There’s a big issue with Black Magic’s speed test: It’s only for sequential reads/writes, not for random reads/writes, which is more important for daily system usage. For example, WD SN570 is way faster than KIOXIA G2 on sequentials, but G2 absolutely demolished SN570 in real usage because its randoms are faster. I don’t know about Mac mini M4’s drives’ randoms, but because the SSD controllers’ are the same M4 chip, the randoms might not be too different. This is why I use Amorphous Disk Mark instead of the Black Magic test, because Black Magic is a camera company, they don’t care about random reads/writes.
Thank you, now I don't have to say it. And along with that, aren't these reads and writes relatively short and greatly affected by the cache size on the SSD.
This is why CrystalDiskMark is a good tool on the Windows side. It breaks things down a lot more than the Black Magic tool, which makes sense as its testing for how well it performs with video file formats.
best reviewer ever! no bs!! just real and positive! and no lie!!!! love your review bro! i think i will get base model with external ssd for app and video editing! normally i never use the internal storage so it can breath better... cheers
The 24GB RAM upgrade is the first thing you should consider. It allows you to run an 8GB Windows virtual machine while still having enough RAM for Mac apps.
@michaelcorcoran8768 well, more and more big titles comes to Mac, so they just growing slowly.. this M4 gen should give a big push for the game devs too. Ray Tracing support just arrived in the M3 series, and with M3+M4 Macbook+Mac their nimbers just growing really fast, they can reach about the same amount of active reacheable users like Steam, or if you also add the M1 and M2 to that and even the iPad and iPhone as a gaming tool since they use the same cores, just in different amount, than already nearly 1 billion gaming ready devices on the market, what is 8x more like the Steam can offer with 120 million or Playstation can offer with 116 million active users, also the Apple store is the most profitable store on the planet, and the store renevue is actually the cut off from the spent amount of money.. so if the Apple store earns $80billion while the Steam store earns $10billion, then the devs in Apple store are also earned 8x more.. guess which company can inore the more potential profit.. because Apple already have 1,5billion of active users, and about half of them already have an A14/M1 or better chip, but they are selling about 350million gaming ready device each year, which is more what Steam+Playstation together can offer.. (250 million iPhones, and at least 100 million combined sales for iPad+Macbook+Mac)
I saw youtube videos where the M4 base model with 256gb was only getting 1700 speed test on write. I just bought mine 2 days ago at the Apple Store here in Illinois and bought the 512 gb like you did. I did it because I realized a couple of days ago that the hard drive on the 256 gb is actually two 128 gb on a board. One 128 on one side and 1 128 gb on the other side of a circuit board. With that being said it isnt one solid 256 gb drive...so it's going to slow down a little bit. My traded in M1 Mac mini that I had was 256 gb on board was faster than the M4 256 gb in regards to hard drive speed. I was getting 2100 write on my M1 and when I bought my M1 I had it configured with 16GB memory. I have always believed and you probably as well believe that you are as fast as your slowest component. I realized when buying the M4 with 512 gb that the hard drive board will get two 256 gb chips onto one board. I am getting with the 512gb on Blackmagic 4200 to 4500 write at time. So with knowing that - it's way faster than my old machine. I do believe the small slow down on the base model with 256 gb is because it's using 2 128 GB chips - and not a solid 256gb chip. I also came to the conclusion - when trying to decide if I should get the M4 pro (since its comes with 512 and the hard drive speeds look amazing) or get the M4 with 512. The memory I know for a fact has served me well for 4 years on my M1 and I never complained about 16Gb memory. So jumping higher to 24Gb was a waste for me. The M4 pro is more for CAD or 3D modeling
Just to challenge your logic, why was the M1 256gb that used 2 128gb chips faster than the M2 that came with one 256 gb chip ? The rumor was that Apple changed to one module to save money, but the 2 module design was inherently faster. The solution to better speeds on the M2's involved either getting a machine with 16gb of ram vs 8gb, or upgrading the drive to 512gb which used 2 256gb modules. Apple has now reverted back to using dual chips on the base models because of the prior problem with the M2 series base model sluggishness.
One other note, the storage on the M4 Mac Mini is on a removable chip and there are people that have already tested swapping modules and building custom upgrade solutions for the SSD.
@@ericjohnson829yea I saw that when the M2 came out that my M1 was faster than the m2 on HD speed. I sorta chuckled at that back then. Yes I’m not really 100% sure the whole reasoning or logic to why this is happening. Maybe three is something going on with bus speeds. I joked to the store rep about the M4 base model 256gb running on a UA-cam @1700 write speeds and said what is apple doing - putting in used hard drive chips and claiming new chips. I said that jokingly. Again I’m not sure what’s really going on with these ssd drives.
@@ericjohnson829 I like that they finally listened to the customer- we wanted that option. To replace if needed or upgrade the SSD. It’s very nice they did that.
My humble opinion 24gb+256gb is better option for future proofing a bit as ram cannot be upgraded later, also new macos allows app install and home dir move to external ssd, so storage is less critical than ram.
That's the reason why I bought the M4 Pro. Now I'm more or less safe for the future. I also have an external 1TB external drive. That should be enough for now.
Future proofing doesn’t seem economically feasible with the year over year improvements. I’d rather get the base model and then get a new base model in 4 years instead of upgrading big now and holding on for 10 years.
@@Samuel-hj9ty I like future proofing. Mainly I have issues with the amount of waste and exploitation in the production of tech. I wish everything was easily upgradable by everyday folk.
These are EXACTLY the speed statistics I was looking for! Between the time the M4 came out and THIS video, I learned how to migrate my working apps and data to an external Thunderbolt drive. In essence, the machine largely boots off my external Thunderbolt box. In my case, I use an old Qwiizlab Thunderbolt 3 enclosure with 512GB NVME (I pulled this NVME out of an old Acer desktop that was my main Linux experimentation machine...) attached to my tried-and-true 8GB/256GB M1 Mac Mini. Just as you demonstrate...I simply do NOT have to worry anymore about the storage speed on my M1. So...yeah...for me a "base" M4 and a Thunderbolt 5 drive with up to 4TB of storage WILL be my next Mac! Mahalo for this timely advice! Aloha!
@@passportmarc Indeed, this is what I've done. My M1 has been with me for a fair bit of time. I got the idea of doing this from all the cool, new videos that people are making about using Thunderbolt 5 drives with M4 Mac Pros. I thought I would first practice by using a Thunder bolt 3 enclosure, an old NVME drive, and one of my existing M1 Macs. As you've seen elsewhere on UA-cam, I, too, migrated my home folder, apps and date to the external. The system has to start from the internal drive. The modified parameters then tell it to seek out and find the rest of the bootup routine, the home folder and the other stuff from the external drive. It works very nicely with my crummy, old 512GB NVME so I'll then move on to replacing the 512GB NVME with a nice 4TB NVME in the near future. After I use this for a good, long while, I'll be comfortable to move on to an M4 Pro with a newer Thunderbolt 5 enclosure...possibly one with a pair of NVME drives in a RAID configuration. Sounds like a fun thing to do.
