 11 as my company does not support Mac OS ) and 1TB with 2TB external (Samsung T7)

[briancollier]

replacing my intel macbook with the m4 Pro Mac Mini, 24 GB RAM, with 1TB storage. Thanks for this!

[kamaboko]

Been on the fence for a while now. I do a lot of dev work (e.g., NodeJS, React, Mongo, etc.) and my M1 mini with 16GB RAM handles it well. Everyone wants something shinny and new, but I don't think I'd experience an "OMG" moment with the M4. Things may appear a bit faster, but a two or three second load time difference? It's hard to justify the added expense of a new M4. Anyone else in the same boat?

[generic_official]

Have you tried this with Topaz Labs Video AI or Photo AI?

[JVDuranPhotography]

Hi Michael thanks for the videos! I just bought the Mac Mini M4 Pro base. I’m a wedding photographer and I’m coming from an M1 MacBook Air. I do batch edit thousands of photos and use Lightroom, Photoshop and Aftershoot a lot. I also use Chrome a lot for my website, calendars and other daily stuff. Wondering if I should stick with the Pro version or just go with the Mac Mini. I don’t really do video work but I’m planning to do more hybrid in 2025. Thanks!

[dekar]

Thinking about "upgrading" from a mbpro from 2018.. even if its no pro and just base.. it still would be an upgrade right? Mbpro was also base.. thanks

[smgumbycat]

The additional Unified Memory (24GB on M4 Pro Mac mini vs 16GB on M2 Pro Mac mini) was worth it for me to upgrade to the M4 Pro Mac mini. But in reality, I gave my wife the M2 Pro Mac mini to replace her 2020 Intel i5 Mac mini.

[kamertonaudiophileplayer]

It is too powerful in the minimal configuration and too expensive in the powerful configuration.

[TheDanEdwards]

The M4/24/512 is a standard SKU, so places like Costco will stock it. Indeed, the Costco promo price on it is almost the same as the Apple EDU price. The 1TB storage version is not a standard SKU. To me the standard SKU seems like a better deal, I have plenty of external SSDs.

[paulliddement]

Doesn’t everyone know Apple do speed, heat management x3, speed with their rollouts? So M4 is fast but hot, M5 will be marginally faster but less hot and so forth until M8 where we will get speed again.

[DavidNiedbala]

Interesting fact I discovered. If you flip the Mac mini upside, the WiFi signal gets about 20% better! I go from 200mb/s to 550mb/s!