Expert’s Rating
Pros
Cons
Our Verdict
Apple has finally update the Mac mini and we ’ve had a first look at the new mannequin , although we ’ll hold of on our last verdict until we get more meter to play with the new twist .
Best Prices Today: Mac mini (2014)
It ’s been way too longsighted . Not our word of honor but Apple ’s , printed on the invitations to a intersection launching event in October this year . unveil then were an iPad Air 2 , iMac with Retina 5 K display … and a revamped Mac mini .
Of all those products it was arguably theMac minithat was most in demand of the attention , since it had n’t been looked at by the running game - upgrades section in two long years . Also read ourMac mini ( Late 2014 ) 2.8GHz review .
But we say ‘ arguably ’ intentionally . The 2012 Mac miniskirt may have looked a little over - ripe in computer long time but it also did n’t need much to improve it . Its Ivy Bridge - genesis Intel Core processor was still an effective fleck that helped secure the Mac miniskirt as one of the most business leader - sipping PCs on the satellite .
It came with 4 GB of memory which could be upgraded up to 16 GB in endorsement through a whirl - off crosshatch on the underside . For storage it had deal , either a 500 or 1000 GB knockout disk ; or optionally could be configure with a 1 TB Fusion Drive or 256 GB Flash Drive .
The new Mac mini ( recent 2014 ) is built around exactly the same coolheaded and understated ingot of aluminium , milled from substantial into a perfect round - cornered foursquare of 21st century computation .
Grabbing attention in this revision is the price dip of the unveiling - level model , from 2012 ’s £ 499 to a novel David Low of £ 399 . There are down side of meat though . The Mac miniskirt ’s performance peak has been eroded by striking any quad - core processors from the tilt ; and system memory follows Apple ’s newfangled trend of being solder to the logic control board and can not therefore ever be upgrade at a later date . Check out the Mac mini on Apple ’s World Wide Web store : here .
Also take a look at ourcomplete guide to buying a Mac hereandMac mini versus MacBook Air , which Mac is proficient value
Read :
Mac mini (Late 2014): build different
The Mac miniskirt ( Late 2014 ) has two rather than one Thunderbolt port , these now up to version 2 stipulation . But in the process it has fall back its FireWire 800 connection . If you need FireWire there is an adaptor uncommitted ( £ 25 ) although we note from Apple Store client feedback that this has its own military issue with some peripherals that otherwise work fine with a aboriginal FireWire port .
The Wi - Fi card at heart has been upgraded to 802.11ac , and with the help of the miniskirt ’s three - antennae form is capable of wireless sync speed up to 1300 Mb / s ( with veridical data point throughput typically up to around half this fastness ) .
Mac mini (Late 2014): storage wars
For storage , the Mac mini still comes in 500 and 1000 GB laborious - disk configurations , with the same additional Fusion Drive and SSD - only options , the latter now up to 1 TB Flash Drive for just the top 2.8 GHz CPU exemplar .
Since the optical drive was stripped from the Unibody chassis with the mid-2011 refresh , the Mac mini has had space for two 2.5 in SATA drive inside . That ’s still the case , although there ’s only one SATA connector on the logic display board now , since the Fusion or Flash Drive models now work on with PCIe - attached whole - nation drive .
Read about why we recommend youget a Fusion Drive .
That ’s great word for performance . Apple ’s PCIe - tie New York minute drives are close to twice as fast as those available to Windows PCs , which still uniformly swear on the SATA Revision 3 bus protocol . However even now , more than a year after Apple ’s PCIe - fond regard technology was introduced with 2013 ’s MacBook Air , there is still no third - party manufacturer able-bodied to make a drop - in surrogate to kick upstairs electrical capacity . So DIYers looking to make a dual - drive Mac mini out of a individual - drive purchase will be out of chance .
When it comes to on - board information computer memory , the 500 GB SATA disk should be more than enough in capacity for many people , if prominently short of élan when it comes to organisation responsiveness compared to , say , the MacBook Air .
We ’re also looked at the new Retina iMac recently , here ’s ourApple iMac with Retina 5 K display review
Mac mini (Late 2014): getting inside and updating the disk drive
you may still upgrade the disk private road yourself , or find a competent technician to do the problem – once you get past Apple ’s tamperproof piece of tail on the underside .
The blackened charge card ‘ lid ’ still come off easily enough , but behind that , instead of the inviting innards of yore , there ’s now an sharpness - to - border round steel bulkhead in place , seal down with Torx T6 T security department screw . Get passed these and you ’ll be able to swap the home magnetic disk for something much faster , such as a SATA Revision 3 SSD from the likes of Kingston , Crucial or Samsung .
Soldered memory is perhaps the campaign of most torture among users with recent Mac models , since it intend you ’re expected to anticipate the amount of memory you ’ll need for the life-time of the product at the time of purchase ; and moreover because you have to pay Apple ’s high-flown prices for SDRAM .
Take the debut - tier £ 399 Mac miniskirt we try here as an example . This is establish with 4 GB of retention , and to double that to 8 GB will cost you £ 80 from Apple .
For the old propagation , an 8 GB upgrade outfit is usable from Crucial , presently selling for £ 61 . So the going third - company route save you just £ 19 here .
The dispute becomes more troubling at the next size jump . To make a 16 GB Mac mini , Apple charges £ 240 on top of the standard 4 GB model ’s price . bend to the Crucial UK internet site , it presently charges £ 123.59 for its 2 x 8 GB memory kit of DDR3 PC3 - 12800 RAM . And this is where Apple get the uncollectible imperativeness , for its near-100 pct markup on other retail merchant ’ prices .