I did the same thing. Bought the 512 version from Amazon for $744, then an OWC 1M2 express enclosure for $94 & a Crucial P3 Plus 2TB for $113. I think this will be a good configuration for years to come. I’m setting it up with the home folder directed to the external drive, so documents etc. won’t be cluttering u -the space on the internal.
In Canada, the base model is $899. Your upgrade is $1099, i believe . For $1299, you get 24 gb, 512 ssd, this is what i opted for. The m4 pro is $1899, i hope i made the right decision, but i figured $600 extra was a bit steep ... I will mostly just use it for recording and mixing music, Harrison mixbus user here 👍
I plan to go for the same config. I was initially going to go with 16gb RAM but 24gb might give me a little more headroom if I decide to leverage Apple Intelligence features in the future. Unless you are planning to do heavy video editing, complex music production or a lot of gaming on it then I think you made the right decision as the M4 non-pro should be more than enough.
@@ancayman As @coltjustice45 mentioned above, here in Canada it's $600 more for the M4 Pro model over the M4 with 24gb/512. It's a much bigger jump to the M4 Pro here unfortunately :(
Great video. I'm still a little confused and maybe you can help me and some other people to. Let's say I go ahead and buy the 512gig mini 4 pro. Then I buy that external 2T storage. How do I actually configure this out of the box and initial setup? OS will run on the mac mini. But I want all my other applications to run off the external storage drive. How would you explain how to set this up for this mac mini for Dummies LOL.
I ask myself which configuration will benefit me more for Lightroom, Photoshop and 4k video editing: - M4 with 512 GB SSD and 32 GB RAM - M4 Pro with 512 GB SSD and 24 GB RAM In terms of the next 3-4 years, will the chip upgrade to the M4 Pro bring more or the higher RAM of 8 GB in the basic model?
The pro is going to be better but the question is would you use that power. I can't answer that but I thin the pro will for sure be better even with a bit less ram.
I’m still using a 3.46ghz 12-core 2012 Mac Pro for DAW software (Pro Tools, Reason, Waves and isotope plugins). The base model will smoke my setup easily and despite currently having 96GB, I’ve yet to see it use much over 24-30GB. I also use an external 10Gbit USB-C enclosure as my recording drive and as storage for my Steam library.
I am thinking of jumping to silicon for S1 Pro and possibly Logic Pro, but am curious about simultaneous multi-channel recording latency (28+ tracks), at 24-bit 48K. I wish I could see more demos of this type of tracking. Most focus on mixing and plug-ins.
Just ordered an m4PRO mini. Looking forward to swapping out the 2017 intel iMac. I’ll miss the 5k display but I’ve chosen to get a a dell ultra sharp with usb c hub
No need to upgrade the the SSD to 512 GB for a ridiculous £200. Simply buy a Crucial P3 1 TB NVMe for £60 and a Thunderbolt enclosure for £70 - £100, install the OS and all your apps on it and run the M4 from that. That way the tiny SSD gets absolutely no wear and tear and the whole caboodle will run faster than using the internal. I have been using a 1 TB USB 3.0 SSD on the basic M2 mini (8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD) for the past year and despite the slow speed of the USB drive, it was only 1% slower in Geekbench scores. Rendering and exporting FCP and Resolve projects took 4% longer which was negligible. No need to upgrade RAM. A lot of people misunderstand RAM. The Mac is designed to use most of its RAM whatever it is doing. So your computer may be idling and yet it appears to be using 75% of its RAM and you mistakenly think you need more RAM. WRONG! The computer is working just as it should. You could put in 64 GB RAM and it would still show most of it being used whilst doing simple tasks.
@@craigneidel Sorry, I must have missed that. I don't bother with the Home Folder on the mini, I just create a new one together with all my apps on the external. As mentioned, even using a terribly slow USB SSD (c. 360 MB/s) there was no noticeable reduction in performance using FCP and Resolve etc. The only thing that was slower was straight copying of huge files which obviously would take around 5x longer but that is something i rarely ever do. My overall discovery was that the speed of a drive has almost no effect on everyday computing tasks as that is determined mainly by the CPU/GPU.
Great commment. I’m looking to go to a Mac mini have used iMacs for years. What would you suggest, low internal ssd size and then use an external like you’ve mentioned? As for RAM, use the 16gb?
@@joshstannard3639 The basic model should be good enough for everyone except busy professionals or those doing highly intensive work . . . and even they could use it but it would take a bit longer. The base model M4 mini is a bargain BUT once you start adding things at Apple's ridiculous prices it's not a very good buy at all. Get the base and either a USB 3.0 SSD or if you feel like really splashing out buy a Thunderbolt NVMe. For the last year I have used a USB 3.0 SSD to boot my M2 mini and have just bought a Thunderbolt NVMe. It's marginally faster but I couldn't really say it's worth the extra.
I am surprised that people are not talking more about the 10 Gig Ethernet upgrade for $100. So glad Apple offers that. Now I work mostly with bigger files on the NAS rather than transferring them in and out of my mini.
Please compare the performance of OWC to Qwizlab enclosures, both are heatsink type design will be interesting to see which one cools better, but OWC is quite a bit expensive and haven't seen in a sale yet so not sure if the extra cost is truly worth it.
Could someone please reconfirm that the mini M4 base model with 256GB SSD is about half so fast in terms of disk write/read speed than a 512GB SSD version. I thought that was the case only for the previous models. Another question. Is it a good and safe idea to save on staying with the base 256GB SSD, that is theoretically upgradeable (sometime maybe with a third party PCB module), or can be mitigated with an external SSD drive. and put that money rather into more RAM that can never be updated or circumvented ?
Go search for SSD speeds on UA-cam and look at values. They are different but I know for sure the 256 is like 2100 at best and 2800 at best RW. But the 512 I have here and that is what I'm getting.
Hello all, i have a M4 mac mini and have purchased an APC Back-UPS the data cable that plugs into the back of the UPS is usb a at the computer end and as you know the M4 mac mini is all usb c. i purchased a USB C to RJ45 cable but the mac does not show it in the power settings. any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you
My tests repeatedly show the high write rates are NOT PERSISTENT. After a while, every SSD I have tested slows down. Is this due to RAM buffers on the front end, or heat, or protection of ssd memory cells? Its complicated. I spent 4 month with a Crucial Memory engineer trying to understand why duplicating a volume slowed down by 90% after ten minutes or so.
@ I do regular backups of my Time Machine internal NVMe and SATA volumes. Data rates start great then drop to 10% of max after 10-15 mins or so. Backup takes forever. HDDs are faster !!! No one talks about this at all
This is going to be our next home computer. That means its over kill right NOW for basic home office stuff. However I would like it to last about 7-10 years. Its replacing a 2014 Mac mini which I actually upgaded with an SSD. I am thinking the upgrade to 24 gb ram might be worth it - give our desired life span. I thought about 1TB but 512 should be good with an external drive for all the photos, music, and stuff.
