Got the base with the 512. Now usually I’m a get the top of the line model, but it’s actually plenty for what I do. Although literally 3 minutes before watching this video I was thinking “should I get the pro instead?”
I opted for the base M4 Mac mini, and still have 176GB of local storage. I'm using a 2TB NVME external drive, which I formatted exFAT so that I can use it with different devices and platforms.
same here , base model with studunt discount from a junior, and 2tb nvme with acasis enclosure, mostly use fcp and capcut no problem at all (40 days)
I get your reason, but exFAT is considerably slower than APFS, and lacks many of its features. Some Mac Apps refuse to run from exFAT disks, for example. I have formatted my external 2TB NVME to APFS, so it is 100% compatible for everything, and I am using an older 256GB SSD formatted to exFAT for things I need on multiple OSes.
@@mojojojo1529 I use exFAT, despite its limitations, because both Mac and Windows can read/write to it. That allows me to store everything, including downloaded applications for both platforms, but I don't try to run the apps from the external drive. I do this for worse case scenarios where I have to reinstall everything to a computer. Some of my apps are very old, like my Photoshop CS2 program exe., and not available for download on the Adobe site anymore. But it's still useful for my purposes so I keep a backup copy.
@@mojojojo1529 I tried APFS for my iPhone 15 to record video on ProRes format externally but it didn't work. So I formatted to ExFat and my iPhone 15 Pro Max recognized it right away.
Whilst from the outside as a Mac owner not having bought one of these, I can see the headline figure of £599 being ok for the majority, it's the same old problem since Apple Silicon came into being, the outrageous incremental upgrade costs. If you add too much to the base model, you're knocking on the door of the Mac Mini Pro. If you do the same with Pro, you're not far off the Studio Max M2. When the Studio Max M4 comes next year, that price vs performance difference will probably be even more acute, making the Studio Max M4 the better buy. Apple are kind of killing their own sales in one sense as indecision leads to someone not buying, waiting for the next big thing, and going round in a loop.
@@stephenvalente3296 For the Mini, which isn’t likely to be moved often, external drives are not a huge compromise, though RAM upgrade pricing is a pretty huge con for myself. For a MacBook on the other hand (my laptop is my mobile do-everything machine), the up-charge on storage pricing is a total deal breaker.
If you are getting a fast M.2 drive make sure you get an enclosure that is faster than 10Gbps. ACASIS and a couple others have 40Gbps enclosures. There is a Thunderbolt 5 enclosure with an integrated hub that’s supposed to come out soon.
I think what some people have done is that before signing into iCloud and setting up their profile, they move their user home folder to the external drive. I think that might resolve the home assistant issue, but that's a big and messy task after things have been set up. Just make sure to add a second admin account that stays on local storage
Regarding the storage and apps off of the internal SSD 1. If you use a good bus powered SSD enclosure, it should boot as soon as the computer is on no issue, but some apps still do behave weird when in an external drive. 2. If you upgrade from spotlight to raycast, you can add an external folder to the “app search” 3. USB 4 NVME enclosures are more expensive but they perform faster than the internal Mac SSDs too, so it’s a great additional storage option too
upgrading the internal ssd is the biggest waste of money imaginable for macs, unless you're one of those people who won't just buy an external drive or diy external nvme
I bought 24 gig and 256 gig model because I run two monitors and have lots of app open at any given time. Got 2tb samsung t7 and it's been really good so far.
I’m going to go for your second Mac-mini option. The M4 Pro with SSD upgrade to 1TB. I like the idea of more storage in the device itself. I have an NAS, but it was so difficult for me, of limited knowledge, to set up, I cannot say I like it very much as I was mainly looking for solid redundancy rather than sheer volume of memory. I do use Backblaze! Now, in reality, I’m not getting anything just yet, as I do not have a large display, just an older 27inch iMac. I’m hoping for an Apple studio display upgrade early next year.
I have a M1 Mac Studio. Tempted as I was to sell it as soon as this one came out I decided to wait for m4 (or whatever number it is) Mac Studio when it comes out as what I have does everything I need with 32gb memory and 512 ssd and an external drive.
I got a base model. I’ve installed a few apps on the system itself (Adobe suite, Microsoft Office suite, WhatsApp Web, Zoom and a few others. Those apps came to around 60Gb collectively. All media (documents, photos, videos, video project saves etc) are stored on an external hard drive tower. £95 for a Seagate 4Tb. Sorted
Will Home Assistant still work when the Mac is in sleep mode? I am currently running HA in Docker on my Synology DS423+, but this may be a better option.
