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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
93 Comments
View All Comments
MonkeyPaw - Monday, August 9, 2010 - link
I don't understand why it has to keep getting smaller and smaller. The original Mini is by no means a monster. I remember setting an old FX5900 on my old G4 mini, and I laughed that the card stuck out about 2" on each side.I guess my point is that I would have rather seen Apple boost the specs all around as opposed to shrinking the package (and raising the price). Apple continues to miss the boat (at least my boat, anyway) when it comes to price/features. I just don't think Apple cares about market share. They want to continue to sell overpriced items to a smaller audience. I guess that's fine, as they seem to make nice profits doing so. But the original Mini made me buy my first mac, and eventually I bought an iBook and a dual-G5. The dual G5 became mysteriously crash-happy, and I haven't been back since. Appke just can't draw me back in yet, not with this price/product.
thunng8 - Thursday, August 12, 2010 - link
That is not correct anymore these days. Modern 7200rpm 2.5" hard drives are only marginally hotter than the 5400rpm variety. It would make no difference in a mac mini enclosure.woutersamaey - Monday, August 9, 2010 - link
It would've been nice to read more on the Mac Mini with Mac OS X Server. To my opinion, it looks like an interesting SOHO server. It has faster (2 of them) 7200 rpm disks and 4 GB of RAM.solipsism - Monday, August 9, 2010 - link
Anand wrote, "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.”There is plenty of space when they remove the ODD. It’s obvious they aren’t going to move to Blu-ray if they haven’t in August 2010 and haven’t even added AACS to Mac OS X.
The ODD is large, slow, prone to breaking and goes unused by most consumers these days. To put it into perspective takes up 25% of the 13” MB/MBP footprint, as well as 5” of port-side space which all Mac notebooks could use.
On top of that, there is no 9.5mm Ultra-Slim Slot-Loading BRD that would be feasible for the needs of a company obsessed with thin.
Honestly, Anand, if they haven’t added AACS to Mac OS X, added the option to their Mac Pros with full-sized ODDs, and left their optical disc authoring apps to rot why would you even expect this to arrive in such a svelte machine as the Mac Mini.
Ratman6161 - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 - link
...because that isn't what this system uses. Take a look at the page in the review where they show pictures of the system torn down and talk about the Nvidia GeForce 320M and go on to say "The 320M has the graphics, memory controller, SATA controller, PCIe and USB interfaces. " The 320M seems to be a common part on Windows based laptops so it's nothing special - but it isn't Intel.larson0699 - Wednesday, August 11, 2010 - link
@solipsism: The new mini also has a server edition ($1k, apple.com/macmini/server), 2 HDD, no ODD, though none of that open vertical space helps the limited real estate of the motherboard itself.@Ratman6161: As far as I can tell, only Apple has used the GeForce 320M thus far -- you may have mistaken that for the GeForce GT 320M, the former being an IGP and the latter a discrete GPU. Notebookcheck is a great place to compare mobile GPUs by specs, 3DMark scores, and their uses among OEMs, and that's where I learned of the similarly named IGP.
mschira - Monday, August 9, 2010 - link
How does the Mac mini fare with a contemporary medium demading game, such as Starcraft 2?Best
M.
jabber - Monday, August 9, 2010 - link
For that price and application I would want a BD drive in it.I mean a BD drive would be what? An extra $50 (real world price) bu then the Apple price would be an extra $200.
Hmmmm.
Johnmcl7 - Wednesday, August 11, 2010 - link
Not just the cost but also a threat to streaming HD content from Itunes which seems to be another reason for not having blu-ray according to Steve Jobs.I agree with you though hence I bought a Dell Studio Hybrid which is a very similar machine in that it uses laptop component but it also has a blu-ray drive - I'm surprised it didn't get a mention at all in the article.
John
PrincePickle - Monday, August 9, 2010 - link
At least Apple is concentraiting on bringing decent GPU's to their lineups. The industry as a whole has been slacking with educating consumers on the benifits of discrete GPU's.