Apple Mac mini Review (Mid 2010)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 9, 2010 3:37 AM ESTFinal Words
The role of the Mac mini has changed dramatically over the past five years. What once was a way for Apple to tempt users into trying OS X is now a fairly expensive, niche Mac. As an HTPC the new Mac mini is great. It works just as well as any of the ION boxes we've reviewed while using less power and offering better performance. The only problem, outside of lacking Blu-ray support, is that it is a very expensive HTPC without offering the higher end HTPC features (e.g. TrueHD/DTS-HD MA bitstreaming). The $699 price tag makes the mini an expensive standalone HTPC, you either need to really be in love with the styling or have an additional use for the machine in order to get your money's worth. That being said, on the used market down the road, these things might not be too bad.
The design of the new Mac mini is very nice. While it's miles ahead of anything else I've used that's similar in size, the impact is somehow less pronounced. Five years ago getting any manufacutrer to make a stylish box the size of the mini was difficult. These days we have things like the Zotac ZBOX or even the Dell Zino HD. They aren't quite as stylish or as well thought out as the mini, but they aren't that far off. The mini just isn't as revolutionary as it once was, which does dampen some of the excitement. That being said, it's still impressive - there's just more competition out now.
Power consumption of the new Mac mini is excellent. You get better-than-ION power characteristics but without sacrificing CPU performance. The Mac mini idles below 10W and full load isn't much higher at 30W. Typical power usage for the whole system is usually less than 20W. Apple achieved this through a combination of OS optimizations and careful hardware selection.
By using notebook components the Mac mini manages to fit in a very compact chassis, which creates one issue: HDD performance. The system ships with a 2.5" 5400RPM notebook drive and only 2GB of memory. Swapping to disk isn't uncommon if you're running an application with a large enough footprint, or if you've got several applications loaded at once. For $699 Apple really should outfit the Mac mini with 4GB of memory, and eventually I'd still like to see SSDs top to bottom in all Macs.
Overall system performance is sufficient for most entry level users. While the new Mac mini is fast enough to replace an aging Power Mac G5, don't expect a performance boost if you're upgrading from anything in the past couple of years.
The pricing is by far the biggest issue here. Even with an upgrade to 4GB, the Mac mini is still the cheapest way to legally get a machine with OS X. Although the mini is fast enough, I would've liked to have a Core i5 in there instead of the aging Core 2 Duo. Apple insists on putting more dollars towards GPUs than traditional PC vendors, presumably for some major application rollout in the coming years with hefty GPU requirements. With no DMI/QPI enabled NVIDIA chipsets, Apple is either going to have to increase the physical size of many of its products to transition to newer Intel CPUs with 3rd party GPUs or live with Intel/AMD integrated graphics going forward. I'm very curious to see how this plays out over the next 12 - 18 months.
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DaveGirard - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 - link
seriously - I use a Mac Pro Nehalem for Maya and if I had to build a network of headless slaves, this would be an expensive and underperforming option. You could make a vanilla i7 for less and it would destroy this machine for rendering. Nice to see this is a great mini server/HTPC but it's not for performance.name99 - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 - link
Why would you engage in such a stupid enterprise?Apple is NOT selling you a bunch of MIPs here at the lowest possible cost. They are selling you a device that runs MacOSX, with IO options adequate for most users, that is low power and small.
If you do not need any of these capabilities, then buying such a computer is stupid.
Or, to put it another, don't buy a package of, what, 10GFlops AND a reasonable quality GPU AND two video ports AND FW8000 AND OSX AND a small form factor, and then complain that the package costs more than this other package consisting of 10GFlops and nothing else.
But if this device meets your needs, it's great --- I got a previous gen mini for HTPC, and it does what it is meant to do, at a price I found acceptable.
JAS - Monday, August 9, 2010 - link
I bought one of these to run a public kiosk display (Apple Keynote program on a loop). Beyond its good looks, the new Mac Mini provides more than enough horsepower for what most "normal" people use computers for -- web browsers, media playback, e-mail, word processing and so forth. I like how access to the RAM has been made easy and the addition of the HDMI and SD connectors.My only significant criticism of the new Mac Mini is its retail price. It ought to be $50 to $100 less to be considered an "entry level" Macintosh.
nafhan - Monday, August 9, 2010 - link
I agree from a computing aspect, but it really ought to be about $200 - $300 less to be considered a good computer for the average home user. Especially since they will have to spring another $100+ for a monitor/mouse/keyboard right off the bat.Steve W - Monday, August 9, 2010 - link
The idea behind the Mac Mini is that you DON'T have to spring for a "monitor/mouse/keyboard" if you are the average switcher. If you need a monitor, then the iMac is a better buy.Ratman6161 - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 - link
Given that it does not come with those items? The only way you would not need them is if you just happened to already have them. But if you were buying this as a second computer etc that might not be the case.tipoo - Friday, September 10, 2010 - link
Exactly. Once you add a monitor, keyboard and mouse into the price, you are into iMac price territory, and the iMac is still alot faster.LtGoonRush - Monday, August 9, 2010 - link
I don't understand why 7200rpm 2.5" HDDs aren't more popular. The cost difference isn't very large, on a 320GB drive it only amounts to $5. The performance difference isn't Earth-shattering, but given the price of the system it seems hard to justify cutting this corner, along with shaving off 2GB of RAM as called out in the review.Minion4Hire - Monday, August 9, 2010 - link
I've heard both power and noise concerns given as reasons (besides cost as you mentioned) why 7200s aren't as popular. Both are pretty minor, but those are valid reasons.Shark Tek - Monday, August 9, 2010 - link
The main reason of why they aren't popular is a very valid one.HEAT...
A good example is one about the PS3 HD upgrade. They recommend 5400rpm disks due to problems of overheating using a faster one.