I set my Mac mini to never sleep. It consumes such little power anyway. I did the same with moving it from my Synology. Mac mini was always on for other things like Plex so it made sense to move it all into one place 👍🏼
Great overview - so good to watch something that isn't finger wagging "you made a mistake, buddy!" kinda thing. On the external SSD speeds - it may depend which model of the mini you buy, base or pro, as to whether an external NVMe drive matches internal. I'm in the process of finding out. (waiting for order to arrive!) I'm fairly sure a 10gbps enclosure is going to struggle to reach the speeds of the mac mini m4 pro internal SSD. That may even be the case with a 40gbps enclosure too - will that be able to match the m4 pro internal SSD? It certainly isn't going to get top speeds on an NVMe with 7400 MB/s read. However, Thunderbolt 5 and a Thunderbolt 5 enclosure will be interesting once they are fully out in the wild, but really only for professional content producers. For most of us it will simply mean quicker copying between drives - e.g. quicker backups. It would be overkill, considering the price that these enclosures will sell for initially, to use them for more trivial tasks. 10gbps would probably be enough for most people, 40gbps for power users perhaps?
The way I see it I have a set of tasks that I do regularly which fit into a performance window. These requirements are essentially limited by the file formats I deal with. Years ago only the top spec machine matched up with that window but over time as the processors get faster and faster that window matches up with a lower and lower tier. At some point the current base models become so capable that it's pointless to spend more unless you want to buy into the "power user" aesthetic. I'd say buy basic machine, forget about which "M" you have and how many cores you have because the numbers are there just to make you feel anxiety when the new model comes out with a bigger number even if what you are doing is only using 7% of your CPU and the software you use isn't programmed to utilize the extra "efficiency cores" anyway. Add on some extra storage and you're good to go.
I went for the base model but added the 512GB storage. I primarily use it for photo editing and keep all my files on an external SSD so only need internal storage for apps. I went for the 512GB to aim off for software bloat in future and thought it might make it better/faster for swap and memory if the Mac needed to. It’s definitely faster than my 2017 Intel MacBook Pro but not eye wateringly so. The bottleneck is probably my Samsung T7 drive but I’ll wait to see what Saetchi produces for an external hub before deciding whether to go for a faster external storage solution.
I bought the Mac Mini when it was $100 off but I won't get it until the first week in January. Worth it for the savings, plus, initial shipments of new products tend to have more bugs. Added 1TB memory and Thunderbolt 4 enclosure. If someone comes out with their own memory upgrade card for the Mac Mini I'll go for it, if it's not too expensive. My only worry about those would be Apple changing something in software/firmware to only accept their own memory cards, in which case I'll keep my eye out for someone dumping a defective Mac Mini but with a memory card still working or a reseller offering one at a good price.
Which usbc / Thunderbolt port do you connect the Mac mini to on the Caldigit Ts4 to? Is it the one labeled 'Computer' even though that provides power for charging? I have a Mac mini on the way for x-mas but don't want to damage it by plugging the TS4 if i get one into the Mac Mini. (Subscribed and liked!)
Hey! I’m connecting HDMI direct from my Mac, and then yeah, using the one marked for computer out of the caldigit. It’s OK as it won’t send power as the ports don’t support it 👍🏼 Enjoy the Christmas present!
Hey Pete, great video, but how did you get the Mini to work with the 57" monitor? I received my M4 Pro Mini yesterday and tried connecting it to my Samsung G9 49" ultrawide and it would not give me the 5120 x 1440 resolution. It would only go up to like 3840. I was even on the phone with Apple support for about an hour and they couldn't figure it out. They told me that the HDMI cable would not support 5K. Any help will be helpful please! Thanks!
Hey! Oh wow that’s strange. I’d make sure you have a 2.1 HDMI cable. Also, try setting the screen itself to 120hz (depending on which model you have, some of them have a toggle in the OSD for 120/240) All 3 of mine work with just a straight HDMI to HDMI cable and get the full native res on the 57” at 120hz
@ the weird thing is that I’m using a 2.1 HDMI cable and only 60hz shows up from. I’m waiting for a USB-C to HDMI/DP cables to come in to see if those work.
Hello Pete , good info, I was wondering if there is any advantage to buying two base M4 Mac mini’s instead of the Mac mini M4 pro or instead of upgrading a base m4 mini? Thanks
What resolution and fps is the mini pro capable of through the Samsung? its a rig a friend of mine is looking to put together and cannot find the answers
Hi not a gamer, he just wants a huge screen and would like to know if the m4 can run the monitor at a high resolution and 120hz plus, he didn’t really need this but would like to use as much as possible.
