Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Apple brought us a wave of surprises on the eve of the Spring Festival this year, suddenly releasing M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, as well as new MacBook Pro and Mac mini. Among them, the price of M2 chip 8GB+256GB basic model Mac mini 4499 yuan is directly cheaper than that of the previous generation, and the education discount is only 3699 yuan.

After the release of the new Mac mini, the basic model of the 8GB+256GB will become a popular model for many friends to taste the fresh Mac ecology. after all, the price is too delicious for Apple. However, some friends may also worry about whether the basic Mac mini is enough. Will the experience be bad, and so on.

Now, CTOnews.com has got the 8GB+256GB Mac mini and has been using it for some time. Today, let's talk about the experience of this closely watched Mac mini and whether it is suitable for everyone to start with.

First, in terms of appearance, the new M2 Mac mini looks no different from what it used to be. it is still a small, square body with a shell made of 100% recycled aluminum, which is also a traditional feature of Apple.

As a mini-host, Apple's biggest advantage of the Mac mini is its lightness and portability. Its thickness is only 3.58cm, and its weight is only 1.18kg, which is almost half that of the previous Mac Studio. It can be used to commute with it. Because its own fuselage size is not very large, it is even easier to be included in the bag than an ordinary notebook.

The new Mac mini machine is a deep space gray color match, the body is angular, the shell is a whole piece of metal, and the appearance and workmanship still maintain Apple's usual high standard.

The back of the fuselage is a unified interface area, with power keys, power jacks, Ethernet interfaces, two Leili 4 interfaces, a HDMI2.0 interface, two USB-A ports and a 3.5mm headphone interface from left to right, and then there is a cooling outlet under the fuselage.

Compared with the Mac mini of the high-end M2 Pro chip, the main downgrade of this basic model is that the Leili 4 interface has changed from 4 to 2. In addition, the HDMI 2.1standard is only available with the top version of M2 Pro Mac mini. Students who want to start need to pay attention.

On the whole, the M2 Mac mini is still a familiar formula in appearance, simple, square and high quality, which can apply the buzzword: "elegant, never out of date."

Second, performance for the new Mac mini, many students should first pay attention to its performance, after all, with the blessing of M2 chip, whether daily office or entertainment, will be more comfortable.

The M2 chip equipped with Mac mini is an 8-core CPU, including 4 performance cores and 4 energy-efficient cores, as well as a 10-core GPU and a 16-core neural network engine. It has more than 20 billion transistors, 25% more than M1, and the memory bandwidth is 50% more than M1, up to 100GB / s, allowing you to easily handle various tasks and switch smoothly between App.

In terms of performance, CTOnews.com first tested the running score with "GeekBench 5" and measured that the M2 chip scored 1893 points per core and 8969 points with multiple cores. Compared with the previous generation, the single core increased by 11% and 25%, and its overall performance was probably close to Intel's Core i7-1260P.

In terms of hard disk read and write speed, CTOnews.com uses software to measure the SEQ1MQD8 read speed of the new Mac mini is 1736.93 MB/s, the write speed is 1726.20 MB/s,SEQ1MQD1, the read speed is 1347.65 MB/s, and the write speed is 1676.33 MB/s.

Specific to the actual use, in order to further understand whether the performance of this M2 Mac mini is enough for normal office use, CTOnews.com simulated a daily work scene. Specifically, the editor opened 20 web pages using chrome browser, and then "Wechat", "QQ" and "nails" were all opened. Photoshop opened about 5 10MB picture files, and played the files with "NetEyun Music". Then use "WPS" to open five 15MB documents.

In such an environment, the editor works for half an hour, edits and switches in different documents, then frequently switches, uses software, and so on, the whole process does not encounter computer stutter, it is very smooth, and the whole process of Mac mini is very quiet and there is no noise of fan turning.

It can be seen that with the performance of M2 chip and the effect of power control, it is very easy to deal with the daily office.

If you are a video worker, can the new Mac mini be suitable for daily office needs? CTOnews.com was also tested. During the test, the editor used "Final Cut Pro" to edit three 4K resolution ProRes RAW format videos. During the actual test, drag and play the progress bar on the video track, without the feeling of stutter.

Then, the editor exports the video to a 4K, 25fps HD video file of about 3 minutes and 32 seconds, the output video format is .MP4, the encoding method is H.264 with better quality, and the output video is large and small 1.27GB. The results show that the Mac mini takes a total of 3 minutes and 40 seconds from the beginning to the end, and the speed is acceptable.

During the video export process, the new Mac mini does not make too much noise, and the body of the Mac mini is not hot at all. Of course, we rarely touch Mac mini frequently in normal use. Here is just a reference.

In addition to daily office processing documents and cutting videos, what else can we do with Mac mini? If you are on the Windows platform, many students may want to play games. The Mac platform has always been a weakness in the game ecology, but using Mac mini is not completely out of games to play. For example, some time ago, CAPCOM's masterpiece "biochemical Evil 8: the Village" landed on the Mac platform. CTOnews.com also downloaded the game and played it with the basic Mac mini.

The game uses the default image quality option setting, with a resolution of 1080p, as follows:

As shown in the video above, Mac mini can play the game smoothly during actual play. When the game is running, the frame rate is basically stable at 30fps. Although it is not very high, it is relatively stable, with almost no obvious feeling of stutter dropping frames. Even the indoor scene is relatively stable, and the default picture effect is acceptable. On the whole, the performance of this Mac mini game on M2 chip is a pleasant surprise.

