8GB of memory was a huge bottleneck for my video-centric workflow in previous Apple Silicon Mac minis, so having 16GB as the baseline in the M2 Pro version lends some much-needed breathing room. The M2 Pro starts with 16GB of memory and can be customized with up to 32GB for $400 more. Like the M1 Mac mini, the M2 Mac mini features 8GB of memory in its base configuration with up to 24GB configurable in build-to-order specs. This means that you’ll be able to connect more high-performance devices, such as OWC’s Thunderblade SSDs, which require lots of bandwidth. Having four Thunderbolt ports not only means that you can connect more physical devices to the Mac mini with M2 Pro, but it also features more Thunderbolt bandwidth, as each port is paired to its own dedicated bus. While the baseline M2 Mac mini again sports just two Thunderbolt 4 ports, the M2 Pro version has four. So when the M1 Mac mini launched in 2020 with just two Thunderbolt 3 ports, I considered it to be a downgrade of sorts. The M2 upgrades make the Mac mini, especially if you decide to configure an 8TB SSD, an ideal candidate for such a workflow! 4 x Thunderbolt 4 portsīack when the 2018 Intel Mac mini refresh launched, I labeled it as the most versatile Mac in existence, and its four Thunderbolt ports played a major role in its gaining that designation. If you have a Canon R5 or R5C and pair it with an Atomos Ninja V+, you’ll be able to record 8K ProRes RAW files directly to an external SSD. The result is a much smoother and usable experience when working with 8K ProRes. This allows the CPU to handle other functionality, such as rending Finder windows, multitasking, etc. Instead of it doing the heavy lifting, the dedicated ProRes accelerators do the job instead. On the M2 and M2 Pro, I can playback ProRes video, and you’ll notice that the CPU stays relatively quiet. Because the M1 Machines don’t have enough cores to throw at the problem, it causes the whole machine to slow down, which affects productivity. ![]() What does this actually mean, though? It means that when I try to playback an 8K ProRes clip on an M1 machine like the iMac, the CPU does all of the heavy lifting, instead of dedicated hardware accelerators. One of the biggest differences that I noticed is with ProRes performance, and this shouldn’t be a surprise given the fact that the M2 series of chips features ProRes acceleration for 8K video. ![]() That means that even the baseline M2 gets features that were previously exclusive to the higher-specced M1 chips that weren’t available to configure on the prior Mac mini. The M2 chips – even the standard M2 – builds on this foundation by providing a higher-bandwidth video decode engine that supports 8K H.264 and HEVC, and hardware-acceleration for both ProRes and ProRes RAW up to 8K. The M2 Pro also provides an additional 6 GPU cores over the baseline M2 machine for a total of 16 GPU cores - double the amount of GPU cores found on the M1 Mac mini from 2020.įor video editors, especially those working with ubiquitous H.265 video, the M1 chip with its hardware-acceleration for HEVC, provided a huge performance boost, and made it viable to edit video on the Mac mini. The M2 Pro version gives the Mac mini CPU two additional performance cores, in addition to its four efficiency cores, for a total of 10 cores. The idea of editing video, playing games, or doing any other graphics-intense operation on a standalone Intel Mac mini was a downright laughable concept, but Apple Silicon changed the game.Īpple’s M2 system-on-a-chip provides a modest bump over the original M1 Mac mini, while the M2 Pro provides an even more noticeable performance leap. Subscribe to 9to5mac on YouTube for more videos M2 Pro chip Video walkthrough: Hands-on with the M2 Pro Mac mini Coupled with the monitor arm that I have paired with the Pro Display XDR, the Mac mini enhances my minimalistic desktop working environment. I personally like to mount my Mac mini under my desk using an inexpensive mount that I purchased on Amazon. It’s less than half the size of a Mac Studio, doesn’t feature a built-in display, and can be placed pretty much anywhere – on a desktop, mounted under a desk, on the back of a monitor, on a wall, etc. One of the most appealing aspects of the Mac mini is its flexibility. Watch my hands-on experience with Apple’s diminutive beast, and be sure to subscribe to 9to5Mac on YouTube for more hands-on videos. Apple Silicon has totally changed the game in that respect, and that’s further emphasized with the Mac mini featuring M2 Pro. In the past, you could have a small footprint, or you could have high performance, but you couldn’t have both. Back in the Intel days, the Mac mini’s small stature resulted in huge performance tradeoffs.
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