Yeah, if you are going to be keeping this 10 years which is super long, go with 24 GB. Most Windows computers have a lifespan of about 3.5 years so 10 is a long time. I would get 1 TB then.
I plan on getting the M4pro and 48 Gb. It’s not about what it can do now it’s more about what it will still be able to handle 5 years from now. I usually have several programs open at once and multiple drives connected. A maximum of 32Gb doesn’t interest me.
If you know you need it then get it. My video is about the average user and not somebody who might need 48 GB of ram. I would say that is very limited but some might need it and they already know that.
I’m also going to go M4 Pro with 48GB. Also, more about covering future need, given the unified memory isn’t upgradable. I’m coming from a late 2014 iMac, and I’ve had to move a lot of production work over to a Windows PC due to lack of iMac performance. So, after 10 years with my 27” 5K iMac, I’m looking to spend a bit more to (hopefully), again get me a desktop Mac solution for the next 10 years (well at least 5+ years).
Dont, the speed Apple Silicon is moving is second to none.. careful investing in the so-called "future" fx 5 years down the line... and maybe learn from the past.. Apple people that did that *invest in the expected future a handful of years back, aint to happy today as compute items, and partcially Apple silicon based' are dating quite fast... if you need 48GB today, then get it.. but don't invest today's money on what you think you will need 5 years down the line, get what you need today and if that equal a saving then use that to elevate your product to a new fx 3 or 4 years later.. Apple price ladder ain't a walk in the park-.. your paying out of your nose for those upgrades to a locked system with a ltd GPU that ain't something to write home about..
@@JAKOB1977 You make some good points to contemplate. I grew up in the 90’s, when upgrading every year was a given. So, the fact that my Intel iMac has lasted me 10 years is quite amazing. But, I agree that Apple silicon is in a relatively rapid growth period. The frustrating thing is the non-upgradability of memory, pushing you to think of paying extortionate prices for more memory to last longer. Lots to think about.
@@craigneidel I see it as a better longterm investment for my needs, setting up a music composition workstation with orchestral libraries etc. Will require a bunch of external drives as well, but that's always how I set these things up anyway.
I bought base specs Mini M4 and paired with external Samsung 970 via Thunderbolt4 case... internal and external storages now have exactly same speed, more than enough for my needs ;-) regarding cons, the case is hot! hence I added extra heat sink and and quiet fan ;-)
Yes, no need for anything faster. Nobody really needs Thunderbolt 5 speeds and I'm sticking to that conclusion. I might test it later but I don't need it either.
I’m very average! I bought this exact model last week but haven’t yet decided what to do about external storage. My main use is photo editing and I’ve always kept my files on an external hard drive (currently a spinning disc G-tech). I use a QNAP NAS for Time Machine backups but bought a Samsung T5 1TB SSD to create a new TM backup when migrating my data and settings from my 2017 MacBook Pro just in case it took forever to do it over WiFi from the NAS. I used it for the first time today and although it was quicker than my old laptop, it wasn’t blazingly so. Am I right is assuming that the bottleneck is the hard drive and that replacing it with an SSD would make a huge difference?
I would thoroughly recommend dropping the external Thunderbold storage for a 10GBit ethernet NIC (+$100) and then connecting a NAS. That way you will be able to store all your data in a centralised way with redundancy (basically using the Mini like a thin client).
So, correct me if I’m wrong, what if you connect two of these USB 4 or Thunderbolt 4 enclosures to the back of the Mac Studio / Mac mini thunderbolt 4 ports with the same two 1tb nvme ssds, say WD SN850X and set these both drives in MacOS through Disk Utility as Raid 0 - wouldnt this make these 2 enclosures/drives into a single 2tb drive while also providing over 6000 sequential speeds? or am I missing something here? Wouldnt this effectively make this setup as fast as the high tier internal ssds? and it would still be cheaper than paying the Apple tax? I dont see any reason why this wouldnt be possible, but I havent been able to find concrete information online about this.
Subscribed. Been researching on reddit and watched a bunch of videos about the M4 vs M4 Pro mostly care about the ram. Then I found your video. I went with Costco config M4 512GB/24GB Ram for $800 something after discount. Mostly use it for basic 4K editing with Final Cut. Hope it will last 5 years then I can upgrade. Buying the base M4 Pro seems great with the same Ram and SSD but it’s too powerful which I do not need. It’s $1400 too where I can save almost $400 just going with the standard M4. Thank you!
Dummy question: If the read speeds are roughly the same, wouldn't that mean that both ssd's will be about the same speed when opening big files and running programs etc.? With the only major difference being the speed at which they can transfer a big file to something else (write speed). I'm reasonably uneducated when it comes to the differences so clever people please help!
Technically speaking, the bigger the ssd, the bigger their cache & IOPS rates are. So the end result being exponentially faster small files (i’m talking a couple KB/MB) transfer rates. It’s helpful in a lot of ways. You can get big files (movies/archives) fast transfer rates even on a classical HDD tho if that’s your main use case
Yes, to tell you the truth most won't notice a difference between 3000 and 4000 MB/s at all. Maybe with file transfers and they could be a bit quicker but overall anything over 3,000 is hard to notice in my opinion and using many fast drives.
There are a few Thunderbolt 5 enclosures but I'm not sure anything over 3000 MB/s is needed with external storage to be honest. So I would not spend the money personally. I may for my channel but that would be the reason.
I think 16 GB can handle 30 tabs for sure but if you are using the computer to make money and considerable money maybe go with the 24 GB to be sure. But I think 16 is fine as I have that many tabs open just fine.
The set up seems good ....but......how do you do regular backups of the files stored on your external SSD? Is there a simple way to back up the files on the SSD automatically or is the only alternative to back up manually?
You can use Time Machine to backup multiple different drives. You can also make it back things TO multiple different drives too, which is handy if you want to have a copy that's taken off site.
I got an M4 mini with 24GB memory and 1TB SSD. The writing speed is about 3060 MB/s and the reading speed is about 2943 MB/s when tested with Blackmagic Disk Speed Test. With AmorphousDisk test, both speeds are a little bit higher, 3260 MB/s and 3172MB/s, respectively.
@@craigneidel Looks to me Apple puts gen 3 spec SSDs in the mini and air with the base processor and gen 4 spec SSD‘s for the pro processors and higher.
I'm seeing very similar speeds on my M4 Mini with 32GB RAM and 512GB SSD. Write/read are always right around 3000. Now I'm wondering why I'm not seeing the higher write speed of ~4000.
@@JayCal6 That won't happen with the M4Mini and the base CPU setup, it's PCI 4.0 x Gen 3 speeds in these. The Gen 4 is used on the M4Pro CPU's. Those who have pulled the SSD's from the two different models shows the SSD's and connectors are indeed different.
There's a good guide to doing this on the Mac Sound Solutions channel. Different processes for converting an existing setup, vs. configuring a new Mac out of the box.
I don't care much about the ssd or ram speed as they are already fast enough for me. Is there anyway to get a DDR4/5 stick, put it in some closure, plug it to the thunderbolt 4 port and make the MacOS use it as additional ram?
