The IT Nerd

There’s a bit of a story behind this Mac mini that I’ve been using for about two weeks now. Which is that I was planning on replacing a rather large PC that I had been using for the online cycling platform Zwift for some time with something a lot smaller and more efficient. But I was planning to hold out for the M3 Mac mini models that are sure to appear seeing as the M2 models have been out for over a year (Exactly 454 days as of the day that this review was posted). But what forced my hand was the fact that my 16″ MacBook Pro started to have keyboard issues. Again. Since I can’t afford to be without a computer as I have a business to run, this forced my hand into buying this Mac mini. Since I knew that it was possible that this could be replaced at any time by something faster, I went the route of buying it from the Apple Refurbished Store. That saved me $260 CDN and as I described here and it’s still eligible for AppleCare which I did buy as well. So once I had it in my hands, I transferred my data and applications to it from my MacBook Pro, took the MacBook Pro in for repair at The Apple Store and carried on running my business. Then when I got the MacBook Pro back (And for the record The Apple Store replaced a top case which includes the keyboard and battery along with a trackpad and got it back to me ten calendar days later), I moved my data back the MacBook Pro and factory reset the Mac mini so that I could repurpose it as my Zwift computer.

With the backstory out of the way, let’s start this review by describing which Mac mini I got:

• M2 Pro processor with a 10-Core CPU (6 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores) and a 16-Core GPU
• 16 GB RAM
• 512 GB Storage
• 16-core Neural Engine
• Four Thunderbolt 4 ports
• Two USB-A ports
• HDMI 2.1 port
• Gigabit Ethernet
• Headphone jack
• WiFi 6E
• Bluetooth 5.3

This is one of the higher end models as the Mac mini starts at $799 CDN. But for that price you get an M2 processor with 8GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. To be frank, Apple’s base models are pretty useless because 8GB of RAM isn’t nearly enough for most people, and 256 GB of storage is slower than their higher tiers of storage on top of not being enough storage for most people. Which is why I skipped the base model (And you should too). Plus I wanted a more powerful processor for Zwift. Which is why I went to the M2 Pro and not the M2. I should also note that Apple has another version of this M2 Pro model that comes with 2 extra CPU cores and 3 extra GPU cores for $379 CDN more. But I didn’t see that on the refurbished store. Which is why I went with this one instead. Here’s a look at the Mac mini:

It’s a pretty small and light computer as the general design of the computer hasn’t changed since they introduced them in 2005. You could easily pop it into a backpack and take it with you if you wanted to and have space left over. It’s also a bit of a fingerprint magnet as you can see. That’s a side effect of the recycled aluminum that they use for the chassis. Though as you will see, the back end of the computer is just as much of a fingerprint magnet:

Here you see the gigabit ethernet jack, 4 Thunderbolt ports, the HDMI port, the two USB-A ports, and the oddly placed headphone jack which in my opinion should be on the front as it’s not all that accessible. Though you could also make an argument that it’s fine on the back because you’ll need to plug in a quality set of speakers into it as the built in speaker isn’t all that good to be frank. It has a decent sized vent, though in the two weeks that I’ve been using it, I’ve never felt any significant amounts air hot air coming out of it, nor have I heard the fans spin up. It’s been silent. I guess that also means that I clearly don’t push the computer hard enough. Speaking of pushing, this Mac mini moves very easily on your desk. As it slides about when you try to plug literally anything into it if you don’t hold it steady. It could use some rubber feet on the bottom to stop that from happening because if you plug a lot of stuff into this Mac, that will be something that will annoy you very quickly.

Now, another one of the reasons why I was sitting on the sidelines for the M3 models of the Mac mini is that on paper, the M2 processors really don’t have that much of a performance gain over the M1 processors. Though as you will also see, that’s an overly simplistic view of what the M2 is capable of. Let me illustrate that with some Geekbench tests. I’ll start with using my M1 MacBook Pro with these specs as a point of comparison:

• M1 Pro with 10-core CPU (8 performance cores and 2 efficiency cores), 16-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine
• 1TB storage
• 32GB of RAM

As you can see they have the same amount of CPU and GPU cores, along with the same number of cores for the neural engine. Thus this is as fair of a comparison that you could possibly get. Let’s start with what the scores are for the M1 Pro CPU cores in my MacBook Pro:

And now, let’s look at the M2 Pro In my Mac mini:

The single core score is a bit higher. But the multi-core score is basically the same. Thus there’s no difference right? Well, not so fast. At first glance these scores would suggest that Apple didn’t spend a whole lot of time to make the CPU faster. But keep in mind that the M1 Pro has 8 performance cores and 2 efficiency cores. And the M2 Pro has 6 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores. That suggests to me that Apple made this M2 Pro more efficient by swapping two performance cores for two efficiency cores, and then tweaking all the cores to allow the CPU to put out the same level of compute power as the M1 Pro. Or to use a car analogy, Apple basically went from using a V6 engine that puts out 300 HP to a turbocharged 4 cylinder engine that consumes less gas and puts out 300 HP. Apple likely did this to save on power consumption for portable computer use without sacrificing speed. It also explains why the Mac mini did not “feel” any faster than my MacBook Pro when I used it to run my business.

