Linus Tech Tips: Finally a Mac for This Economy - Mac Mini M4

The new Apple M4 Mac Mini, priced at $600, offers impressive performance for everyday tasks like email, video conferencing, light professional work, and casual gaming. Despite criticism over storage pricing, it remains a strong contender for budget-conscious users.

We benchmarked the M4 Mac Mini against a $600 Mini PC and a tower desktop PC to evaluate performance, energy efficiency, and gaming capabilities. The Mac Mini excels in single-threaded tasks and energy consumption, running cooler and quieter than its PC counterparts.

In Cinebench multicore tests, the tower PC and Mac Mini performed closely, but the Mini Forum PC led due to extra performance cores. The Mac Mini’s integrated GPU nearly matched the tower’s dedicated GPU in Blender rendering, showcasing impressive graphics power for its size.

Apple’s M4 chip features two additional efficiency cores, a doubled neural engine operation rate, and 20% increased memory bandwidth. The base model now offers 16GB unified memory, doubling last year’s 8GB, making it a solid choice for most users without upgrades.

Apple’s unified memory architecture dynamically allocates RAM between CPU, GPU, and neural engine, enhancing AI workloads. In LLaMA language model tests, the M4 Mac Mini significantly outpaced the PC competitors, highlighting its strength in AI-related tasks despite its small form factor.

Gaming on the Mac Mini is decent but limited by compatibility issues. Shadow of the Tomb Raider ran well, though the tower PC with a dedicated GPU outperformed it. However, the Mac Mini’s compact design, quiet operation, and integration with Apple’s ecosystem add significant value.

While the tower PC wins in raw gaming power and upgradeability, the Mac Mini offers a balanced package for the average user prioritizing efficiency, responsiveness, and seamless integration with Apple devices. For those on a budget and non-gaming needs, the Mac Mini is a compelling option.