Did you use the thunderbolt port in your external SSD test? Do you get the same results using one of the non-thunderbolt USB-C ports? I’m considering the studio display and would need to use the thunderbolt port for that full time. Thanks for the review!
At 7:10 How is it that the writing speed is 50% faster than the reading speed? Shouldn't it be the opposite? And the reading speed of the 512 GB is 3,000GB/s, which is NOT "double" than the 256 GB, but exactly the same.
How about booting from an external drive? I boot from an external drive on my Mac Mini M1 and get close to the speeds from the internal...using the 990 might match the internal speeds of the M4....plus you are saving the internal from wear...
I heard that boot from externals on the M4 could hurt the ai stuff but I may do some testing. Maybe just making your external your home directly (right when you get Mac before you install anything) is another option.
@ yes, been following you and some others quite intensely regarding the new Mac Mini and it does seem that moving your home folder to the external drive right at the initial start up is the best and most trouble free way to go. I must say Craig is that I find your reviews and tests are to me most helpful. Not filled with meaningless theoretical benchmarks that others use but you concentrate on the real world and how 95% of use our computers and advise what will suit our computing.
Thanks Glenn. Appreciate that. I try my best. It's so hard to come out with videos on a daily basis with all the competition out there but I do my best to try and help people.
Can you do a video on the speed difference of Mac mini base model using an external SSD and without the external SSD? I’m wondering if there’s different in terms of apps and videos editing or data transfer? Thanks
Hi! Thank you for you video. Do you think it can handle 3 webcams at the same time? Processing and encoding? I’m just starting to make me a streaming setup, (I sing and play music) and want to record videos to UA-cam and maybe stream live on twitch. But my imac is old (late 2017) and I need to buy a new one (i think) My problem now is that my cpu is getting maxed out and OBS will not detect my gpu (radeon 580) because i don’t have a silicon chip?. I don’t know that much about computer specs and what I need to have. I’m not going to use the mac for anything else, than editing the videos that I make. What to buy?
I think it should be able to handle that. The M4 should work but maybe start there and if you run into any issue return that and get the M4 Pro. I just don't think you will need it.
Thank you for your quick response. I Think I will start out with the m4 and get the version with the 512gb - but should I buy the 16 or 24 ram version? - I don’t know if its the ram that helps processing the videodata from the three webcams I wanna use, or is it just overkill for my setup with that extra rams? Ps. You make some awesome and great videos, very informative and easy to understand, eventhough im not that good at english😅
Thank you. It's really hard for me to answer the ram thing but maybe do a test now and see how much ram you are pulling with the 3 feeds. Since every program is totally different that will be your answer and then if you are using over 16 GB you can go with the 24 GB version to be sure.
great video. question. for logic audio and some video work. Apple Mac Studio M1 Max 10-Core CPU, 64GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 24-Core GPU, brand new for $1499 or should i just look more into a M4 mac mini pro 12 core 24ram 1tb??
Thanks. The reason I might not do the M1 is because of OS support and how that will be 4 years ago so the support won't last nearly as long. I might look at Mac mini.
I'm bit confused about the specifications hope you will help me out... I use after effects for video editing... I was thinking of buying a 24gb ram +256gb storage varient... will this specs be ok for running AE
@@craigneidel Thank you! I do real estate videography and photography so sometimes I do stress my current machine (i9, 2TB, 32gb) but I've been hearing so many good things about this new Mini M4 that I'd like to use it as my "work horse" and leave the current Linux Mint 20 machine to handle everything else. While I do have it set up to dual boot into a separate Win10 drive, I'd rather just leave the Linux and Mac running and switch from one computer to the other using the same display but two different keyboards with either a trackball or track pad built in. When I think about the $900 I paid for the Nvidia GPU a few years ago, it kinda makes me sick when this Apple Mini M4 with better computing power is now available for less than I paid for that graphics card. I did buy during the chip shortage but I needed it so of course I paid a premium at the time. I find it amazing that this M4 is so much faster with just a 512gb drive vs the 256gb.
@@craigneidel Ordered the base model with the 512 nvme through Amazon. I guess they are flying off the shelves because my delivery time is Dec. 10-20. For anyone reading this in the future, today is 11.20.24 so up to a month to get it.
My Mac Mini M1 has 512 GB and I have less than 256 GB of available space left on my drive. I keep all of my photos on a separate drive so this storage is just from the OS and apps. I’m about to buy a Mac Mini M4 this week and I think I’m going to go with the 512 GB drive. Any comments?
I do not need the M4 Pro but to be honest, I do not need the M4 Mac Mini at all, I just wanted it as soon as I saw it. (My first Mac ever after 33 years being into computers.) That said, I bought the Pro version because it is noticeably faster, overall, when compared to the base M4 Mini. I did by the Pro for $1139 so it was a good deal and on sale.
@@craigneidel Thanks! That's the one I'll need to replace my 21 inch Mac from 2012,... I need the larger storage because I have 550 GB of pictures on my iPhotos App,... Cheers!
My plan is to go base model and set the home and application folder up on my external. This is replacing my PC, so I already have all the accessories I need. I already have a MacBook M1, but I want to use that more as a media/document writing device, and do everything else on my M4 Mini. The original plan was to update to a MacBook Pro and skip out on the desktop, but now I think I'm going to hold off on that plan until a later gen (maybe 2027) - and just stick with the way cheaper combo of Mac mini M4 and MacBook Air M1.
Can. you do a walkthru on how to set up a external SSD drive to edit off of, i seen other videos but they talk about how you move your home folder files to it and then set it to it etc? All i would like to do is how to set it up for editing and thats it.
I edit multi-cam 4K videos for my Pokémon channel and I am still on the fence on which one to get and what config. I currently have a MacBoom Pro with 32gb of RAM and it works really well for my use. I basically want something that will become more of a desktop instead of something mobile. Would you guys recommend I stick with the regular M4 and up the RAM? Or should I go for M4 Pro? I really don’t care about rendering time as much as fluidity while I edit on Final Cut Pro
It's hard to say for sure but I think the base with upgraded ram to at least 24 or higher would be enough. Normally I say to buy one and test it as you have normally 30 days to return it and that is the only want to know for sure since every workload is so different.
Couldn’t bring myself to spend $200 for a 256gb upgrade. Since the memory is removable I’ll wait to upgrade later. There are 3rd party companies working on that. For now running off an external 2TB drive.
ive seen reviews where people say that this time the 515gb version is not faster then the 256gb one like ot was the case with the older macmini. So what now ? :D
I’m surprised nobody has done a test in the Apple storage read/writes on 256, 512, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, 8TB. It looks like the more you have, the faster they are.