Yep, it literally says this within Mac / in Mac Photos when you open a library on an SSD it specifically says it won’t bring up results from a library that’s stored on an external drive
Unless I missed it you didn’t mention the option of using an external thunderbolt boot drive instead of paying for the extra internal storage for the Mini Pro - even with Thunderbolt 4 it’s at least as fast as the base internal drive (both in throughput and IOPS) and cheaper and more flexible for upgrade
Just for clarity: when you're talking about your 10 GB ethernet connections, you mentioned having to use proxies. That's like a lower resolution video file, not a networking proxy server, right?
Yeah correct! Still figuring out some kinks but proxies seem to sort it. But also editing direct from the NAS does work sometimes, I need to spend some time working out if it's a network bandwidth thing, disks, or just processing power on the NAS that's busy doing other tasks
I was downloading fairly large music library sample files onto a external drive connected to my MBP. Despite having 1TB on my MBP it was failry full - only around 180GB free - and the download wouldn't start until I had deleted quite a lot of files to make more space on my MBP available. So it seems that even using an external drive isn't a perfect solution because the files still have to pass through the Mac. Maybe I was doing something wrong
This. Instead, you upgrade to the lastest base model more frequently. That way, you keep your resales loss minimal when the next generation of hardware comes along.
What I really would be interested in is the difference in powerconsumption of this models. Could you please provide a comparsion of that? Maybe somthing like in idel mode and with home assistant running in the background. That would be so great 😍
Depends on your use case. If you have a 10Gb network and want to transfer files quickly to a NAS or another 10Gb connected device, then yes. Otherwise no! Also I know some places can get 2.5Gb internet, so that’s worth considering upgrading if you want to get the full speed
So, if I want to keep my Mac mini for a long time is choosing the normal Mac mini with 512gb and 24 ram overkill? Bc I feel like memory storage will add over time with my photo and videos. Especially when I transfer or edit light stuff and as a casual user.
actually you don't need more than 16 gb of ram to work with that mini m4, but what will happen when apple intelligence will be implemented into Mac OS Sequoia?
The good news, 16Gbyte is standard. No more "Apple says that 8Gbyte is more then enough and Apple 8Gbyte equals windows 16Gbyte" But yes they still ask $200 for a 8Gbyte upgrade????
I'm so happy being a big box PC guy. I want more storage, I buy it and install. I want more RAM I buy it, though already maxed out 😃 New GPU, new whatever, no probs
I just hate the term "Future Proofing"...Ive been a commercial photographer for over a decade and thats the biggest lie camera companies sell you. More megapixels...trust me, next year there will be a new Mac for maybe less money and we'll buy that and forget about that "Future Proofed" item we bought the year before. Remember the "Trashcan"?? I bought two specced out units along with that Sharp PNK321 monitor they sold as a match for lots of $$. That went over like a f@rt in church. Buy what you can afford. Make it work for you until the next big thing comes along.
The base model is the one to get with no upgrades out of the box. Someone will make a thunderbolt dock base with nvme in it for $100ish and out of warranty when the M5 launches, ill upgerade the internal storage to 2TB on the cheap (might even post in the board and get it back resoldered with 2TB) and it will be good for years to come! If I was to spend more the PRO base model was the BUY but by the time the M5 is out, the $$$ might mean its just better to upgrade as current storage options apple upsell is THEFT and it cant continue!
I mean, how is 'I'm not subscribing because RUclipsrs make money' even an argument? That's like 'I'm not going to pay for stuff in McDonald's/Tesco/Sainsbury's because they exist to make profits so I'll nick it instead'.
Still MAJOR FAIL on Apple's part of not making the starting unified memory starting point of 24GB..... "Fight the swap!!!". If all the base chips start at this level how much more does it cost to produce this SOC?
for me, memory is not really an issue. but as someone who needs to install a lot of audio software on the internal disk, a 512gb SSD in 2024 is just laughable.
16 GB memory is enough for anyone less than a "pro user" - aka normies and pro-sumers who edit videos and photos, dabble in coding and music production. You only need 24 GB and above if you edit 8K (bitrate equivalent) footage constantly, do 3D modeling or business photo shooting, and run personal LLMs, in which case you'll probably need a M4 pro computer to begin with.
