Mac mini M4 Pro review: Speed, cost, design, power

Relating to desktop Mac fashions, the Mac mini is all the time thought of the entry-level and low cost possibility, whereas the Mac Studio and Mac Pro are efficiency beasts. With the introduction of the M4 Professional Mac mini, Apple has flipped the script — no less than for now.

We have already regarded on the entry-level M4 Mac mini. The M4 Professional Mac mini is a fairly priced improve for individuals who need nice efficiency, all in a tiny bundle.

The Mac Studio and Mac Professional are nonetheless caught on M2. Upgrades to each aren’t anticipated till midway by way of 2025, so the New Mac mini with M4 Professional may very well be the interim improve for a Professional that wants energy now and may’t anticipate M4 Extremely.

A part of Apple’s overhaul of the Mac mini design, the M4 Professional model has the identical exterior look as its M4 counterpart. The 7.75-inch rounded flat sq. has remodeled right into a 5-inch rounded sq., shrinking its desk presence.

Apple TV [top], new Mac mini [middle], outdated Mac mini [bottom]

At 2 inches, it is also a little bit taller than the 1.41-inch earlier Mac mini design. It is nonetheless fabricated from aluminum, although, and has a spherical base part that handles air flow.

The recomposition of the Mac mini has additionally pressured a number of attention-grabbing adjustments.

The rear ports of the brand new Mac mini

For a begin, Apple could not match the entire ports on the again of the Mac mini just because there wasn’t sufficient room. As a compromise, some USB-C connections have been delivered to the entrance alongside the headphone jack.

It is a compromise and a large departure from the same old Mac mini design philosophy.

The entrance ports of the brand new Mac mini

The peak improve and width lower additionally make it resemble a Mac Studio however in miniature. One bigger compromise is with energy, in that the ability button is now positioned beneath the Mac mini.

The M4 Professional Mac mini’s energy button is now beneath a nook

This appears like a nasty design thought, as it’s a must to carry it as much as entry the button. Besides, most customers will likely be placing the Mac mini to sleep, hardly ever needing the bodily energy button in any respect.

How a lot this issues actually depends upon how typically you shut down your machine. It is aggravated considerably by needing to make use of the Terminal to set startup and wakeup instances, nevertheless it’s not likely a serious disaster.

As for the wi-fi facet, there’s Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. These are pretty normal, but in addition connections that you’ll solely actually profit from when you’ve got the infrastructure or supporting peripherals that use it.

There isn’t any Wi-Fi 7 right here as there’s within the iPhone. We’re undecided why this was determined, particularly on the higher-end Mac mini, nevertheless it’s not an enormous disaster in the intervening time.

Thunderbolt 5 will likely be actually helpful for many who want high-bandwidth connections

The place of ports is not the one change to the connectivity within the M4 Professional Mac mini. The choice has additionally modified to match the brand new design.

The again of the M4 Mac mini has an HDMI connection, a trio of Thunderbolt ports, and Gigabit Ethernet, which you’ll be able to pay to improve to a 10-gig model.

Across the entrance are a pair of USB-C ports, providing USB 3 assist and 10Gb/s speeds. There’s additionally the headphone jack, which helps high-impedance headphones, a now-standard characteristic change.

The M4 Professional Mac mini’s entrance ports are sparse however reachable.

The pair of USB-A ports from the outdated Mac mini have been consigned to the trash can of historical past. If you really want them, your finest wager is to make the most of a Thunderbolt dock.

Talking of Thunderbolt, the M4 Professional mannequin improves right here over the M4 Mac mini. Reasonably than Thunderbolt 4, the trio of ports within the M4 Professional Mac mini use Thunderbolt 5.

There are a number of benefits to utilizing Thunderbolt 5 over Thunderbolt 4, with the chief one being bandwidth. Whereas Thunderbolt 4 maxes out at 40Gb/s, Thunderbolt 5 doubles it to 80Gb/s for bi-directional connections.

For asynchronous makes use of, it goes even increased, to 120Gb/s.

Then, there are the expanded video capabilities of the expertise. Thunderbolt 4 manages one 8K display screen or two 4K 60Hz shows, which is first rate in its personal proper.

The M4 Professional Mac mini and its field

However Thunderbolt 5 can deal with a number of 8K screens or three 4K screens at as much as 144Hz. If it is one 4K display screen, the Thunderbolt 5 normal permits it to go as much as 540Hz.

Thunderbolt 5 may also deal with increased energy limits. Thunderbolt 4 permits as much as 100W of energy supply, whereas Thunderbolt 5 can do as much as 240W, with 140W obligatory assist.

That is nice future-proofing, nevertheless it’s extraordinarily laborious to check. We’ll be this extra sooner or later, as Thunderbolt 5 enclosures, docks, and different equipment are extra accessible.

The massive attraction right here is the M4 Professional chip, marking a two-generation chip improve from the M2 Professional within the earlier mannequin.

This time, the M4 Professional packs extra cores than the M2 Professional in each variants. Add in Apple’s declare that it makes use of the “world’s quickest CPU core,” and issues begin to get spicy.

The M4 Professional base model is a 12-core CPU with eight efficiency cores and 4 effectivity cores. That is paired with a 16-core GPU and the 16-core Neural Engine primed for Apple Intelligence and the Media Engine for video encoding and decoding.

The upper-tier model has a 14-core CPU, with ten efficiency cores and 4 effectivity cores. The GPU is equally bumped up, provided with 20 cores.

Reminiscence can also be improved in a number of methods. There’s the capability of unified reminiscence for starters, with the bottom being 24GB, rising to 48GB and 64GB, double the final mannequin’s most.

Reminiscence bandwidth can also be up, from 200GB/s within the M2 Professional to 273GB/s within the M4 Professional. Even this improve helps push the M4 Professional additional when it comes to efficiency.

