Apple last week unveiled the new Mac mini, supercharged by M2 and the all-new M2 Pro. With the M2 chip, Mac mini is even more powerful, capable, and affordable with a new starting price of just $599.
Andrew Cunningham for Ars Technica:
Apple sent us the M2 Pro version of the mini to review, and for many price-conscious power users who prefer or require macOS, it injects just the right amount of Mac Studio performance into the mini’s 13-year-old design.
The M2 Pro model has a marginally higher-wattage internal power supply than the regular M2 (185 W, up from 150 W). But there’s no difference in weight between the M2 and M2 Pro models, suggesting that both versions use the same fan and heatsink design. And in our testing, the M2 Pro mini runs just as cool and quiet as the M1 mini did.
That’s impressive because the M2 Pro is a major speed upgrade, whether you’re comparing it to the old M1 Mac mini or the cheaper non-Pro M2 version. Apple sent us a not-quite-fully-loaded version, with the fully-enabled M2 Pro (four little CPU cores, eight big CPU cores, 19 GPU cores) but 16GB of RAM instead of 32GB.
The M2 Pro is a solid step up from the M2, and the fully enabled version even gives the M1 Max in the Mac Studio a run for its money… If you compare the M1 mini to the M2 version, you get a solid but not life-changing CPU and GPU performance bump across the board. The M2 Pro, on the other hand, is around twice as fast as the M1 in the old mini.
MacDailyNews Take: Interested in a new Mac mini? Theres much more in the – recommended – full review here.
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The new Mac Mini with M2 Pro chip delivers superb performance that makes us wonder if Apple might continue with Mac Studio and instead only offer at the higher end the Mac Pro with M2 Ultra chip. Mac Mini with M2 Pro chip delivers exceptional speed and power according to the available Geekbench results and other benchmarks. If you need a tough computer that has powerful performance and speed within reasonable budget this might be the one. With M2 Pro Mac Mini Apple has seriously cannibalized its more medium end product – Mac Studio. Time will demonstrate how these Mac Minis perform for gaming, but I would have preferred to see 64 GB Ram version. Currently Mac Studio with M1 Ultra is the perfect alternative for gamers for example as it is able to deliver above 100 FPS gaming experience. Of course, the RTX3090 is faster than m1ultra and wins gaming category, however whether Mac Mini with M2 pro or new Macbook Pro can offer better gaming experience remains to be seen.