At Apple ’s 30 October New York event the company announced a revamped Mac miniskirt – the first update to the dry pint - sized desktop Macsince 2014 .
The Mac miniskirt has always been pop because of its affordability and utility as a server , a medium library for the living way or a first Mac for those who do n’t want to pay a premium , and the unexampled model looks set to stay on that while also offer extra power to invoke to the professional market place .
Read ourfull review of the 2018 Mac mini here , and for a compare with the last generation , seeMac mini 2018 vs Mac mini 2014 .
Mac mini release date
The Mac mini for 2018 is now available toorder from Applefollowing its7 Novemberrelease date .
Price
The new Mac ministarts from £ 799/$799for the entry model , with a 2nd model priced at £ 1,099/$1,099 – though loading up every potential upgrade takes that to an eye - tearing £ 3,859/$4,199 .
That ’s a big Leontyne Price parachuting from the older models , which start up from £ 479/$499 – though that was for a four - year - old model , to be fair .
Of course , you ’ll still need to factor out in the price of a monitor , keyboard and mouse . For advice on that , see our roundups of thebest Mac monitors , good Mac keyboardsandbest Mac mice .
Design
The 2018 Mac mini is broadly the same plan as the previous theoretical account , but with one major change : it now comes in Space Grey rather than Silver , a move Apple said is partly to appeal to the pro gang .
The size is also exactly the same – dashing any hopes for a smaller Mac mini , which makes sentiency given the importantly improved specs of the new modelling . So once again this measures 3.6 atomic number 96 tall and 19.7 curium wide . It weighs 1.3 kg – a very slight jump from the former 1.22 kg .
The final pattern variety – Apple has switched to using 100 percent recycle aluminium thanks to a newfangled usance alloy , along with more recycled credit card than before , draw this a small more eco - friendly .
Specs
As we ’ve already note , the new Mac mini boasts a serious performance bump from the 2014 fashion model . Here are the two new main conformation :
£ 799/$799 :
£ 1,099/$1,099 :
Processor
First up , the Mac mini is now packing Intel ’s 8th - gen Coffee Lake processor for some badly amped up execution mightiness – Apple boasted the fresh devices are five sentence quicker than before .
The entry fashion model will include a quad - core 3.6GHz Intel Core i3 processor , but you may upgrade all the way to a 6 - core i7 with Turbo Boost speeds up to 4.6GHz .
The Mac mini also admit Apple ’s fresh T2 security scrap , which offers on - the - fly ball data encoding , along with HEVC video encoding that ’s reportedly up to 30 fourth dimension faster than before .
Graphics
Unsurprisingly , given the Mac mini ’s diminutive form factor , there ’s still no support for a distinct artwork wag – there simply is n’t the blank in the enclosure .
rather you get integrated Intel UHD Graphics 630 , which should be a big measure up from the last - gen equipment – but still wo n’t be capable to compete against discrete cards . fortunately , the young Thunderbolt 3 porthole mean you ’ll always be able to connect the Mac mini to an extraneous GPU if you seriously involve graphic carrying into action .
RAM
RAM has arguably get an even bigger spec boost than anything else . The entry mannequin Mac mini packs 8 GB of 2666MHz DDR4 RAM , which is upgradeable to a whopping 64 GB – a huge leap from the former cap of 16 GB .
Storage
The other with child internal change is the commitment to flash repositing – every single role model now packs an SSD , with Apple promising that the new drive are four time quicker than before .
The entry - level simulation admit 128 GB of SSD storage , but you may upgrade all the way to 2 TB .
Ports
Ports have been tweaked too , and thankfully there are plenty of them . Every model of Mac miniskirt come with four Thunderbolt 3 ports along with two USB - A ports , back up by HDMI 2.0 and an audio jack – along with a socket for the AC adaptor .
Gigabit ethernet also come as monetary standard , but this is where there ’s also elbow room for an upgrade : you could jump to a 10Gb ethernet port if you need .
There ’s one boastful thing missing though : the South Dakota card slot has been removed , so any photographers or anyone else reliant on Coyote State cards will need to take hold of a dongle .
Here ’s a summing up of the porthole on the 2018 Mac mini :
Further reading
If you ’re not certain which Mac is right for you , visit ourMac buying guide , and our guide towhere to buy a Mac miniskirt .
