The M2 Max Mac Studio Just Killed the M2 Pro Mac mini

Apple's announcement of the M2 generation Mac Studio at WWDC in June basically makes the M2 Pro Mac mini they launched just 5 months ago in January almost completely pointless. Well, ok, not the base model, but if you were looking to get an upgraded M2 Pro mini, you should set your eyes on the Mac Studio instead. Here's why.

[MutePCdotcom]

Forgot to include the 10Gb Ethernet as another advantage in the summary list. What the Mac Studio gets you for "free" versus the similarly priced upgraded M2 Pro Mac mini is quite good.

[litesoutproduction]

I returned the Mac mini and got the studio. I upgrade the Mac mini with 32g of ram and 1TB storage. 2200$ out the door. For an additional 1k I got the Studio M2 Max 64g of ram 38 core GPU and 1TB storage. I feel I made a better choice 💪🏾

[JamesJosephFinn]

This advice is only pertinent if you need to spec up; and most people don't. The base M2 Pro Mini, as you've meticulously demonstrated in prior videos, is a bad ass machine that can handle most modern workloads.

[mohammednadeem]

This is probably the only video which has the most information that anybody who’s looking to buy a Mac mini or a Mac Studio needs. Compared to almost all the other nonsense comparisons that exists on YouTube.

[chrisbogart]

Last year in March, I was ready to buy a Mac Mini Pro since I over-taxed with the tasks I run on my Mac Mini M1. When Apple announced the Mac Studio instead, it took me less than 5 minutes after Apple made them available in the store to order the Mac Studio Max and trade in my Mac Mini. I have been a happy camper ever since. Announcing the Mac Mini Pro was too little too late. The Mac Studio Max is an absolute beast. Today, I tell people to skip the Mac Mini Pro and buy a discounted M1 Mac Studio and live happily ever after.

[johnborges]

M2 Max Mac Studio is a very good deal, yes. Has it "killed" the M2 Pro Mac Mini? Absolutely not. The base price difference is $700. There are plenty of customers for whom that $700 is a bridge too far, and for whom the additional features would be an utter waste.

[nahlene]

Just wanna say a big thank you for posting this video!

I was exactly at the boat of having just bought a Max-out M2-Pro mini (ok except the SSD is upgraded to 1TB only). After watching your video I realized that a based Mac Studio model with 512GB, actually cost less than my Mac mini at where I live (Canada). Then I checked the return policy, I was at the last day of eligible return. So I rushed to nearby Apple Store and exchanged it for a Base Mac Studio and got a few hundred refund XD. 

The speed difference is very obvious when running Blender, but not so much in FCPX & Motion. I can now totally use that refund to buy a TB4 enclosure and a 4TB NVME for the extra storage.

Thank you so much.

[ausom]

Very informative!! Thanks for posting this. Been waiting for this since I’ve seen your Mac mini comparison video a week ago

[mototacularlife]

The title makes no sense, most average people don’t need a Mac Studio for basic computing let me see $599 or $2000

[crearg]

I quite like the form factor of Mac Mini, originally I planned to get it configured to 32GB+1TB. Now, with the price of Mac Studio, paying any amount more than $1300 on a Mac Mini is a disrespect to the Mac Studio (M1 Max Mac Studio only $1499)

[ericlee]

I was looking for a desktop Mac, went to the base m2 pro Mac mini and works perfectly.

[modalities]

I needed this video about 3 weeks ago! Thanks, great comparison.

[raoulcoZA]

Yeah. I'm one of those who got screwed with the Mini M2 Pro three months ago. Specced up the Memory, CPU and GPU to the maximum available. This is really depressing.😡

[smgumbycat]

Totally agree that the Base Mac Studio M2 beats the Mac mini M2 Pro. The Mac mini M2 Pro with the 400 dollar 32GB upgrade ALONE makes Mac Studio M2 a reasonable choice. I still love my Mac mini M2 Pro base model but it doesn't justify any upgrade.

[jivexero]

Looking forward to see what your results with the coil whine are. When do you think that will be?

[implisyt]

I've purchased the Mac Studio M2 Max not just for my workload but also because soon many windows games will be ported over to Mac (one would hope!) using GPT and the graphically intensive games would consume those extra graphics core on the Max.

[PapiVanWinkle]

you are wrong, its a lot less money the Mac mini its a great value for the money

[AlBergstein]

Yes, this makes the difference, even with bumping both to 1TB (a sort of minimum for these kinds of machines) to be about $300. I recently ordered a Mac Mini fully kitted out with 32 GB & 1TB and just priced the new studio at $2199.00. I paid $1899.00 for mine. I would have bought the studio for that price difference. I'm not sorry about the Mac Mini, it's an incredible machine for the price. I don't really push my video renders anymore. Just no longer doing multicamera work. So the mini will be plenty.

[jeanjasinczuk]

If Apple would lower the price of the upgrades on the Mac mini, Apple would also need to lower the same upgrades on the much more lucrative MacBook pro. Sadly for the consumer, the most profitable for Apple is to be left with very bad values upgrades on the Mac pro mini.

[bostjanlah]

Hello. Please help me with an advice. Im a photographer, and i m not sure which should I buy, or mac mini pro m2 or mac studio m2 max. Is mac studio so much better? Could I use mu 2015 Imac as external monitor to mac mini or mac studio? thank you