As a power user I'm almost always constantly maxing out my 64gb of ram/memory on my mac M1 MAX. As a digital marketing freelancer I have to switch between multiple projects (3-5 at any given time). Each project has four or more spaces/chrome browsers, each with four or more tabs. Then there's the apps running along with all the tabs. I'd like a TB of ram/memory please. :-)
i would disagree that if you are not doing anything but web-browsing and light tasks, that you dont need more than 16gb of memory. With my Mac mini (with 16gb memory), If I only have one App Open (Safari) With 2 to 3 browser windows running, the system is already eating 12gb of my memory. Then if i open a second Non work intensive app, 15gb of the memory is being eaten up. I literally have to work on my mac mini with only one app open at a time Which is ridiculous at this point in apple technology.. i should be able to have 5 or 6 apps running with not even half of the memory being gobbled up. I say all that to say... More Memory is always better. Save on the storage tier ,get an external ssd and an ssd enclosure and run your Mac off of that. #1 youll save money on storage and #2 the external SSD youre running the Mac off of will have faster read and write speeds than the actual Mac's SSD Does!
If the base M4 mac mini came with 1TB of storage at the base price Apple could have really shaken things up in the Mini PC market. As it is I just won't recommend it as its too expensive with that upgrade.
My GPD Win 4 2024 handheld game console is 4TB M.2 + 32GB RAM Plays impressive 3D game titles.. bought on Black Friday...... And your excited on Mac upgrades to saturated 2TB capacity? - I think it's time to let Apple life style go buddy 😂😂😂
So basically...the base Mac mini is not enough for music production...smh. sticking with windows unfortunately because apple and their business practices are extremely ridiculous! I try and try to move to apple pc but they making it almost imposible for the middle class people.
I'am an art- and concert photographer often shooting large number of raw images (maybe 5.000 cr3s on an EOS R3) Then, after selection, I might load 150 or 200 of them at once into Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) via Adobe Bridge developing them. At the end of this process I'll denoise them with the ACR AI function for this in one step. On my old and current iMac 5K (late 2014) with 32 GB of memory I limit myself to only batches of maybe 30 RAWs due to speed / memory issues. When I have my jpgs, I'll sometimes load 20 to 25 of them in Adobe Photoshop and start editing them there. Doing this, I'll have various layers for the current image I am editing. And I'll use the Dxo NIK-Filters very intensely: In Color Effex I havestacks of six filters and within one filter there might be a hundred U-Points. Another filter I use is Topaz Photo AI. With all this given (and being a browser-tab-messie), I am going for the M4 Pro and at least 48 GB, thinking of 64 GB. Any opinions / experiences on y use case and my thoughts? Thanx a lot!
I skipped buying Apple as they are going mad. The housing and specs are so ridiculous, pure material might be worth just 150$ in production. The Pro is even worse, giving Apple an up to 800% margin. BTW, the base model has a very bad ssd performance slightly above 2000mb/s, which is ridiculous these days. The ram is eaten up by every additional display and app, because the iGPU has no own ram. 16gig for a GPU alone is standard these days. So just the usual hype.
Ok, be honest, who bought one of the upgrades and is now regretting it?
did you come from 7 hours in the future
I’m regretting not upgrading the Ethernet speed
Got 500GB SSD upgrade, not regretting.
@@KanielD What on earth do you need 10Gbps for? The built-in SSD is not even that fast.
Got the base with the 512. Now usually I’m a get the top of the line model, but it’s actually plenty for what I do. Although literally 3 minutes before watching this video I was thinking “should I get the pro instead?”
I opted for the base M4 Mac mini, and still have 176GB of local storage. I'm using a 2TB NVME external drive, which I formatted exFAT so that I can use it with different devices and platforms.
same here , base model with studunt discount from a junior, and 2tb nvme with acasis enclosure, mostly use fcp and capcut no problem at all (40 days)
I get your reason, but exFAT is considerably slower than APFS, and lacks many of its features. Some Mac Apps refuse to run from exFAT disks, for example. I have formatted my external 2TB NVME to APFS, so it is 100% compatible for everything, and I am using an older 256GB SSD formatted to exFAT for things I need on multiple OSes.
@@mojojojo1529 I use exFAT, despite its limitations, because both Mac and Windows can read/write to it. That allows me to store everything, including downloaded applications for both platforms, but I don't try to run the apps from the external drive. I do this for worse case scenarios where I have to reinstall everything to a computer. Some of my apps are very old, like my Photoshop CS2 program exe., and not available for download on the Adobe site anymore. But it's still useful for my purposes so I keep a backup copy.
@@mojojojo1529 I tried APFS for my iPhone 15 to record video on ProRes format externally but it didn't work. So I formatted to ExFat and my iPhone 15 Pro Max recognized it right away.
Whilst from the outside as a Mac owner not having bought one of these, I can see the headline figure of £599 being ok for the majority, it's the same old problem since Apple Silicon came into being, the outrageous incremental upgrade costs. If you add too much to the base model, you're knocking on the door of the Mac Mini Pro. If you do the same with Pro, you're not far off the Studio Max M2. When the Studio Max M4 comes next year, that price vs performance difference will probably be even more acute, making the Studio Max M4 the better buy.
