Review out today from Patrick @ STH.

https://youtu.be/l3Vaz7S3HmQ

Overall a great little machine…

Well I ordered one and after a minor delay it arrived from HK last week, although I only unpacked it last night as was away all week. Looks very neat and well put together. Hoping to be able to fire it up later tonight.

Running GeekBench 6.1 on it:

Single-Core Score: 2116
Multi-Core Score: 10020
OpenCL Score: 25084

Have it powered through a USB4 port via a Minix USB-C 100W power adapter, currently drawing around 6.5 to 7 watts at idle. Peak I saw during benchmarking was 36W for brief spikes, but again mostly in single watt figures. There is a small fan running on the underside of the unit, but it's near enough silent.

Quietly impressed.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Running GeekBench 6.1 on it:

Single-Core Score: 2116
Multi-Core Score: 10020
OpenCL Score: 25084

Have it powered through a USB4 port via a Minix USB-C 100W power adapter, currently drawing around 6.5 to 7 watts at idle. Peak I saw during benchmarking was 36W for brief spikes, but again mostly in single watt figures. There is a small fan running on the underside of the unit, but it's near enough silent.

Quietly impressed.

Mac mini M2 pro
Single-Core Score
2621
Multi-Core Score
12292


OpenCL Score
44222

Topped about 45watts while running, but only for a couple of seconds, most of the time it stayed between 10-18. I have a smart plug on the machine that reads the wattage pulled.

My Mac runs about 7 at idle.

I don't normally take much notice of benchmarks, as it is how the machine work in real life that is important. I got a Mac because i was fed up with Windows, windows is becoming more Apple like than Apple itself. With the forced MS account and pushing their edge browser and to be honest becoming more of a walled garden than Mac Os is.

sure I have less choice with hardware and can't expand it internally , I can add external storage.
the other reason i wanted a Mac is because of the energy use or lack of it and I know it is more expensive than what you paid for your small machine.

Not saying there is anything worn with the machine you have, being able to update the storage is nice and for people who want a powerful machine but in a small form factor and want to stay with Windows, then it is a nice machine.

Mac killer? nope.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Mac killer? nope.

It seems you are getting similar performance, but the Windows machine is considerably cheaper. The Mac Mini with 1TB SSD and only 64Gb comes for £1449.

Pretty much this. Very happy with all my Macs but I do still need to run on native x86 tin for some stuff and don’t want / need a huge desktop/tower. Something around half the footprint of a mini is perfect. Doesn’t need to be a killer 😅

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

It seems you are getting similar performance, but the Windows machine is considerably cheaper. The Mac Mini with 1TB SSD and only 64Gb comes for £1449.

Mine is the Mac mini 2 pro, so it has 16GB of ram and 512GB of storage, 10-Core CPU, 16-Core GPU, it costs £1,399, but I did not pay that for it, I got it for £1319.

I did think about updating my Windows machine before i got the Mac, but as I said, I got fed up with Windows, been using it for too long and I have seen how it has become.
I only use the PC for games these days, may have to update it at some point as I think the main board is on it’s way out, but not going to go crazy, If I can get a board at a decent price that will keep the Ryzen 7 1700 going then i will if not, then I will go for something like a Ryzen 5 5600 if I see it at a good price. But hopefully the PC will keep going for a bit longer.

Oh, right. That with 1TB disk and 32GB ram is £1999 - nearly 3 times the price of the Winwdows machine with twice the ram.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

Oh, right. That with 1TB disk and 32GB ram is £1999 - nearly 3 times the price of the Winwdows machine with twice the ram.

People who buy a Mac do so because of the OS and because it normally just works, where Windows even now seems to have problems galore. I realise producing an OS for different hardware is more difficult.

So far, I have not had to re-install Mac OS, If I was still using Windows as often, something would have gone wrong by now.

As I said the one good thing about that mini PC is that it can be updated, memory wise and Apple charges a fortune to buy a mac with more memory, but even with 16GB of ram this machine is doing fine, far better than my Ryzen 7 1700 machine did with it's 54GB of ram or something like that.

I am a convert now , Should have gone for a Mac years ago

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

People who buy a Mac do so because of the OS and because it normally just works, where Windows even now seems to have problems galore. I realise producing an OS for different hardware is more difficult.

So far, I have not had to re-install Mac OS, If I was still using Windows as often, something would have gone wrong by now.

I think that's something of a myth. I've not had to reinstall Windows, Mac OS, or Linux for many years now,

They all "just work".