I love this new Mac mini M4. Off-topic question: Can I use an Ethernet cable Cat. 8 on the new Mac mini M4? Thank you in advance (I have 1Gigabit, I know a Cat. 6a cable would be enough but usually newer is better and has lower or no interferences (EMI, Electromagnetic interferences))
Any feedback would be appreciated. I’m thinking of picking up the Mac Mini with 256 GB internal storage. I’m not a video editor nor do I need super high performance as I am now retired and most of my work is spreadsheets, watching UA-cam, having multiple Safari tabs open simultaneously, etc. I’m trying to understand the advantage of adding an external SSD and placing my home folder and/or apps there. Also, if I add the OS to the external SSD what purpose does internal drive serve at that point?
If you make your home folder the external drive your OS stays on your internal drive. That is really want you want and you really don't want to boot off the external in 2024 otherwise I think things like ai won't work etc. So I just wanted to clarify that changing your home directory to the external doesn't mean your OS is there. Only you can answer the question if 256 is enough space. The OS will use 35 GB and then programs and data.
Just note that even if you put the home folder on the external drive you need to make sure the external drive is super reliable and won't sleep etc. Otherwise it will error out. Thanks and good luck with things.
There was a UA-camr by the name of David Lewis that recommended the $1,299 configuration of the Mac Mini with the standard M4 chip, 24GB of RAM, 1TB SSD, and the 10 gigabit ethernet port as the perfect sweet spot for almost all users. I wonder what your thoughts on that would be.
Yeah, but for most users that is another $400 bucks and then you are in the M4 Pro space. People that need 24 GB usually know they do but for the 90 percent who do normal computer tasks I think the 16 is fine. I mean I can even 4K edit just fine.
Just subscribed. Have watched a few other M4 mini reviews, really like yours. Question, I think the answer is no but will ask to confirm. With an external SSD like in the video or similar, is it possible to store internals on it? Like applications or iOS files? How about mail and messages?
I’m coming from a pc. This will be my first Mac. I’m a basic user but I do get into some heavy excel files that can bog down my PC with 32gb ram, cpu speed of 3.6ghz . I’m considering the base m4. What are your thoughts. Would be 512 be better? Side note; I plan to add a 2TB ssd tb4 to use as my home folder. Does that make a difference?
That seems good but maybe go with the 512 GB as you will be happier in the long run since some things will need to run on that and you don't want to push it. I would look for some sales. I heard Costco has that version for under $700 now on sale.
@@craigneidelwell, I ended up getting the 512 with 24Gb ram using Apple discount program 100 off. I received a gift card in the mail today that I used to bring my total down to 650 out of pocket. Maybe I won’t need the extra ram, this being my first Mac I was unsure of 16gb. All my pcs have had so much more than that.
I went with M4 Pro fully maxed out CPU 2TB storage and 24GB of memory and upgraded Ethernet port….hoping 24GB of memory is enough. No way I would ever do less than 2TB of internal storage ever but that’s me.
@@craigneidel I know and I hate spending money...maybe I should have snort more conservative but then I thought about the thunderbolt 5 ports too being a good thing.
Hey Craig, hello from Phoenix Arizona well the weather finally cool off down here dare I say it’s even a little chilly although we’re gonna be back up to 78 today so we’ll get down to below freezing for a few nights in January anyway I was just thinking about the new Mac mini and what the bestspecifications would be to get and then your video pops up amazing
That extra storage was very tempting, but for my modest use case the external storage was the best way to go. I have a 2TB external drive based on the recommendations of one of your past videos.
Love the Qwiizlab enclosure, unfortunately can't get hold of one in the UK. Nobody has any. Amazon out of stock saying they do not know when it will be back. Which usualy means never with them.
I hope 512 is good enough for you. I’m one of those people who don’t like external drives sitting around. But I know many people like em to keep the cost down. ✌🏻
£200 for add a 2TB external drive or pay Apple £600 to upgrade the internal drive from 512Gb to 2TB - so only an increase of 1.5TB. It’s a no brainer. I spent the money on getting the Pro with extra ram.
Ordered 24g and 1tb storage plus I have 12tb ssd external (3-4tb) for photo storage which not near as fast as yours but lot faster than I have now with HDD 8 tb WD.
I'm trying the same setup (Evo plus 990 + enclosure 40Gbps) with a Macbook M4 pro. I'm getting 3500 MB/3200 MB, but the problem is that it's hot even when idle. Samsung support told me that the Evo was created to be used internally, directly attached to the motherboard, and therefore, they cannot confirm if it will work/be detected when used via an adaptor/HUB. Even if it was initially working, they cannot confirm its long-term usage if connected externally. Anyone having the same issue?
I'm not and I don't see why that would matter too much. They might just be trying to cover things etc. but I don't see why it would not work in an external SSD enclosure. They said the same thing with a 2.5" Samsung I bought 7 years ago and I still boot my 2017 27" iMac off that one.
@@craigneidel You mentioned that your drive is running cool. Could you tell me its temperature when idle? Unfortunately, I can’t check the temperature of mine using Samsung Magician because the drive status shows as "N/A," even though it’s running. Also, I can’t install AmorphousDiskMark since it’s not available in my country’s App Store.
I can't really do individual requests all the time as I am so swamped to even respond to the two hundred posts per day. I can only say that it get's warm sometimes but not super hot at all.
I'm not sure what is going on with that 256 vs 512 SSD but the extra cost for the 512 is worth the upgrade. And after my old 2020 Mac Mini trade in. Total cost was less then $550.00 So it was a no brainier for me to get the 512 SSD 2nd tier model. i will just have ti wait till they come out with newer Docking Stations for the M4. As now I'm stuck with the older model .Satechi USB C Hub. Just to have USB abs card readers.
For some reason read speeds of 256GB model is around the same 3000MB/s as your 512GB model.If to transfer User Folder and All no system app to the external SSD and run it from there than if read speeds are the same around 3000MB/s than OS system speed will be almost the same even if to buy 256GB base model.
Yes, but when you do that you need to make sure the external is super solid and won't sleep or have issues or you could get some data corruption. Since the home folder needs to always be visible to the OS.
oh now I know, Mac Mini also means slow and mini disk performance. My 6 years old PC has Samsung M2 SSD with 3400 MB/s and Mac Mini Standard has SSD with 2000 MB/s. That's the reason I would never change my old PC for a new Mac Mini. With my Intel I5 CPU I have all the CPU power that I need for my programs.
Then use windows. Nobody is making you switch but trust me if you did you would love the mini. So snappy on everything it's a pleasure to use even 599 version.
Has anyone found the speed figures for the M4 Mini Base Chip with 1 TB or 2 TB internal storage (are they the same like the 512 GB or is there an additional uplift)? So the smart config seems to be 24/512/10 Gig as the 10G capability is dirtcheap compared to other upgrades at apple (if i allready pay 200 or 400$ premium i should pay the 100$ for the faster network anyway even if morelikely you won't have a 10 Gig Ethernet at home but probably a 2,5 Gig Ethernet. But you convinced me to add at least the 200$ for the storage. And just recognized completely fall into the apple trapanother additional 200 and i have the Mac Mini M4 Pro, so i keep my M1 MBA 16/512 and wait until apple release a base model without crippled storage.