Apple trumpeted the velocity of the M4 throughout its announcement. They gave imprecise guarantees of two instances that, thrice this, however they by no means actually benchmark issues.

M4 Professional Mac mini vs older Mac minis in Geekbench single-core benchmarks

When in comparison with the earlier fashions of Mac mini in Geekbench, it is clear that the M4 Professional is significantly extra highly effective. With a single-core rating of three,509 in testing, nearly 900 factors away from the M2 Professional model.

Geekbench multi-core benchmarks for M4 Professional Mac mini and older fashions

For multicore, there’s nonetheless an observable distinction in efficiency for the M4 Professional fashions. That is partly as a result of elevated core counts, however even the 12-core M4 Professional at 20,195 dwarfs the 12-core M2 Professional model at 14,483.

Geekbench Metallic benchmark outcomes for the M4 Professional and former Mac mini releases

This continues on with the Metallic benchmark, because the top-spec model of the M4 Professional lastly breaks the 100,000 rating barrier.

Within the single-core take a look at, the M4 Professional once more blasts previous the M1 Mac Studio fashions at 3,500 versus 2,400. That may be a appreciable step up within the velocity of on a regular basis duties.

For the non-Professional, single core continues to be the metric that issues.

Geekbench multi-core figures evaluating the M4 Professional Mac mini towards the M1 Mac Studio

Multicore testing is far nearer, partly as a result of the M1 Extremely has a 20-core CPU versus the 14-core and 12-core M4 Professional. Nevertheless, regardless of the sheer variety of cores, the M1 Extremely nonetheless cannot sustain with the M4 Professional, even the 12-core model.

Geekbench Metallic outcomes for M4 Professional Mac mini vs M1 Mac Studio

Relating to Metallic, the GPUs within the M4 Professional and M1 Max fashions are comparable. The outlier is the M1 Extremely, just because it has so many cores at its disposal. It is laborious to maintain up on GPU enhancements alone towards a chip that provides that sheer amount of GPU cores.

So, perhaps, hold on to that M1 Extremely Mac Studio for a short time longer, when you want the CPU grunt.

Our evaluation M4 Professional unit has a 512GB SSD. As promised, it has a sooner SSD than the M4 mini has.

Our BlackMagic Disk velocity take a look at for learn checked out information at about 6.3 gigabytes per second. It constantly wrote at 5.2 gigabytes per second.

That is in distinction to our M4 Mac mini evaluation, the place we noticed symmetrical learn and write speeds about 3 gigabytes per second.

As I nearly all the time have, I like to recommend exterior native storage, or community hooked up storage as an alternative of paying Apple’s exorbitant SSD costs. Exterior storage is sort of all the time a greater and vastly cheaper possibility for desktops. On the M4 Professional Mac mini, although, it isn’t equal velocity throughout Thunderbolt 4 enclosures.

Use your improve cash for further RAM, perhaps. Apple’s RAM costs are steep too. In a desktop kind issue, that is cash higher spent than inner storage.

Avenue costs for 1TB exterior high-speed Thunderbolt or USB4 SSDs are about $160, when you store proper, or construct your personal. Or, 2TB drives may be had for about $250. These will ship about 2.7 gigabytes per second learn and write, which is greater than sufficient velocity for nearly any process.

We’ll be Thunderbolt 5 enclosures after they’re extra extensively accessible.

Time marches on, and so does computing energy. Whereas Moore’s legislation is fairly lifeless, annual increments in Apple Silicon have introduced pretty spectacular outcomes to even the low-end, just like the Mac mini.

The M4 Professional Mac mini is a superb compact block of computing efficiency

While you’re wanting on the Mac mini M4, it is value contemplating what your jobs appear to be. For those who’re doing largely enterprise informal work, like Workplace, then there will not be an enormous distinction in efficiency from the M4 to M4 Professional fashions.

Nevertheless, renders, video modifying, and the like, will likely be enhanced by the increase in multicore and GPU speeds from the $599 mannequin to the $1200+ model.

The M4 Professional Mac mini, with a HomePod mini for scale

I’ve appreciated the Mac mini from the beginning. There’s been no less than one in the home for the reason that G4 model shipped, and as I depend proper in the intervening time, there are 5. One is a beefed-up G4 mannequin for once I get nostalgic for OS9, and the opposite is the core of my residence community, serving content material and Time Machine backups for a bunch of machines. Now, there’s this one.

Now that this evaluation has concluded, the cascading upgrades start. The M4 will likely be overkill for the house server, that M2 mini will substitute a M1 mini in use as a normal computing equipment, and the M1 mini will get handed all the way down to a member of the family for normal use.

What it will not do is substitute my M1 Extremely Mac Studio — at this time. It most likely should not for the few that personal one. The following one most likely will, although, and because it stands at this time, nearly every little thing else in Apple’s lineup is slower than the M4 Professional Mac mini.

As we stated within the M4 mini evaluation, if you’re nonetheless on Intel Mac {hardware}, it is most likely time emigrate, no matter your energy wants.

• About M2 Mac Studio Energy, for half the worth
• Extra USB-C and extra USB total than the earlier design
• Thunderbolt 5 will likely be amazingly quick, however…

• Thunderbolt 5 equipment aren’t actually delivery but, and can take nicely into 2025 to proliferate
• Exorbitant SSD and RAM improve pricing

Each 2024 Mac mini configuration is on sale in our M4 Mac mini Price Guide, with costs beginning at $499 at press time.

Save on the retail M4 Professional mannequin with 24GB unified reminiscence and 512GB storage at Amazon with an on-page coupon, or go for a configure-to-order (CTO) mannequin at up to $200 off with promo code APINSIDER at Apple Licensed Reseller Adorama.