Apple are kind of killing their own sales in one sense as indecision leads to someone not buying, waiting for the next big thing, and going round in a loop.
True! It’s getting near to the messy iPad lineup now with products crossing over one another.
@@stephenvalente3296 For the Mini, which isn’t likely to be moved often, external drives are not a huge compromise, though RAM upgrade pricing is a pretty huge con for myself. For a MacBook on the other hand (my laptop is my mobile do-everything machine), the up-charge on storage pricing is a total deal breaker.
@@Lauren_C Yes. Think they’d make more money in the long run from upgrades if they charged less in the first place really.
So happy with my M4 PRO Mini.. attached a 4TB ssd in Satechi enclosure, getting 3.800 mb/s read and write.. this thing is flying!
11:48 which model SSD failed? Can you please mention , we'll try to avoid that model then
If you are getting a fast M.2 drive make sure you get an enclosure that is faster than 10Gbps. ACASIS and a couple others have 40Gbps enclosures. There is a Thunderbolt 5 enclosure with an integrated hub that’s supposed to come out soon.
Yeah - waiting on those TB5 enclosures, along with some docks too!
@
I saw a prerelease review of a TB5 dock with integrated M.2 support. FINALLY. A drive and dock in one!
even in that case it does not make sense. In europe it's 230 eur for 8gb ram upgrade. You can almost get 128gb of ram for that price.
I think what some people have done is that before signing into iCloud and setting up their profile, they move their user home folder to the external drive. I think that might resolve the home assistant issue, but that's a big and messy task after things have been set up. Just make sure to add a second admin account that stays on local storage
Regarding the storage and apps off of the internal SSD
1. If you use a good bus powered SSD enclosure, it should boot as soon as the computer is on no issue, but some apps still do behave weird when in an external drive.
2. If you upgrade from spotlight to raycast, you can add an external folder to the “app search”
3. USB 4 NVME enclosures are more expensive but they perform faster than the internal Mac SSDs too, so it’s a great additional storage option too
I bought the best one. M4 pro base, 1TB storage, 10G ethernet. I am future proofed with (some) extra ram, TB5 and network upgrade.
Boom! Nice spec
M5 coming next year already bruh
Close to mine, ordered Mini Pro base with 24GB/512GB and added 10GbE; more storage then via TB
upgrading the internal ssd is the biggest waste of money imaginable for macs, unless you're one of those people who won't just buy an external drive or diy external nvme
I bought 24 gig and 256 gig model because I run two monitors and have lots of app open at any given time. Got 2tb samsung t7 and it's been really good so far.
The base model is all you need, get an external ssd and you'll be fine even for graphic design/video editing.
I’m going to go for your second Mac-mini option. The M4 Pro with SSD upgrade to 1TB. I like the idea of more storage in the device itself. I have an NAS, but it was so difficult for me, of limited knowledge, to set up, I cannot say I like it very much as I was mainly looking for solid redundancy rather than sheer volume of memory. I do use Backblaze! Now, in reality, I’m not getting anything just yet, as I do not have a large display, just an older 27inch iMac. I’m hoping for an Apple studio display upgrade early next year.
I went with base model but upgraded to 32gb ram and have an 8tb external ssd
I have a M1 Mac Studio. Tempted as I was to sell it as soon as this one came out I decided to wait for m4 (or whatever number it is) Mac Studio when it comes out as what I have does everything I need with 32gb memory and 512 ssd and an external drive.
I got a base model. I’ve installed a few apps on the system itself (Adobe suite, Microsoft Office suite, WhatsApp Web, Zoom and a few others. Those apps came to around 60Gb collectively. All media (documents, photos, videos, video project saves etc) are stored on an external hard drive tower. £95 for a Seagate 4Tb. Sorted
Will Home Assistant still work when the Mac is in sleep mode? I am currently running HA in Docker on my Synology DS423+, but this may be a better option.
I set my Mac mini to never sleep. It consumes such little power anyway.
I did the same with moving it from my Synology.
Mac mini was always on for other things like Plex so it made sense to move it all into one place 👍🏼
The only reasonable upgrade is the ram to 24g as long as ur able to get a student discount....
Fair! Yeah student discount can actually be a pretty nice discount if you can get it!
Great overview - so good to watch something that isn't finger wagging "you made a mistake, buddy!" kinda thing.
On the external SSD speeds - it may depend which model of the mini you buy, base or pro, as to whether an external NVMe drive matches internal. I'm in the process of finding out. (waiting for order to arrive!)