The point is, after editing the game for about 30 minutes, the Mac mini is quiet, there is no noise, and it is not hot to touch the top of the fuselage, which once again highlights the advantage of M2 chip in power consumption and heat control.

If you do not play such a large game, then some games can be played on mobile platforms, such as playing "original God" through PlayCover, the picture is very smooth and there is no pressure to play. In addition, there are popular mobile games such as "Moonlight Blade" and "Tian Xue".

In addition, there are many excellent independent games on steam, such as Hades, dead cells, teacup head, etc., which can also be played.

Of course, such a game lineup is not good enough compared to the Windows platform. However, after experiencing biochemical Evil 8: village with the basic Mac mini, the editor feels that Mac is now ready for hardware, and the most important thing is Apple's efforts to develop game ecology.

Third, use experience as an entry-level product of Mac ecology, Mac mini is naturally the best choice for you to taste fresh macOS ecology, and this basic version of Mac mini reduces the cost of this taste to a minimum.

As a technology website editor, the editor has been away from the Windows platform for a long time in his daily work, life and entertainment. The Windows computer at home is usually used only when playing games. In addition, most of the work is done on macOS, and there is not much inconvenience.

Daily writing, processing documents, cutting videos, dealing with pictures, watching movies, listening to music, learning, finding materials, etc., can be easily and happily done on the macOS system, the core deficiency lies in the lack of some professional software of science and technology, so if you do some clerical work, there is basically no problem with using macOS, but if you are an engineer of science and technology, and so on. So before you start, you have to find out whether the daily software can be well supported on the Mac platform.

The advantage of macOS over Windows lies in simplicity and stability. For example, the editor has been annoyed by the pop-up windows of various rogue software on the Windows platform in the past, and even sometimes the codeword is happy, losing the cursor by a software pop-up window. After switching to the macOS platform, it did not appear again, there will be a feeling of refreshing.

On the macOS Ventura system run by Mac mini, the editor feels that there is a function that is more suitable for Mac mini, a device with a large external screen, that is, front-stage scheduling.

When the daily office is busy, the system desktop can easily accumulate a lot of messy windows. If you want to sort out these windows, you have to go to the points manually. Although there are also ways to organize them quickly, they are relatively unpopular. Front-end scheduling can help you organize these application windows quickly and make it easy for you to switch between different applications.

In the past, front scheduling was used on MacBook, but because the screen size itself is small and the application sidebar of front scheduling still takes up part of the space, it always feels a bit crowded. The Mac mini needs to be connected to the big screen, so the front dispatch to the Mac mini undoubtedly appears to be more practical.

When it comes to connecting a large screen, the basic Mac mini of this M2 chip supports connecting a monitor with a resolution of up to 6K (60Hz) through the Leili port, while connecting a monitor with a resolution of up to 5K (60Hz) through the Laili port or a monitor with a resolution of up to 4K (60Hz) through the HDMI port.

Unless you are a very professional video worker or game developer, this kind of video output performance is definitely enough for us to connect to the monitor.

In addition to video output, there is also audio output. The Mac mini itself has a built-in speaker, but the actual sense of the speaker is very thin, which is basically the function of listening to a sound, so if you need better sound quality, it is best to have an external stereo, or directly use the 3.5mm headphone port to connect the headphones.

Finally, one problem for video or photo workers is that this generation of Mac mini is still not equipped with SD card slots, so if you need to use SD cards frequently to import videos or pictures, an additional docking station with SD card slots is also recommended.

Fourth, is it worth buying 8GB+256GB 's M2 Mac mini basic model? is it worth starting?

I believe that the friends who ask this question are friends who have less extreme requirements for performance and memory, and like the portability and price of Mac mini, but they are not sure whether there will be any obvious shortcomings in the experience.

From the experience of using CTOnews.com these days, this entry-level M2 Mac mini is worth having, at least it won't make you feel bad.

4499 yuan, or even 3699 yuan, you can get a very smooth and stable mini host, the performance can be killed at the same price, the key is quiet, basically no heat, and the compact body allows you to take it to and from work or even travel, especially if you want to taste fresh macOS ecology, what kind of bike do you need?

As for the storage of 8GB and the memory of 256GB, it is enough to edit documents, cut videos, or watch movies and watch web pages every day, including playing biochemical Evil 8: village. So unless your job requires running multiple large-scale software at the same time, 8GB storage is sufficient.

Compared with 8GB storage, 256GB storage is really stretched, with the accumulation of working files, the hard disk space will indeed be full soon. So buying this version of M2 Mac mini with an external mobile hard drive should be done sooner or later.

In the case of 1TB's mobile solid-state drive, the current average price of JD.com is about 500 to 600 yuan, which is more affordable than adding a high-storage version to Apple.

In fact, this is also a major advantage of Mac mini, giving you the core M2 chip and macOS system, and you can flexibly match the peripheral equipment in a way that suits your budget, keeping the cost of using Mac to a minimum.

After knowing this, it may not be a question of whether it is worth it or not, but when to buy it.

JD.com Apple Mac mini 8-core M2 chip 8G 256G SSD desktop mainframe MMFJ3CH / A4499 yuan direct link

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