New mac mini

So Apple have announced a new mac mini, a M2 version and M2pro version. This is what I have been waiting for. £1400 more or less for the m2 pro, not sure if I need that, but the M2 looks pretty good at £850 for 8Gb of ram and 512Gb of storage.
If it is sold at work I can get a discount on that.


Also, new mac book pros announced .

You might want to consider the 256GB version at £649 with an external SSD. A Samsung T7 1TB drive is less than £90 and gives 1,000 MBps read/write speeds. The 2TB version is under £200 so would give you 2,250GB of storage for the same price as the 500GB model.

Personally, I’d go for a model with more RAM as opposed to storage space. You’re stuck with the former but can always upgrade the latter. But it all depends upon your intended usage.

Edited by TinyMongomery (Wed 18-Jan-23 06:55:39)

I did think about the middle one at £849 and then adding more memory to it, but that is around £1,049.

They sell Mac minis at work, so I am hoping they will sell the new one, if so then I could go for the top one at £1,399, minus my discount if I get it at the right time will take it down to about £1,100. But the thought of spending a grand on a computer fills me with horror, i have spent £800on a computer, on this one, in fact no doubt more over the five years since I have added ram and more drives.

The thing about getting them from work I would have to get what they have got, so no being able to add to it like i can on Apples own site.

As for storage, yes I agree with you, I was thinking of getting one of those units that fit unto the mac mini that can have a drive fitted in them, then I can take out the 960GB Maxtor SSD from this machine as it only has a few games on it and put that in there.


I have over £1300 saved in an account for this reason, but I don't like spending money . the other thing is, am I going to like using a Mac?

According to the other half, I should be more impulsive and not think about things too much, then I end up not doing it. Like when I saw a nice Microwave on Asda website that was cheap for a flatbed and I took ages to decide and now it is not available

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

As for storage, yes I agree with you, I was thinking of getting one of those units that fit unto the mac mini that can have a drive fitted in them, then I can take out the 960GB Maxtor SSD from this machine as it only has a few games on it and put that in there.

I'm pretty sure that you can't add an internal drive to the new Minis. If you could, it would be slower than an external USB 3 drive (assuming it's SATA).

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

I'm pretty sure that you can't add an internal drive to the new Minis. If you could, it would be slower than an external USB 3 drive (assuming it's SATA).

My M1 Mini is a sealed unit, similar to the MacBook Air or similar. No point as the storage is fused together into the Silicon-on-Chip, for speed.

One of those Samsung USB-C connected, either USB 4 or Thunderbolt 4 drives will be equally as fast as internal. My M1 Mini internal SSD is only 3000 Mbps (3 Gbps), which is significantly faster than my old Windows PC with its Samsung 850 Evo SATA 3 drive running close to 500 Mbps.The latest PCIe 4 drives can go double that speed (close to 7 or 8 Gbps).

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

As for storage, yes I agree with you, I was thinking of getting one fof those units that fit unto the mac mini that can have a drive fitted in them, then I can take out the 960GB Maxtor SSD from this machine as it only has a few games on it and put that in there.

Yes, the OWC stuff from MacSales.com and similar (US sites) can go very fast, they connect over the Thunderbolt/USB4 connection (using the USB-C connector).
Note the M2 Mini has 2xUSB-C and the M2 Pro Mini has 4xUSB-C from what I read. My M1 Mini has only 2xUSB-C, and I used one with a displayport adaptor cable, for second screen, first on HDMI.

But don’t use the Mac much now, using work laptop more than home kit.

The Samsung externals aren’t as fast as the internal SSD (about a third the speed), but you only really notice the difference if using one as a boot drive when the boot time is noticeably longer. Once running I’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between the internal and external drives.

It’s certainly fast enough unless you are moving huge amounts of data - and then you are likely to be moving it to or from an external drive or a network device so you’ll have a speed hit anyway.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

I'm pretty sure that you can't add an internal drive to the new Minis. If you could, it would be slower than an external USB 3 drive (assuming it's SATA).

No this an external unit that fits under the Mac and connects to the USB,something like this

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

The Samsung externals aren’t as fast as the internal SSD (about a third the speed), but you only really notice the difference if using one as a boot drive when the boot time is noticeably longer. Once running I’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between the internal and external drives.

Yes, the USB 3.0 ones were nowhere near as fast as internal but as you say still quick enough except for booting MacOS.

Some colleagues have bought the more expensive 3.2 or the really new Thunderbolt ones and claim they are ‘amazing’ but I’ve not myself benchtested.

Oh, right. Yes, you can obviously use an external enclosure, just like any other external drive. If it’s a SATA drive it will be slower than a USB C external drive, but fast enough for data.