You should really mention what amount your testing with when talking about speedtests as a lot of the examples flooding around ain't apples to apples. Mini 4 will vary a lot depending on size. in blackmagic with low black magic t4estsize fx 1GB your around 3000 in both read & write. on Mini 4 base 256gB and with 5GB your also around 2800MB in read.. so the only gain on 512GB drive is your write for an added systemcost of +33%... 33% of the full cost, aitn peanuts
I just picked up the M4 Mac mini 512GB SSD model that you just received, because the entry level 256GB SSD model was too limiting for me. The Apple store carried that 512GB M4 model in stock, unlike many of the Build To Order models with long wait times. My Write Speed on my 512GB model is only about 3,000 MB/sec with the same Read speed as yours on Blackmagic. I guess it depends on which particular RAM supplier Apple uses when they made your particular 512GB model.
Yeah, I'm not sure and I thought it was unusual on the speed of the disk but I have not tested it many times and it still comes back that fast. But, at the end of the day most won't notice a difference between these speeds.
Black Friday sales (or if you are just a Best Buy Member)... you can get the Base M4 Mini for $550. so $744 is still almost $200 more if you are comparing "Apples to Apples" (see what I did there?)
I don't think that much since most of Apples ai stuff you need to ask for like completing a email or creating an image. I mean during that time it would be using the memory for a short period.
Its fast if you have enough memory for your task depending on your use case otherwise your SSD will be used for swap slowing the cpu gpu npu osx apps data multitasking down
i saw many reviews on the mac mini m4, this by far one of the best video review on it, well done man .
I appreciate that. Thanks for watching the channel.
There’s a big issue with Black Magic’s speed test: It’s only for sequential reads/writes, not for random reads/writes, which is more important for daily system usage. For example, WD SN570 is way faster than KIOXIA G2 on sequentials, but G2 absolutely demolished SN570 in real usage because its randoms are faster. I don’t know about Mac mini M4’s drives’ randoms, but because the SSD controllers’ are the same M4 chip, the randoms might not be too different. This is why I use Amorphous Disk Mark instead of the Black Magic test, because
Black Magic is a camera company, they don’t care about random reads/writes.
Thank you, now I don't have to say it. And along with that, aren't these reads and writes relatively short and greatly affected by the cache size on the SSD.
It's been fairly accurate over the years when I compare to data tests. I have like 30 videos where I compare both.
Thank you for mentioning this. I often wondered why amorphous always shows much slower random 4K single writes and reads as compared to crystal mark.
This is why CrystalDiskMark is a good tool on the Windows side. It breaks things down a lot more than the Black Magic tool, which makes sense as its testing for how well it performs with video file formats.
I normally also do 100 GB data test to compare to Black Magic tests.
best reviewer ever! no bs!! just real and positive! and no lie!!!! love your review bro! i think i will get base model with external ssd for app and video editing! normally i never use the internal storage so it can breath better... cheers
Wow thanks for the kind words. Good luck with everything.
I'm one minute in and he's repeated himself 4 times. Unwatchable.
@@ke5112 who?
The 24GB RAM upgrade is the first thing you should consider. It allows you to run an 8GB Windows virtual machine while still having enough RAM for Mac apps.
If you need to run Windows then yes but most here normally only macos
Windows, yeah no thank you 😂
@@harrirauhanummiI mean it wouldn't be necessary if Mac actually cared about gaming.
@michaelcorcoran8768 well, more and more big titles comes to Mac, so they just growing slowly.. this M4 gen should give a big push for the game devs too. Ray Tracing support just arrived in the M3 series, and with M3+M4 Macbook+Mac their nimbers just growing really fast, they can reach about the same amount of active reacheable users like Steam, or if you also add the M1 and M2 to that and even the iPad and iPhone as a gaming tool since they use the same cores, just in different amount, than already nearly 1 billion gaming ready devices on the market, what is 8x more like the Steam can offer with 120 million or Playstation can offer with 116 million active users, also the Apple store is the most profitable store on the planet, and the store renevue is actually the cut off from the spent amount of money.. so if the Apple store earns $80billion while the Steam store earns $10billion, then the devs in Apple store are also earned 8x more.. guess which company can inore the more potential profit.. because Apple already have 1,5billion of active users, and about half of them already have an A14/M1 or better chip, but they are selling about 350million gaming ready device each year, which is more what Steam+Playstation together can offer.. (250 million iPhones, and at least 100 million combined sales for iPad+Macbook+Mac)
nahh.. Apple silicon..Windows virtual or not.. hmm lets go with one of these infamous "no"
I did the 512gb, M4 pro with 24gb memory, incredibly happy with it, traded in my M1 mac mini.
I picked up the same and traded in a 2020 intel iMac 27"
Went for the same.
Dude, EXACTLY the same here ... Mine will be delivered in 2 weeks . OH I went with 10Gb network NIC as well !
That will be a great system. The video is more about the average user but if you know you will do any heavy lifting the Pro is the way to go.
@@NicolasMichel_CCIE_29410 Why does it takes 2 weeks to deliver it to you?
I saw youtube videos where the M4 base model with 256gb was only getting 1700 speed test on write. I just bought mine 2 days ago at the Apple Store here in Illinois and bought the 512 gb like you did. I did it because I realized a couple of days ago that the hard drive on the 256 gb is actually two 128 gb on a board. One 128 on one side and 1 128 gb on the other side of a circuit board. With that being said it isnt one solid 256 gb drive...so it's going to slow down a little bit. My traded in M1 Mac mini that I had was 256 gb on board was faster than the M4 256 gb in regards to hard drive speed. I was getting 2100 write on my M1 and when I bought my M1 I had it configured with 16GB memory. I have always believed and you probably as well believe that you are as fast as your slowest component. I realized when buying the M4 with 512 gb that the hard drive board will get two 256 gb chips onto one board. I am getting with the 512gb on Blackmagic 4200 to 4500 write at time. So with knowing that - it's way faster than my old machine. I do believe the small slow down on the base model with 256 gb is because it's using 2 128 GB chips - and not a solid 256gb chip. I also came to the conclusion - when trying to decide if I should get the M4 pro (since its comes with 512 and the hard drive speeds look amazing) or get the M4 with 512. The memory I know for a fact has served me well for 4 years on my M1 and I never complained about 16Gb memory. So jumping higher to 24Gb was a waste for me. The M4 pro is more for CAD or 3D modeling
Yes, I think you described it well and it's good system for most. I'm not saying everybody as some need more but for most it's a great system.
Just to challenge your logic, why was the M1 256gb that used 2 128gb chips faster than the M2 that came with one 256 gb chip ? The rumor was that Apple changed to one module to save money, but the 2 module design was inherently faster. The solution to better speeds on the M2's involved either getting a machine with 16gb of ram vs 8gb, or upgrading the drive to 512gb which used 2 256gb modules. Apple has now reverted back to using dual chips on the base models because of the prior problem with the M2 series base model sluggishness.
One other note, the storage on the M4 Mac Mini is on a removable chip and there are people that have already tested swapping modules and building custom upgrade solutions for the SSD.
