Mac mini (Late 2018)
The revamped entry-level Mac packs a punch
The USB-C ports bring powerful new expansion opportunities to the mini
From £799 From Apple, apple.com/uk Features 3.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i3 processor, 8GB 2,666MHz memory, 128GB storage (256GB tested), Intel UHD Graphics 630, 4x Thunderbolt 3 ports, 2x USB-A ports
After a four-year gap since the last model, there’s a new Mac mini in town – and it’s a more significant update than it might look at first sight. The first thing that leaps out, though, is the cosmetic change to Apple’s increasingly familiar and darker space grey – the only shade in which the mini is now available.
Turn the computer around and you start to get an idea of the more meaningful changes, which are only to be expected after so long in the silicon wilderness. This is the first mini with USB-C ports – four of them, and they’re not limited to USB 3.1 transfer rates. Instead, all offer Thunderbolt 3’s 40Gbps bandwidth.
This brings powerful new expansion opportunities to the Mac mini. Arguably one of the most important is support for external graphics processing units (eGPUs), which we’ll come back to. And if you don’t have graphically demanding uses in mind, you can buy adapters to turn the ports into the USB-A type, though Apple’s own adapter will set you back a princely £19 per port.
Got an old wired keyboard and mouse set? Don’t worry: the move to USB-C doesn’t mean buying adapters to keep using them. After all, it has always been intended that you’d add your own to the mini. To that end, Apple has sensibly retained two USB-A ports that’ll help you get up and running with any old pair.
That has a cost elsewhere, as those ports occupy the space where there was an SD card reader on the 2014 mini. Apple’s USB-C to SD Card Reader is £39. Shop around, as thirdparty alternatives are a lot less. This change may sting if you’re a photography enthusiast, but Apple has chosen the better generalpurpose option to satisfy more people.
A crucial part of your setup to think about is your display. Thunderbolt 2 ports on the last mini also worked as Mini DisplayPort, but Thunderbolt 3/USB-C may mean getting a new cable or adapter, unless your display has an HDMI input. The mini’s HDMI port has been upgraded to HDMI 2.0 for use with compatible 4K displays that work at 60Hz.
The remaining ports on the mini’s back are a 3.5mm audio jack and Gigabit Ethernet. You’re likely to use the mini’s 802.11ac Wi-Fi connection to get online. If not, notice there’s an optional upgrade for the standard Gigabit Ethernet to a 10Gb Ethernet port, which costs £90. It’s there for high-end users of the mini using pro video apps like Apple’s Compressor that are able to distribute their workload across multiple computers on a network.
Six of one, a dozen of the other
Intel’s processor line-up has changed around a bit recently, and this is one component you still need to consider carefully in advance of buying, based on what your Mac mini will do and how fast you need it to be. There are three processors to choose from: a quad-core i3 in
the £799 model, a quad-core i5 at £1,099, and an optional six-core i7 that can be added to the former spec for £270 and the latter one for £150. Apple provided the Core i3 and Core i7 options for our review, which were fitted with 256GB and 1TB SSDs, respectively.
Something stood out in testing these processors’ capabilities: the Core i3 didn’t cause the mini’s fans to go wild even when we put it through our HandBrake test, which maxes out whatever processing cores are available. We could only hear fan activity when we put an ear close to the mini.
The inevitable trade-off is that the low-end processor is slower to deal with tougher tasks like this one. And yet it stacks up well next to the seventh-generation Core i5 used in the £1,449 model from 2017’s 21.5in iMac range, surpassing it in Geekbench’s single-core ranking and roughly equalling it in our multicore, real-world HandBrake test. (Expect that to change when Apple gets around to refreshing its all-in-one desktop, depending on what parts it puts inside.)
The more powerful Core i7 processor includes Intel’s Hyper-Threading technology, enabling each of its six cores to process two threads in tandem, meaning greater performance. Because our HandBrake test puts all available cores to full use, the mini’s fans kick in harder, making it audible without putting your head close to the computer, but not so loud that it’s unpleasant to be around.
The Core i7 didn’t quite halve the i3’s time to complete our video encoding challenge, but it managed an enticing 42% reduction. If you will regularly use the mini for hard work that runs off the Core processor rather than the graphics one, the value in spending an extra £270 or £150 – the amount depends on the model you choose to add it to – is plain to see.
Graphically challenged
We mentioned earlier that Thunderbolt 3 means the mini is now able to get a big boost just by taking a few seconds to plug in an eGPU. Don’t think that we’re pointing this out due to some inherent deficiency in the mini’s integrated Intel UHD Graphics 630. For basic productivity, the built-in GPU is enough. After all, it can run your desktop across two 5K or three 4K displays.
That said, it’s obvious from the charts opposite that it’s a poor option for powering pro apps and games that need highly capable graphics hardware to run well. This is where iMacs, at least those with a discrete graphics processor, inevitably have an advantage.