I'm fairly sure a 10gbps enclosure is going to struggle to reach the speeds of the mac mini m4 pro internal SSD.
That may even be the case with a 40gbps enclosure too - will that be able to match the m4 pro internal SSD?
It certainly isn't going to get top speeds on an NVMe with 7400 MB/s read.
However, Thunderbolt 5 and a Thunderbolt 5 enclosure will be interesting once they are fully out in the wild, but really only for professional content producers.
For most of us it will simply mean quicker copying between drives - e.g. quicker backups.
It would be overkill, considering the price that these enclosures will sell for initially, to use them for more trivial tasks.
10gbps would probably be enough for most people, 40gbps for power users perhaps?
The way I see it I have a set of tasks that I do regularly which fit into a performance window. These requirements are essentially limited by the file formats I deal with. Years ago only the top spec machine matched up with that window but over time as the processors get faster and faster that window matches up with a lower and lower tier. At some point the current base models become so capable that it's pointless to spend more unless you want to buy into the "power user" aesthetic.
I'd say buy basic machine, forget about which "M" you have and how many cores you have because the numbers are there just to make you feel anxiety when the new model comes out with a bigger number even if what you are doing is only using 7% of your CPU and the software you use isn't programmed to utilize the extra "efficiency cores" anyway. Add on some extra storage and you're good to go.
Thanks for the vid. Was wondering: What is your "home automation system"? IE, brand, etc. Thx.
I went for the base model but added the 512GB storage. I primarily use it for photo editing and keep all my files on an external SSD so only need internal storage for apps. I went for the 512GB to aim off for software bloat in future and thought it might make it better/faster for swap and memory if the Mac needed to. It’s definitely faster than my 2017 Intel MacBook Pro but not eye wateringly so. The bottleneck is probably my Samsung T7 drive but I’ll wait to see what Saetchi produces for an external hub before deciding whether to go for a faster external storage solution.
I bought the Mac Mini when it was $100 off but I won't get it until the first week in January. Worth it for the savings, plus, initial shipments of new products tend to have more bugs. Added 1TB memory and Thunderbolt 4 enclosure. If someone comes out with their own memory upgrade card for the Mac Mini I'll go for it, if it's not too expensive. My only worry about those would be Apple changing something in software/firmware to only accept their own memory cards, in which case I'll keep my eye out for someone dumping a defective Mac Mini but with a memory card still working or a reseller offering one at a good price.
Given that they've been doing this for years with the iphone, I would expect that 3rd party components will be blocked or artificially slowed down...
Great video
Thank you!
Which usbc / Thunderbolt port do you connect the Mac mini to on the Caldigit Ts4 to? Is it the one labeled 'Computer' even though that provides power for charging? I have a Mac mini on the way for x-mas but don't want to damage it by plugging the TS4 if i get one into the Mac Mini. (Subscribed and liked!)
Hey!
I’m connecting HDMI direct from my Mac, and then yeah, using the one marked for computer out of the caldigit.
It’s OK as it won’t send power as the ports don’t support it 👍🏼 Enjoy the Christmas present!
@ Thanks!
Is there a way to check my current 8MB ram to see how often, if ever, my applications have to disk memory?
You can open up activity monitor and keep an eye on what’s going on 👍🏼
This is great, but where do I get your hoodie?!
Hey Pete, great video, but how did you get the Mini to work with the 57" monitor? I received my M4 Pro Mini yesterday and tried connecting it to my Samsung G9 49" ultrawide and it would not give me the 5120 x 1440 resolution. It would only go up to like 3840. I was even on the phone with Apple support for about an hour and they couldn't figure it out. They told me that the HDMI cable would not support 5K. Any help will be helpful please! Thanks!
Hey! Oh wow that’s strange.
I’d make sure you have a 2.1 HDMI cable.
Also, try setting the screen itself to 120hz (depending on which model you have, some of them have a toggle in the OSD for 120/240)
All 3 of mine work with just a straight HDMI to HDMI cable and get the full native res on the 57” at 120hz
@ the weird thing is that I’m using a 2.1 HDMI cable and only 60hz shows up from. I’m waiting for a USB-C to HDMI/DP cables to come in to see if those work.
Hello Pete , good info, I was wondering if there is any advantage to buying two base M4 Mac mini’s instead of the Mac mini M4 pro or instead of upgrading a base m4 mini? Thanks
What resolution and fps is the mini pro capable of through the Samsung? its a rig a friend of mine is looking to put together and cannot find the answers
What game are you looking at playing, and on roughly what sort of screen size? (32” 4k?) I’ll give it a test 👍🏼
Hi not a gamer, he just wants a huge screen and would like to know if the m4 can run the monitor at a high resolution and 120hz plus, he didn’t really need this but would like to use as much as possible.
