One year on and I have some thoughts about the little beast!

It dawned on me last week that I’ve now been using my M4 Pro Mac mini for about a year. It’s been a busy year, and a year of growth, but the M4 Pro Mac mini has stood up to most of what I’ve asked of it ever so well.

But that said, maybe I made a mistake, and if I had my time over, I might do things very differently.

Oh, and before we get into the meat of the story, all the pictures in this story were taken with my iPhone 17 Pro Max in London on another Slow Horses trail! This week, I found the church they used in the final episode of Season Two. Yes, I took my Mac mini into London with me!

Breaking my own rules

One of the mistakes I made was not listening to my own advice!

There are still bargains to be had from Apple, but there’s one golden rule you must stick to if you want to bag that elusive, too-good-to-be-true deal: try to stick with the basic entry models.

There are exceptions to that rule, and I’ll cover those later on, but as a rule of thumb, it’s not a bad one to stick to.

Before looking closer at the Mac mini, look no further than the MacBook Air – it’s a perfect example of the point I’m trying to get across.

That entry-level MacBook Air starts at £999. For that, you get a gorgeous Retina display, a class-leading keyboard and trackpad, 16GB of memory and 256GB of storage.

Now I’d argue with anyone that isn’t a good value Mac.

Apple silicon has changed everything.

16GB of memory will be more than enough for most folks doing a normal day’s work, and it’ll have plenty of grunt left in reserve too. OK, the storage is a bit on the lighter side, but again, I reckon the majority of MacBook Air users aren’t moving or storing massive files on their Macs. The MacBook Air is designed for a certain kind of user.

For £999 you’ll have an ultra-portable, fast, hardworking Mac that’ll last you for years. But if you were to tick all the boxes and spec it with 32GB of memory and 2TB of storage, well then you’d be spending £2199. Suddenly, you’ve jumped into MacBook Pro territory.

Don’t try to make a Mac into something it was never intended to be. Each Mac is the the lineup for a reason.

So, with that said, let’s go back to my M4 Pro Mac mini. I went option mad, and I paid the price!

The Mac mini sitting on my studio desk has the upgraded Pro chip in it with a 14-core CPU and a 20-core GPU, it has 48GB of memory, 1TB of storage, and it even has the £100 upgraded 10GB Ethernet port too.

All in it ended up costing me £2199, which is Mac Studio money.

Coming to my own defence!

There are a couple of points I’d like to toss into the mix to save me a little face.

The new design of the Mac mini sparked a lot of interest when it came out. It was a reasonably priced Mac that I felt lots of readers and viewers might be interested in and may be considering buying, so from a content point of view, it did make sense, and I stand by that!

Also, and as importantly, last year, the M4 Max Mac Studio hadn’t been released. But now that it has, and now that we have the specs on it, you can see precisely the point I’m trying to make in this story.

The base M4 Max Mac Studio has a 14-core CPU, a 32-core GPU, 36GB of memory, 1TB of storage, two more Thunderbolt 5 ports, a pair of USB-A ports and that Ethernet port I spent an extra £100 all for £2299.

That’s a crazy deal and only £100 more than my M4 Pro Mac mini. The memory bandwidth is 50% faster, it has twice the amount of video encoder & decoder engines and better cooling.

That is a great value proposition, Mac for commercial, professional Mac users.

M4 Pro Mac mini in the trenches

But here is where I’ll stand up for the M4 Pro Mac mini.

This past year, it’s dealt brilliantly with nearly everything I’ve thrown at it. It’s only recently that it’s started to struggle, and that’s because of changes in my workflow. I’m asking it to do things it wasn’t designed to do, and that I had no idea that I would be asking it to do.

I’ve changed a lot this past year. The new me loves getting away from the studio and filming around London and the UK. When I shoot on location, I use my iPhone 17 Pro Maxand one of the higher CODECs such as ProRes Raw or ProRes 422HQ, and I always shoot in Log too, so the files are huge.

However, in the old days, when I bought the Mac mini, I always used to shoot in the studio, it was on my Canon 90D, and that only gives me a .MOV file, which is a way smaller file.

Final Cut Proon my M4 Pro Macmini performs just fine with the Canon footage, but when I have multiple layers of ProRes Raw footage stacked up, the timeline starts to stutter and judder.

Also, some of the MotionVFX plugins I use are also pretty intensive, and it’s noticeable how some of those are now taking time to render in the timeline as well. The M4 Pro Mac mini handles it, but not without missing a beat from time to time. Although it’s worth saying it’s dead silent – the fan has yet to be heard!