If you elect for the middle Mac mini model ( 2.6 gigahertz , £ 599 ) or top ( 2.8 GHz , £ 799 ) , you ’ll already recover 8 GB memory solder in spot . To configure either of these with 16 GB cost an extra £ 160 at time of leverage .
For the previous generation , to upgrade to 16 GB still costs £ 123.59 even if you had 8 GB already installed with the typical 2 x 4 GB arrangement ) , so the Apple markup over the independent memory - seller option is reduced to only around £ 36 here .
If you have a Mac that you may update you may be interested in reading aboutthe best solid - state storage for Mac upgrades .
Mac mini (Late 2014): lab results
There ’s now a very wide range of processor clock speeds offer for the Mac mini , from the tinny model ’s 1.4 GHz Core i5 to a CTO model with 3.0 GHz Core i7 .
We tested just the flash model here with its MacBook Air - vogue 1.4 gigahertz dual - essence central processing unit . We do n’t have carrying out results for the submission manikin of 2012 with its twofold - centre 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 C.P.U. and Intel HD Graphics 4000 graphic . But we did find that the newfangled Mac mini ’s central processing unit and graphics carrying out was unsurprisingly closemouthed to that of the current MacBook Air compass , which takes the same Intel chipset .
In fact the introduction - level 2014 Mac mini has much more in coarse with the debut - level 2014 iMac , since they share the same Intel scrap and slow 2.5 in notebook hard disk .
The Geekbench 3 mainframe / memory test rated this Mac mini with 2803 and 5401 points , for single- and multi - core speed respectively .
When we quiz the 21.5 - inch iMac in the beginning this class , it score 2838 and 5464 points respectively . The circa-1 percentage divergence in outcome is insignificant and as easily explain by the wholly new OS X revise of 10.10 on the Mac miniskirt against 10.9 on the iMac .
For comparison , the ‘ halfway ’ modelMac miniskirt of 2012had a 2.3 GHz quadriceps - core i5 CPU , and scored 2966 item in individual - Congress of Racial Equality tests ( a little bite faster , just under 6 percent for the statisticians ) . And in multi - core mode it scored 11752 point , which can be written as 218 percent faster .
How much the top - spec Mac mini of 2014 may shack the top - spec Mac miniskirt of 2012 stay to be fancy .
In the Cinebench tests we also see the same kind of performance figures as the iMac ( Mid-2014 , 21.5 - inch ) . Version 11.5 of the CPU psychometric test rank the Mac mini with 1.1 and 2.49 point ( versus 1.13 and 2.58 for the iMac ) . Version 15 scored the Mac mini with 97 and 236 point ( 98 and 240 points iMac ) .
Mac mini (Late 2014): graphics & gaming
Graphics tests also showed the same kind of performance as the entry - level iMac , with both machine relying solely on Intel HD Graphics 5000 within the Core i5 processor . Cinebench diddle at 22 and 23.1 fps for reading 11.5 and 15 of Cinebench , with the latter upshot around 1.5 Federal Protective Service faster than the iMac – which again could be explained by revisions in the core group O .
gambling , we found , is not really viable for the Mac mini unless you play old games and/or plough down TV calibre to very low preferences .
Feral’sBatman : Arkham Citycould average 31 Federal Protective Service when coiffe to 1280 x 720 pixels and Medium quality , albeit with minima at 15 fps which would be detectable as stutter in gameplay .
Tomb Raider 2013uses the late OpenGL 4.1 API which seems to ask much more horsepower to lam swimmingly , in this secret plan at least . At 1280 x 720 sieve resolution and Low detail preferences , the Mac mini muster just 19.4 fps . step up to Normal quality lowered framerate further to 15.8 fps .
We switch the game to Legacy OpenGL modality , where it then returned framerates of 34.5 and 24.4 Federal Protective Service for otherwise exactly the same configuration . With no obvious difference in hand over quality to our eyes , this pinch makes the game a more viable option on this Mac .
Power consumption figures have been reduced , as you may expect from not just a slower CPU clock , but a change from Ivy Bridge to Haswell multiplication Si . This alteration introduced Intel ’s ulterior FinFET ‘ three-D ’ transistors , along with legion other power - efficiency adjustments to better shelling thriftiness in the laptop computer and roving calculation age .
The last time we measured a Mac miniskirt it was pull just 10 W of power from the mains when at the out of work desktop . Today ’s most affordable Mac mini was found to have just 5 double-u requirements , rising to a maximum of 40 W when running flat out . That human body of 5 W is startlingly down , another authoritative check in the miniskirt ’s pros number .
Verdict
The entry - level Mac mini at £ 399 is effectively the most low-cost Macintosh ever sold in the computer line ’s 30 - year history . Yes , the PowerPC G4 version of 2005 started at just £ 329 in this body politic , but adjusted for inflation that ’s closer to £ 429 in today ’s money . What you get today is a the right way fast mini background PC using an older hard disk for reposition but which is in every other way justly up to date ; bleeding boundary in fact when you consider just how far ahead of the vast majority of Windows hopeful are its wireless and Thunderbolt credentials . For the cheesy model peculiarly where a buyer is looking to keep initial cost down , our only complaint is the lifetime computer memory sentence . This means a bump to 8 GB for £ 80 on pay day is almost mandatory , if you want to futurity - proof the little marvel for several years to come . Storage , for today at least , can still be upgraded with care .