I do video editing. 90% of it is light edits. The other 10% I do some compound clips in FCPX. Is 16gb enough?
I'm not seeing a link for your review of external SSD drives.....thanks.
Nice video, but what do you mean spotlight doesn't index files in external drives, are you sure?
Yep, it literally says this within Mac / in Mac Photos when you open a library on an SSD it specifically says it won’t bring up results from a library that’s stored on an external drive
Unless I missed it you didn’t mention the option of using an external thunderbolt boot drive instead of paying for the extra internal storage for the Mini Pro - even with Thunderbolt 4 it’s at least as fast as the base internal drive (both in throughput and IOPS) and cheaper and more flexible for upgrade
do you think the base mac Mini m4 based model is way better than a Mac Mini M1 8-core 16GB or RAM and 512GB HD?
Just for clarity: when you're talking about your 10 GB ethernet connections, you mentioned having to use proxies. That's like a lower resolution video file, not a networking proxy server, right?
Yeah correct!
Still figuring out some kinks but proxies seem to sort it. But also editing direct from the NAS does work sometimes, I need to spend some time working out if it's a network bandwidth thing, disks, or just processing power on the NAS that's busy doing other tasks
Need people of europe to lobby their politicians to stop this price gouging on upgrades.
Nonsense. If you don't like Apple's pricing, there are plenty of other computer manufacturers you can give your custom to.
@ predatory pricing is predatory pricing lol they hold a monopoly on mac OS so it’s anti consumer af
I was downloading fairly large music library sample files onto a external drive connected to my MBP. Despite having 1TB on my MBP it was failry full - only around 180GB free - and the download wouldn't start until I had deleted quite a lot of files to make more space on my MBP available. So it seems that even using an external drive isn't a perfect solution because the files still have to pass through the Mac. Maybe I was doing something wrong
That doesn't sound right. It might have been an issue with how the destination path was chosen or bad website programming.
@@JoeCastellon Yes it could have been that
Interesting! Yes it might be caching the download somewhere before moving it off to the external drive
@@PeteMatheson Actually that sound like it might be it, I think it did cache the download onto the MBP
Good video.
Future proof technology is the dumbest choice.
Buy what you need and technology keep evolving.
This. Instead, you upgrade to the lastest base model more frequently. That way, you keep your resales loss minimal when the next generation of hardware comes along.
What I really would be interested in is the difference in powerconsumption of this models. Could you please provide a comparsion of that? Maybe somthing like in idel mode and with home assistant running in the background. That would be so great 😍
Is upgrading to 10G Ethernet worth it?
do you have 10GB network (wifi plan) or 10GB nas?
Depends on your use case.
If you have a 10Gb network and want to transfer files quickly to a NAS or another 10Gb connected device, then yes.
Otherwise no!
Also I know some places can get 2.5Gb internet, so that’s worth considering upgrading if you want to get the full speed
@@PeteMatheson You can do 2.5Gbit usb3 NIC, they work pretty well these days
So, if I want to keep my Mac mini for a long time is choosing the normal Mac mini with 512gb and 24 ram overkill? Bc I feel like memory storage will add over time with my photo and videos. Especially when I transfer or edit light stuff and as a casual user.
subscribed :)
Woop!
actually you don't need more than 16 gb of ram to work with that mini m4, but what will happen when apple intelligence will be implemented into Mac OS Sequoia?
The good news, 16Gbyte is standard.
No more "Apple says that 8Gbyte is more then enough and Apple 8Gbyte equals windows 16Gbyte"
But yes they still ask $200 for a 8Gbyte upgrade????
I'm so happy being a big box PC guy. I want more storage, I buy it and install. I want more RAM I buy it, though already maxed out 😃
New GPU, new whatever, no probs
I just hate the term "Future Proofing"...Ive been a commercial photographer for over a decade and thats the biggest lie camera companies sell you. More megapixels...trust me, next year there will be a new Mac for maybe less money and we'll buy that and forget about that "Future Proofed" item we bought the year before.
Remember the "Trashcan"??
I bought two specced out units along with that Sharp PNK321 monitor they sold as a match for lots of $$. That went over like a f@rt in church.
Buy what you can afford. Make it work for you until the next big thing comes along.