I think I’ve found its breaking point, but my use of it is far from normal. It’s served me bloody well, and I won’t hear a word said against it!

Those exceptions to the rule

Although my sights may well inevitably be set on eventually swapping my M4 Pro Mac mini for an M4 or M5 Max Mac Studio, this time when I buy a Mac Studio, I’ll stick with the base model.

The only spec that will need immediate attention is the 1 TB of storage. But with that bank of four super-fast Thunderbolt 5 ports on it, popping on some external SSD storage is no biggie. This past year, I’ve started to rely heavily on external SSDs.

But earlier, I mentioned that I thought that there were a couple of Macs that could be treated differently and that could withstand a slew of extras. One of those is our eternal friend, the iMac.

The £1300 iMac is good enough and will serve its purpose well as it stands out of the box, but if you’re happy with a 24-inch display, then I reckon the £2900 version of it with a Nano-texture display, 32GB of memory and 2TB of storage still isn’t a bad deal. It breaks the mould because it is Apple’s only all-in-one desktop Mac.

It doesn’t trip over any other models, so it’s hard to overspend.

The same is also true of the MacBook Pro. I’d guess that most folks who buy a MacBook Prowill turn it into a desktop Mac pretty regularly, using it alongside multiple monitors and other peripherals. Because of that, and that most MacBooks are hammered for years, they too are worth spending a few extra quid on.

A MacBook Pro tends to be an investment.

But the MacBook Air and the Mac mini can be genuine bargains so long as you remember those golden rules of not trying to make them into something they were never supposed to be by throwing too many expensive options at them.

Don’t try to turn your MacBook Air into a MacBook Pro, and equally don’t pretend you can make an M4 Pro Mac mini into a Mac Studio. I really must listen to my own advice!

Enjoy them for what they are and for what they are supposed to be.

Is the mini for you?

Quite likely, yes, it is.

As I mentioned, it is only because my workflow has changed and intensified that it has started to struggle a little. But by and large, it still does its job brilliantly.

You’ll know the kind of work you do. I’m guessing if you are a professional video editor or live in Lightroom, Photoshop, code for a living or rely on 3D rendering, then you probably wouldn’t be looking at Mac minis in the first place.

The only thing wrong with that £599 M4 Mac mini is probably the memory. The one thing I’ve learned from all the Apple silicon Macs that I’ve used is that they crave memory. As that’s the one thing you can’t change after the fact, always spend your cash on getting as much memory as you can.

Looking at the Mac mini range today, I’d say if you upgraded the memory to 24GB and spent £800 on that entry-level Mac mini, then you’d pretty much be in the sweet spot!

Also, I just wanted to mention that this range of Apple silicon Macs is pretty indestructible. After heavy daily use for the past four years, my M1 Max MacBook Pro still performs like it did day one. That MacBook Pro handles anything I can throw at it with ease. It has grown with me and shows no signs of slowing down.

When I compared the M4 Pro Mac mini to my MacBook Pro this time last year, I just looked at export speeds – now I can see I missed the point.

Damn, that means I’ve been wrong twice!

While I did end up connecting a NAS to that £100 Ethernet port as I don’t edit directly from the NAS and my network speeds are quick enough to warrant it, I’d say that probably was a waste of money.

My final pearls of wisdom

Don’t lose sight of what you need a Mac for. Buy a Mac that is suited to your needs and build in a little headroom. Don’t be sucked in by clever Apple marketing or by well-meaning ‘experts’ and friends!

Grab the bargains that Apple still has in their lineup with both hands, and don’t be afraid to look at the refurbished site either. As I just said, these Apple silicon Macs are pretty much bulletproof. Even a second-hand, well-cared-for Mac wouldn’t concern me if you were after the ultimatebargain.

The Mac mini is not that far removed from the iPhone Air. It’s Apple at its best. Who else could offer this level of performance in a packet so neat, tidy and gorgeous? The Mac mini has led to me having the best and cleanest desk setup I’ve ever had. And don’t forget, it’s that light and small that I carried it around London all day!

The pair of Thunderbolt 5 ports has served its purpose, and I have one of them permanently connected to a 4TB external Thunderbolt 5 SSD. On there, I have archived my past years’ videos, meaning I can access those old b-roll files quickly whenever I need them. In turn, those files are then backed up to the NAS for redundancy and long-term storage.

The M4 Mac mini is a winner. It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but I still got it wrong. Learn from my mistakes, save some money and make the smart choice.

If you want a Mac mini, spend no more than £800 and walk away knowing you have got one over on Tim with a Mac that’ll serve you well for years to come.

Sometimes, just sometimes, it’s still possible to get something for almost nothing.