@@ericjohnson829yea I saw that when the M2 came out that my M1 was faster than the m2 on HD speed. I sorta chuckled at that back then. Yes I’m not really 100% sure the whole reasoning or logic to why this is happening. Maybe three is something going on with bus speeds. I joked to the store rep about the M4 base model 256gb running on a UA-cam @1700 write speeds and said what is apple doing - putting in used hard drive chips and claiming new chips. I said that jokingly. Again I’m not sure what’s really going on with these ssd drives.
@@ericjohnson829 I like that they finally listened to the customer- we wanted that option. To replace if needed or upgrade the SSD. It’s very nice they did that.
One of the best videos I’ve see so far on Mac mini M4 external storage. Thank you!!
Thank you for the feedback on the video. Appreciate that.
My humble opinion 24gb+256gb is better option for future proofing a bit as ram cannot be upgraded later, also new macos allows app install and home dir move to external ssd, so storage is less critical than ram.
That's the reason why I bought the M4 Pro. Now I'm more or less safe for the future. I also have an external 1TB external drive. That should be enough for now.
My thinking also. I think this is the better option & what I will be buying. Give it 12 months & there will be plenty of 1TB swappable SSDs.
That's fine but for this video I'm saying for most users and not everyone. People that get 24 GB usually know they need it.
Future proofing doesn’t seem economically feasible with the year over year improvements. I’d rather get the base model and then get a new base model in 4 years instead of upgrading big now and holding on for 10 years.
@@Samuel-hj9ty I like future proofing. Mainly I have issues with the amount of waste and exploitation in the production of tech. I wish everything was easily upgradable by everyday folk.
Thanks for keeping it real and not overcomplicating
For sure and thanks more for watching.
These are EXACTLY the speed statistics I was looking for! Between the time the M4 came out and THIS video, I learned how to migrate my working apps and data to an external Thunderbolt drive. In essence, the machine largely boots off my external Thunderbolt box.
In my case, I use an old Qwiizlab Thunderbolt 3 enclosure with 512GB NVME (I pulled this NVME out of an old Acer desktop that was my main Linux experimentation machine...) attached to my tried-and-true 8GB/256GB M1 Mac Mini.
Just as you demonstrate...I simply do NOT have to worry anymore about the storage speed on my M1.
So...yeah...for me a "base" M4 and a Thunderbolt 5 drive with up to 4TB of storage WILL be my next Mac! Mahalo for this timely advice! Aloha!
Base M4 only supports TB4.
@@jdevoz Ah...forgot that point! Mahalo. Looks like I'll STILL have to splash out on an M4 Pro if I want the TB5 ports. Aloha!
Glad the video helped you out and thanks for watching the channel.
Should boot from your nand drives just on first boot after buy move your home folder to external drive
@@passportmarc Indeed, this is what I've done. My M1 has been with me for a fair bit of time.
I got the idea of doing this from all the cool, new videos that people are making about using Thunderbolt 5 drives with M4 Mac Pros.
I thought I would first practice by using a Thunder bolt 3 enclosure, an old NVME drive, and one of my existing M1 Macs.
As you've seen elsewhere on UA-cam, I, too, migrated my home folder, apps and date to the external. The system has to start from the internal drive. The modified parameters then tell it to seek out and find the rest of the bootup routine, the home folder and the other stuff from the external drive.
It works very nicely with my crummy, old 512GB NVME so I'll then move on to replacing the 512GB NVME with a nice 4TB NVME in the near future.
After I use this for a good, long while, I'll be comfortable to move on to an M4 Pro with a newer Thunderbolt 5 enclosure...possibly one with a pair of NVME drives in a RAID configuration.
Sounds like a fun thing to do.
Your comparison of the 256 /512 ssd speed test on the Mac Mini was very helpful, i have just ordered the M4 Mini with 24/512
Ok, thank you.
I did the same thing. Bought the 512 version from Amazon for $744, then an OWC 1M2 express enclosure for $94 & a Crucial P3 Plus 2TB for $113. I think this will be a good configuration for years to come. I’m setting it up with the home folder directed to the external drive, so documents etc. won’t be cluttering u -the space on the internal.
Yes that will be a nice setup for you for sure. Good luck with everything and the new mini.
In Canada, the base model is $899. Your upgrade is $1099, i believe . For $1299, you get 24 gb, 512 ssd, this is what i opted for. The m4 pro is $1899, i hope i made the right decision, but i figured $600 extra was a bit steep ... I will mostly just use it for recording and mixing music, Harrison mixbus user here 👍
Wow I knew Canada was more but that is so much more. That is a good configuration also. Good luck.
Base model is $799 in Canada.
I plan to go for the same config. I was initially going to go with 16gb RAM but 24gb might give me a little more headroom if I decide to leverage Apple Intelligence features in the future. Unless you are planning to do heavy video editing, complex music production or a lot of gaming on it then I think you made the right decision as the M4 non-pro should be more than enough.
@@Harvey-1980 i stand corrected 👍
@@ancayman As @coltjustice45 mentioned above, here in Canada it's $600 more for the M4 Pro model over the M4 with 24gb/512. It's a much bigger jump to the M4 Pro here unfortunately :(
Great video. I'm still a little confused and maybe you can help me and some other people to. Let's say I go ahead and buy the 512gig mini 4 pro. Then I buy that external 2T storage. How do I actually configure this out of the box and initial setup? OS will run on the mac mini. But I want all my other applications to run off the external storage drive. How would you explain how to set this up for this mac mini for Dummies LOL.
I did a video on this here - ua-cam.com/video/KeE_K-ACMHY/v-deo.html .
I ask myself which configuration will benefit me more for Lightroom, Photoshop and 4k video editing:
- M4 with 512 GB SSD and 32 GB RAM
- M4 Pro with 512 GB SSD and 24 GB RAM
In terms of the next 3-4 years, will the chip upgrade to the M4 Pro bring more or the higher RAM of 8 GB in the basic model?
The pro is going to be better but the question is would you use that power. I can't answer that but I thin the pro will for sure be better even with a bit less ram.
I’m still using a 3.46ghz 12-core 2012 Mac Pro for DAW software (Pro Tools, Reason, Waves and isotope plugins). The base model will smoke my setup easily and despite currently having 96GB, I’ve yet to see it use much over 24-30GB. I also use an external 10Gbit USB-C enclosure as my recording drive and as storage for my Steam library.
I am thinking of jumping to silicon for S1 Pro and possibly Logic Pro, but am curious about simultaneous multi-channel recording latency (28+ tracks), at 24-bit 48K. I wish I could see more demos of this type of tracking. Most focus on mixing and plug-ins.
Yes, if you get the M4 with 24 GB you will be more than fine.
Just ordered an m4PRO mini. Looking forward to swapping out the 2017 intel iMac. I’ll miss the 5k display but I’ve chosen to get a a dell ultra sharp with usb c hub
@@itsgmani nice. I'm doing a video on a 5k screen for about 799 tomorrow on my channel.