The base model is the one to get with no upgrades out of the box. Someone will make a thunderbolt dock base with nvme in it for $100ish and out of warranty when the M5 launches, ill upgerade the internal storage to 2TB on the cheap (might even post in the board and get it back resoldered with 2TB) and it will be good for years to come! If I was to spend more the PRO base model was the BUY but by the time the M5 is out, the $$$ might mean its just better to upgrade as current storage options apple upsell is THEFT and it cant continue!
I mean, how is 'I'm not subscribing because RUclipsrs make money' even an argument? That's like 'I'm not going to pay for stuff in McDonald's/Tesco/Sainsbury's because they exist to make profits so I'll nick it instead'.
Still MAJOR FAIL on Apple's part of not making the starting unified memory starting point of 24GB..... "Fight the swap!!!". If all the base chips start at this level how much more does it cost to produce this SOC?
I probably will buy the base M4 with 512 GB SSD.
for me, memory is not really an issue. but as someone who needs to install a lot of audio software on the internal disk, a 512gb SSD in 2024 is just laughable.
Ok, but with Apple AI, the new 16GB of RAM are not the old 8GB of RAM?
I dont think 200gb is enough, i have an intel mac with 124Gb and its very very painfull. just use a 500Gb one
16 GB memory is enough for anyone less than a "pro user" - aka normies and pro-sumers who edit videos and photos, dabble in coding and music production.
You only need 24 GB and above if you edit 8K (bitrate equivalent) footage constantly, do 3D modeling or business photo shooting, and run personal LLMs, in which case you'll probably need a M4 pro computer to begin with.
As a power user I'm almost always constantly maxing out my 64gb of ram/memory on my mac M1 MAX. As a digital marketing freelancer I have to switch between multiple projects (3-5 at any given time). Each project has four or more spaces/chrome browsers, each with four or more tabs. Then there's the apps running along with all the tabs. I'd like a TB of ram/memory please. :-)
i would disagree that if you are not doing anything but web-browsing and light tasks, that you dont need more than 16gb of memory.
With my Mac mini (with 16gb memory), If I only have one App Open (Safari) With 2 to 3 browser windows running, the system is already eating 12gb of my memory.
Then if i open a second Non work intensive app, 15gb of the memory is being eaten up. I literally have to work on my mac mini with only one app open at a time
Which is ridiculous at this point in apple technology.. i should be able to have 5 or 6 apps running with not even half of the memory being gobbled up. I say all that to say...
More Memory is always better. Save on the storage tier ,get an external ssd and an ssd enclosure and run your Mac off of that.
#1 youll save money on storage and #2 the external SSD youre running the Mac off of will have faster read and write speeds than the actual Mac's SSD Does!
If the base M4 mac mini came with 1TB of storage at the base price Apple could have really shaken things up in the Mini PC market. As it is I just won't recommend it as its too expensive with that upgrade.
8GB RAM not MB.
Salute
Great video.......sub'd
My GPD Win 4 2024 handheld game console is 4TB M.2 + 32GB RAM Plays impressive 3D game titles.. bought on Black Friday...... And your excited on Mac upgrades to saturated 2TB capacity? - I think it's time to let Apple life style go buddy 😂😂😂
So basically...the base Mac mini is not enough for music production...smh. sticking with windows unfortunately because apple and their business practices are extremely ridiculous! I try and try to move to apple pc but they making it almost imposible for the middle class people.
What windows pc for $599 does what this cannot?
I'am an art- and concert photographer often shooting large number of raw images (maybe 5.000 cr3s on an EOS R3)
Then, after selection, I might load 150 or 200 of them at once into Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) via Adobe Bridge developing them. At the end of this process I'll denoise them with the ACR AI function for this in one step. On my old and current iMac 5K (late 2014) with 32 GB of memory I limit myself to only batches of maybe 30 RAWs due to speed / memory issues.
When I have my jpgs, I'll sometimes load 20 to 25 of them in Adobe Photoshop and start editing them there. Doing this, I'll have various layers for the current image I am editing. And I'll use the Dxo NIK-Filters very intensely: In Color Effex I havestacks of six filters and within one filter there might be a hundred U-Points.
Another filter I use is Topaz Photo AI.
With all this given (and being a browser-tab-messie), I am going for the M4 Pro and at least 48 GB, thinking of 64 GB.
Any opinions / experiences on y use case and my thoughts?
Thanx a lot!
I skipped buying Apple as they are going mad. The housing and specs are so ridiculous, pure material might be worth just 150$ in production. The Pro is even worse, giving Apple an up to 800% margin. BTW, the base model has a very bad ssd performance slightly above 2000mb/s, which is ridiculous these days. The ram is eaten up by every additional display and app, because the iGPU has no own ram. 16gig for a GPU alone is standard these days. So just the usual hype.