I think I’ve made a mistake.
I’ve bought the wrong Mac.
It hasn’t arrived yet, either. That’s how confident I am that I’ve chosen the wrong computer. I even had the feeling rumbling away in the back of my mind while I was heading through the checkout process.
The good news is that this error has given me a cunning idea and a new direction for my music studio, which is all rather exciting.
Unfortunately, it has also placed a huge question mark over another purchase I’ve made – the M2 Max 14-inch MacBook Pro.
I’ve got myself into a right ol’ pickle here, haven’t I?
Let’s unpick it.
What I ordered and why it’s wrong
Winging its way to my house next week is an M2 Mac mini with 16GB of unified memory and a 512GB SSD.
This is the exact spec, pound-for-pound, as the M1 Mac mini it was destined to replace. My plan was simple – I wanted to find out how much of an improvement the M2 offered for my workflow.
Is this next generation of Apple silicon for the Mac mini a leap or a moderate step forward? If I’d built my business with the M2 Mac mini rather than the M1 version, could I have rendered and exported my videos quicker?
I still want to see the result of the M1 vs M2 Mac mini battle, and I will run some tests and reveal the results as part of a review. But the more I think about it, the less excited I am by the prospect of this M2 Mac mini (and, let’s be honest, we probably all know what the result is going to be – there’ll be marginal gains, nothing more).
Sure, there’s always the chance of a surprise, but I remain less convinced by the day while I wait for that package to arrive.
The allure of the M2 Pro Mac mini
The embargo reviews for the M2 Pro Mac mini are slowly dropping (I have to wait like every other normal person for mine, I’m afraid) and early indications suggest that Apple has a winner on its hands here.
That tiny powerhouse is punching well above its weight class for a price that still defies its capabilities. More importantly, it is, clearly, a massively more capable computer than its M1 predecessor.
Early benchmarks have revealed that the M2 Pro-powered Mac mini scores a single-core performance of 1,952 and a multi-core tally of 15,013. The previous M1 Mac mini scored 1,715 and 7,422, respectively.
This makes the leap from M1 to M2 for Apple’s cheapest desktop Mac one of the most impressive Apple silicon upgrades so far – but only if you go for the M2 Pro version. It’s also why I’m suddenly yearning for that machine rather than the standard M2.
More impressively, the same benchmarks reveal that the M2 Pro is (on paper, at least) a far more capable chip than the M1 Pro and even the M1 Max.
To have all of that power in a Mac mini is mouth-watering.
To this day, a 16GB M1 Mac mini remains a stupidly capable Mac. Bearing that in mind, imagine what one could achieve with the M2 Pro version. The more I think about the prospect, the more excited I get about what I could do with it.
What this means for the music studio build
Regular followers of this blog will know that I’m currently in the process of planning a mini music studio in my YouTube studio.
The original idea was to use my trusty M1 Mac mini as the centrepiece. I wanted to put that machine back into action and push it in the music realm to see what it could do, and to answer the requests I often get to delve into that side of production.
The plan was simple – I’d run that setup for three months or so before replacing it with an M2 Mac mini. It’s important to note at this juncture that the latter device was still nothing more than a rumour when I began planning my music studio build.
Then, Apple completely screwed up everything.
A surprise January Mac announcement left us with two brand-new chips and a living, breathing M2 Mac mini. Suddenly, I needed to account for the early arrival of a new Mac mini.
This brings me to an absolutely obvious conclusion, which you probably drew yourself several paragraphs ago.
My inevitable conclusion
The M2 Mac mini I really need and the one you’re most interested in me reviewing is the M2 Pro Mac mini.
So, this is my new plan; I’m going to accept delivery of the M2 Mac mini. I’ll run my non-patented Mark Ellis Review Crap Benchmark Test between that machine and the M1 Mac mini before returning the new one.
Then, I’ll get an M2 Pro Mac mini and spec it up as much as I feel appropriate. This new super-powered miniature beast will become the centrepiece of my music studio build and, I think, a potential candidate for a video production machine when I’m working from the studio.
The only other question left is whether or not I’ve ordered the right M2 MacBook Pro, or, indeed, whether I need to bother switching from the 16-inch to the 14-inch at this moment in time, given my new Mac mini plans. That doesn’t feel like a financially sound plan, to me.
What a mess. I’ll figure it all out – I promise.
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Well I’d say first things first, consider yourself one of the fortunate who can own at least 3 Apple Silicon Macs, and that you’re also lucky that you get to have these little musings on them – if that’s the totality of your problem set, what a nice problem to have 😂. No malice intended, just perspective.
As for the rest of it, I would have to agree with MKBHD (Marquez Brownlee if you like), that the M2 Mac mini in either Pro or non-Pro configurations is one of the best price to performance value Macs, and computers in general, considering their ability to ProRes number crunch and render etc without any issue. Personally for me I could see a use not just doing that but as a file server/Mac restorer which is what my current 2018 Intel version does and is very good at due to it’s low power/low noise when not being pushed.
