The only real advantage of the M2 Pro Mac mini is Wi-Fi 6E and HDMI 2.1. Plus, it’s got two USB-C ports and an SDXC slot up front. With the lower-tier M2 Mac mini starting at a lower $599 price, the gap is bigger than ever.Ĭonsider that the entry-level Mac Studio is $1,999 and has an M1 Max with a 24-core GPU, double the memory bandwidth, and double the RAM (32GB vs 16GB). $1,099 was a good starting price for an upper-tier Mac mini, it’s a real shame it went up by almost 20 percent with the new model to $1,299. If there’s a problem with this system, it’s the price. It goes without saying it absolutely smokes the Intel-based Mac mini it replaces, but that system was so old that we don’t even use the same tools to benchmark it anymore. It’s a nice upgrade from the M1 Pro and obviously a lot better than the M2. Take the gap between the M1 and M2 and apply that to the M1 Pro and there you have it-a better Neural Engine, and usually somewhere between 10 percent and 20 percent better performance depending on what the limiting factors are. The M2 Pro is about what we’d expect, performance-wise. But the faster CPU and Neural Engine in the M2 Pro make it faster than the M1 Max when applying the video stabilizing feature. The 2020 Intel mini is still available and that’s what crucial and others are selling memory.The M1 Max has two video encoding engines, so the M2 Pro can’t quite keep up with its exporting speed, and the M2 Pro is similar in performance to the M1 Pro. Pick any ten apps you want to start and race the entry level Air with any Mac of your choosing - iMac Pro, Mac Pro, or an 8 core MacBook Pro - there are only few specialized tasks where the Air is slower. Real world benchmarks are showing them completing work dramatically faster than 12 core Mac Pro with 32 GB of RAM. I would not mistake an 8 GB RAM Air, Pro or Mini for anything but a beast of a workstation for most tasks. Everything is soldered to the logic board for Apple Silicon Minis.

The SSD chips have separate placement on the logic board from the Processor board. There is no slot or place to add memory on the M1 based Air, Pro or Mini. RAM Memory on the Apple Silicon M1 Processor is integral to system package “chip” that’s mounted as one unit to the logic board. No RAM upgrade - you would need to reflow new processor board or be skilled enough to rework the one you have.

Mac mini ram upgrade m1