Now let’s look at the Metal score. That’s important as Zwift uses Apple’s Metal graphics API to render graphics on the screen. Again, let’s start with the M1 Pro GPU in my MacBook Pro:

Now over to the M2 Pro in the Mac mini:

Now there’s a bit more of a difference. Clearly Apple invested some time to make the graphics a bit faster in the M2 Pro.

So if you take the GPU and CPU scores into account, and also take into account that there was no M1 Pro version of the Mac mini, that would suggest that this would be an upgrade path for someone with an M1 Mac mini who wants a faster Mac mini. Or this would be the computer to pick if you are coming to the Mac mini from a PC for example, and you wanted a small desktop computer that has healthy amounts of compute power. While at the same time not spending Mac Studio kind of money.

But the real question is, how does this run Zwift as that was the point of the whole exercise? Well, let me get something out of the way. Zwift on the Mac platform limits the level of detail of the graphics that the game displays for reasons that I don’t understand to what they term as “high” graphics detail which is their second highest tier of graphics quality (“Ultra” is the highest that you can go on the PC side of the fence which is visually sharper than “high”, but you have to look for the differences between the two. And you need some serious hardware to run Zwift at that level. As in an RTX 3090 for example). But they do let you run it at up to 4K resolution. So what I did was some frame rate tests at 4K and my results are as follows:

• The maximum frame rate that I recorded was 121 FPS
• The average frame rates were between 87 and 101 FPS based on recording the average frame rate over 10 different one hour rides.

In terms of what “high” graphics quality looks like on Zwift at 4K, here’s a couple of quick video clips where I set a couple of PR’s in a couple of sprint segments while I was doing a training session:

The graphic quality is good and there’s nothing to complain about here. But you have to wonder what you would get if you could unlock the “ultra” setting on a Mac. I say that because I was monitoring CPU and GPU performance and there was headroom to spare on both fronts. Which means that Zwift can look better than it does now if they chose to take advantage of the hardware on offer to the application. As for how that compares to the PC that I was replacing? Well, first of all, you can find the specs for the PC in question here, but average frame rates tended be between 59 – 66 FPS. And I’ve never recorded anything past 67 FPS as a maximum frame rate. All of that was on the “ultra” setting at 4K. If I throttled it back to “high” I likely would have gotten better frame rates. But I think you see the point here. Which is this tiny computer has enough power to run whatever you need, in my case Zwift, without breaking a sweat. And it can do it better than some PCs.

One final observation is that WiFi on this computer is faster than the WiFi that’s part of the M1 Pro chip. How Much faster? How about 150 Mbps upstream and downstream in testing on my WiFi network? That’s not a trivial amount. And keep in mind that I have WiFi 6 here in my condo. That means that you get a bit of an upgrade in terms of WiFi performance that you may actually notice depending on what WiFi hardware you own and what you’re doing. For example you won’t notice this streaming Netflix. But I tripped over this speed difference by doing a Time Machine backup and noticing that the backups went somewhat faster versus a Time Machine backup on my MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro. I attribute this speed increase in part to the fact that the M2 Pro’s WiFi support can do up to 2400 Mbps which is twice what the M1 Pro can do. And clearly that speed increase isn’t just a WiFi 6E thing.

Gripes? The only gripes that I have are the usual ones that I have about Apple computers. They are not cheap (Though to be fair, you could make an argument that the Mac mini has the performance of a 14″ or 16″ M2 Pro MacBook Pro at a lower price point). You can’t upgrade them after the purchase which forces you to perhaps buy more computer than you need in order to increase the longevity of said computer. And the base models suck performance wise which means nobody should ever buy them. Other than that, there’s really nothing negative that I have to say.

Let’s get down the price. This specific Mac mini variant is $1699 CDN. Though I paid $1439 via the Apple Refurbished Store, which is how I would suggest that you acquire one of these computers if you have a use case for it. I say that because I fully expect it to be replaced with an M3 model or even an M4 model at any time over the next few months. One thing to keep in mind is that the Mac mini doesn’t come with a keyboard or mouse, and you’ll need to source a monitor as well. So you’ll have to factor that into the purchase price if you don’t have a spare monitor, keyboard and mouse lying around. Having said all of that, this is a good way to get a desktop Mac and it’s worth a look if this Mac fits your needs. Just skip the base model.

This entry was posted on April 15, 2024 at 9:00 am and is filed under Products with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.