“I wanted to find out how much of an improvement the M2 offered for my workflow.” – Based on all the testing that channels like MaxTech have performed, the 20-30% average gain Apple posited is about right for complex stuff like video rendering where it can shave minutes off – just not as many minutes as the jump from Intel to Apple Silicon. The M2 series is an iteration, not a generational leap, and the engineers have done it the lazy way by increasing base clock speeds, changing/adding cores – it’s like something Intel would do, frankly – resulting in chips that run hotter and presumably don’t last quite as long. That and the additional cost-cutting in the manufacturing process by using fewer SSD chips, causing 50% read/write speed performance drops. I’ve seen this firsthand too – I get 5GB/s read/write peak speeds on an M1 Pro MacBook Pro, and on the M2 Air it’s about 2GB/s read/write which is actually *slower* than my 2015 MacBook Pro Retina 15″ when using an upgraded M.2 NVMe SSD. Honestly I think the M1 series was the bigger achievement and represents a more “complete” product that clearly had more R&D time and consideration.
“but only if you go for the M2 Pro version” – Well of course. You’re comparing a base M1 chip to the Pro M2 chip. It’d be like comparing the M1 to the M1 Max, they’re different classes of processor. It would be more fair to compare M1 Pro and M2 Pro (as MaxTech have done, in depth, really well) and the performance gains there are appreciated but not life-changing. I know there isn’t an M1 Pro Mac mini and never will be but you can make do with test results of them in two similar devices, i.e. MacBook Pro.
Conclusion – you could send back the regular M2 Mac mini. But honestly, if all you’d be using the M1 Mac mini for is music production (which, from the sort of way the article is written, it seems to hop between saying it’ll be used for music production versus video production) then it’s fine and doesn’t need to be upgraded unless you need Logic Pro to be doing more than 100+ simultaneous tracks with effects on a regular basis. Music production really isn’t a massive strain on the hardware like video production is, so you’re just buying something overpowered for the job unless you’re later going to use it for video production.
Thanks for the input Gary – useful stuff. A couple of quick points – rather than being ‘fortunate to be in this position’, I should highlight that I’m running a full time business and all of this stuff sits on a balance sheet and needs to be budgeted for. It’s an expensive game!
Secondly, I’d politely push back on the comment about music production – it can be just as intensive as video work, particularly when you get into the realm of hundreds of tracks, plug-ins, soft synths and film scoring. That isn’t what I’ll be doing, but I did wince a bit reading your comment while thinking about those who do that stuff 😉
Gotcha, Kev. Thanks for stopping by. Beer’s on you tonight!
I can get your M1 out of your hands for a fair price. We just need to figure out the shipping to Argentina 😉
Honestly I wouldn’t take the time out of my day to insult you, I read the whole article and it wasn’t terrible. It just seems oddly self centered, like your reviewing your own personal circumstances in regards to Macs, rather than sharing broader information that could actually help strangers who might be considering the Mac M2 Mini. For my part, I bought the M2 mini with the 256GB drive. I only bought it because I wanted a quality apple desktop to run ableton live on as a hobbyist and to play media and this works perfect for that purpose. This was a slam dunk purchase that I definitely don’t regret after reading your article
I’m glad you don’t regret it, Jose! As for the article, I’m running a personal brand, buddy 😉
Blatant click bait headline.
And it worked – the busiest day for my website in the last few months. Bosh, as they say.
Lol what a first world problem you have, but in this day and age if Apple I get it. I have a Mac Mini M1 base model with a measly 8GB RAM, which works fine, but I always wanted more RAM. The want for a higher powered CPU I completely understand
It might be more interesting for your readership to see how an entry level mac mini handles music production. We already know that the m2 pro will get on just fine.
I’ll be doing just that 🙂
Great, looking forward to it
But are you really doing just that? Haven’t you in fact returned the base spec and now have m2 pro?
I’m looking forward to AI journalism so I don’t have to read junk like this. Its your personal story about buyers remorse for a computer you haven’t even used yet.
Ah, chill out Max, mate – you don’t have to read this stuff. You certainly don’t have to waste your time commenting on it! I’m cool with you not liking it – I’m not for everyone. Have a good day.
[…] So, onto the newest Mac in my studio – the base-model M2 Pro Mac mini. […]
Seems the M2 line of products are just slightly upgraded M1 SOCs and heavily downgraded SSD performance.
Is like S versions of eyePhones every second year. Not really worth it, cost reductions with quality reduction too.
I would like to see how the M2 SSD performs with huge files, video and audio. The SSD is the bottleneck. Does the 4 USB c ports perform well or are they stealing bandwidth from bt and wifi like old macs? Does the m2 still screw up bt stability? How does it manage two external screens?
My M1 mini stalls when it is given real life challenges, but looks great in geek bench.
For music production i just can’t tolerate fan noice. How is the M2 mini comparing?
Are you selling your M1, 16gb mac mini? I am from the UK and would happily buy it.
What the fuck is this egotistical bollocks? Not a review, just buyers remorse from a self centered privileged cunt. I’ll be avoiding you like the plague. Bellend.