Apple offers no internal upgrade options for this component, but look at the difference the £810 Core X and Vega 64 eGPU setup we reviewed recently made in DaVinci Resolve. That kind of performance just wasn’t achieveable on a low-end Mac like this until Thunderbolt 3 came along – but make sure you read more about eGPUs on page 89.
One other component in the new mini is upgradeable even after you buy: memory. The £799 and £1,099 configurations normally come with 8GB. Upgrading is wise for pro photo and video editing, for example, and you can go further than the previous 16GB limit to 32GB – or even 64GB! That’s great news if you want multiple high-resolution photos or virtual machines open at once.
Apple’s prices for memory upgrades are higher than those of third-parties like Crucial. It wants £180 for 16GB, £540 for 32GB and £1,260 for 64GB. At the time of writing, Crucial was selling a 32GB upgrade kit for £252. It’s great that you’re not stuck with what was installed at the time of buying,
The Core i3 processor is fine, but the i7 is worth considering for pro tasks
as you were on the 2014 mini. But before you breathe a sigh of relief, there’s a catch. Or, rather, the mini’s base plate, some screws and other bits and bobs to get out of the way.
One of Apple’s publicity shots (see page 86) shows the computer with its base plate removed and the memory ready to access. However, reaching the memory slots isn’t as straightforward as that pic alone suggests. On the 2012 mini you would twist the base plate to remove it and have immediate access to the slots. On the 2018 design, though, it’s a longer process that requires you to remove some components. There’s a visual guide to this at iFixit (bit.ly/ifxmcmn2018); if you’re at all concerned about performing those steps in a suitably prepped space, you’re better off paying a pro to do it.
Apple acknowledged to us that customers will want to indulge in aftermarket upgrades, and that good service providers are often okay with you buying memory elsewhere and merely paying them to fit it. Even with labour costs, that ought to help you avoid Apple’s prices.
Space to breathe
That’s where the DIY upgrade story ends, sadly. Storage, like on most Macs, can’t be swapped out on account of it being soldered to the logic board. Decisions about what’s fitted internally are simpler now, though, boiling down to how much space you need – or can afford at Apple’s prices. (Yes, that again.)
Hard drive and Fusion Drive options have been dispensed with. The latter is Apple’s economical hard drive/SSD combo, which we thought would remain as a stopgap until SSDs became more affordable. Sadly not.
Every mini has a speedy SSD, which means you should see the spinning beach ball less often than on any hard disk-based Mac on account of not having to wait for a disk to spin up and seek the right data. That’s true even on the £799 model, but there you get a
Balancing storage and budget is the hardest part of buying a Mac
128GB drive, which can work out pretty tight.
Unlike on the MacBook Air (see page 76), this is easier to address on a desktop computer as and when your needs demand and budget permits. But if you’ll run apps that create or cache a lot of data, it’s safer to at least double the internal storage. The price to get 256GB is £180, which is terrible value per gigabyte.
Apple’s other SSD upgrades are also costly: taking the £799 mini to 512GB adds £360, 1TB is £720, and 2TB is £1,440. Prices are slightly lower on the £1,099 model. SSD specs vary, yet PC parts retailer Scan sells the 1TB Intel 760p Series for £232.49. Intel says that’s capable of reading up to 3.2GB/sec and writing at 1.6GB/sec – fine for most people. It may be Apple is using a different quality of drive in other regards than just speed, perhaps even to do with lifespan. But with its SSD prices as high as they are, balancing storage and budget is the most uncomfortable part of buying a Mac. We wish it had kept the 1TB Fusion Drive option around for now.
Our tests revealed that not all SSDs in the Mac mini perform exactly the same. Transfer rates when reading were consistent between the 256GB and 1TB capacities Apple supplied. They reached peak transfer rates of around 3GB/sec when reading and writing, and a mean average of about 2.4GB/sec when reading. But we observed a big drop in the 256GB drive’s transfer rates when writing very large files, and saw this in two different storage testing tools. This drive fluctuated between 645 and 923MB/sec, while the 1TB version sustained an incredible 2.9GB/sec.
The reason for this is unclear. It could be a difference in cache sizes, or a quirk of coming from different manufacturers (if the drives do). All Apple discloses is the capacity. Will you even notice? Maybe, but external drives that read more than a gigabyte per second are pretty rare. A pro user might notice it when transferring large videos, say, but most of us would really have to push the mini – restoring windows containing many very large photo files at login, say – to get an inkling.
A class act
Beyond alienating storage upgrade prices, the mini is a superb entry point to the whole Mac range. Even the £799 model gives a responsive experience of macOS that delights. We had been concerned over the base model’s Core i3, but it has turned out to be a good performer.
The addition of four USB-C ports is forward-thinking and generous, and keeping USB-A around is plainly sensible. The key components are well balanced, and it offers expansion options that make the mini a viable and versatile alternative to the all-in-one iMac that is suitable even for many pro scenarios.