No need to upgrade the the SSD to 512 GB for a ridiculous £200. Simply buy a Crucial P3 1 TB NVMe for £60 and a Thunderbolt enclosure for £70 - £100, install the OS and all your apps on it and run the M4 from that. That way the tiny SSD gets absolutely no wear and tear and the whole caboodle will run faster than using the internal. I have been using a 1 TB USB 3.0 SSD on the basic M2 mini (8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD) for the past year and despite the slow speed of the USB drive, it was only 1% slower in Geekbench scores. Rendering and exporting FCP and Resolve projects took 4% longer which was negligible. No need to upgrade RAM. A lot of people misunderstand RAM. The Mac is designed to use most of its RAM whatever it is doing. So your computer may be idling and yet it appears to be using 75% of its RAM and you mistakenly think you need more RAM. WRONG! The computer is working just as it should. You could put in 64 GB RAM and it would still show most of it being used whilst doing simple tasks.
Yes I have the external in my video where I get over 3100 MB/s. Some people also change home folder to point to external.
@@craigneidel Sorry, I must have missed that. I don't bother with the Home Folder on the mini, I just create a new one together with all my apps on the external. As mentioned, even using a terribly slow USB SSD (c. 360 MB/s) there was no noticeable reduction in performance using FCP and Resolve etc. The only thing that was slower was straight copying of huge files which obviously would take around 5x longer but that is something i rarely ever do. My overall discovery was that the speed of a drive has almost no effect on everyday computing tasks as that is determined mainly by the CPU/GPU.
No problem at all. Thanks for the info too.
Great commment. I’m looking to go to a Mac mini have used iMacs for years. What would you suggest, low internal ssd size and then use an external like you’ve mentioned? As for RAM, use the 16gb?
@@joshstannard3639 The basic model should be good enough for everyone except busy professionals or those doing highly intensive work . . . and even they could use it but it would take a bit longer. The base model M4 mini is a bargain BUT once you start adding things at Apple's ridiculous prices it's not a very good buy at all. Get the base and either a USB 3.0 SSD or if you feel like really splashing out buy a Thunderbolt NVMe. For the last year I have used a USB 3.0 SSD to boot my M2 mini and have just bought a Thunderbolt NVMe. It's marginally faster but I couldn't really say it's worth the extra.
I am surprised that people are not talking more about the 10 Gig Ethernet upgrade for $100. So glad Apple offers that. Now I work mostly with bigger files on the NAS rather than transferring them in and out of my mini.
@@joelpatrick287 yeah but I think most use thunderbolt 4 enclosures for fast storage vs sans. Most but not all
Please compare the performance of OWC to Qwizlab enclosures, both are heatsink type design will be interesting to see which one cools better, but OWC is quite a bit expensive and haven't seen in a sale yet so not sure if the extra cost is truly worth it.
I don't have the OWC one yet.
would love to see a comparison with the base m4 pro that's the 12-core . Most compare the base m4 with the 14-core pro that doesn't help.
Yes, I may due that if I pick that up.
Could someone please reconfirm that the mini M4 base model with 256GB SSD is about half so fast in terms of disk write/read speed than a 512GB SSD version. I thought that was the case only for the previous models.
Another question. Is it a good and safe idea to save on staying with the base 256GB SSD, that is theoretically upgradeable (sometime maybe with a third party PCB module), or can be mitigated with an external SSD drive. and put that money rather into more RAM that can never be updated or circumvented ?
Go search for SSD speeds on UA-cam and look at values. They are different but I know for sure the 256 is like 2100 at best and 2800 at best RW. But the 512 I have here and that is what I'm getting.
Hello all, i have a M4 mac mini and have purchased an APC Back-UPS the data cable that plugs into the back of the UPS is usb a at the computer end and as you know the M4 mac mini is all usb c. i purchased a USB C to RJ45 cable but the mac does not show it in the power settings. any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you
I don't have that and not familiar with that UPS. If anybody has it post here.
I like your practical presentation. It’s nice to explain what people really need (vs. hype upgrading). Thanks.
Thank you for watching and the feedback on that.
My tests repeatedly show the high write rates are NOT PERSISTENT. After a while, every SSD I have tested slows down. Is this due to RAM buffers on the front end, or heat, or protection of ssd memory cells? Its complicated. I spent 4 month with a Crucial Memory engineer trying to understand why duplicating a volume slowed down by 90% after ten minutes or so.
@@donelson52 I'm able to complete 100 GB transfer tests at those rates so most work like that will be at high speeds.
@ try copying 2TB to another drive in one go, such as a backup to another drive. Watch data rates collapse after 10-15 mins
@@donelson52 I mean I maybe copied 2tb once in my life. Usually like 10 gb per day so I'm not too worried.
@ I do regular backups of my Time Machine internal NVMe and SATA volumes. Data rates start great then drop to 10% of max after 10-15 mins or so. Backup takes forever. HDDs are faster !!! No one talks about this at all
I normally do backups on my SSDs up to about 100 GB. They take around 33 seconds to complete which is very quick.
This is going to be our next home computer. That means its over kill right NOW for basic home office stuff. However I would like it to last about 7-10 years. Its replacing a 2014 Mac mini which I actually upgaded with an SSD. I am thinking the upgrade to 24 gb ram might be worth it - give our desired life span. I thought about 1TB but 512 should be good with an external drive for all the photos, music, and stuff.
Yeah, if you are going to be keeping this 10 years which is super long, go with 24 GB. Most Windows computers have a lifespan of about 3.5 years so 10 is a long time. I would get 1 TB then.
I plan on getting the M4pro and 48 Gb. It’s not about what it can do now it’s more about what it will still be able to handle 5 years from now. I usually have several programs open at once and multiple drives connected. A maximum of 32Gb doesn’t interest me.
If you know you need it then get it. My video is about the average user and not somebody who might need 48 GB of ram. I would say that is very limited but some might need it and they already know that.
I’m also going to go M4 Pro with 48GB. Also, more about covering future need, given the unified memory isn’t upgradable. I’m coming from a late 2014 iMac, and I’ve had to move a lot of production work over to a Windows PC due to lack of iMac performance. So, after 10 years with my 27” 5K iMac, I’m looking to spend a bit more to (hopefully), again get me a desktop Mac solution for the next 10 years (well at least 5+ years).
Dont, the speed Apple Silicon is moving is second to none.. careful investing in the so-called "future" fx 5 years down the line... and maybe learn from the past.. Apple people that did that *invest in the expected future a handful of years back, aint to happy today as compute items, and partcially Apple silicon based' are dating quite fast... if you need 48GB today, then get it.. but don't invest today's money on what you think you will need 5 years down the line, get what you need today and if that equal a saving then use that to elevate your product to a new fx 3 or 4 years later..
Apple price ladder ain't a walk in the park-.. your paying out of your nose for those upgrades to a locked system with a ltd GPU that ain't something to write home about..
@@JAKOB1977 You make some good points to contemplate. I grew up in the 90’s, when upgrading every year was a given. So, the fact that my Intel iMac has lasted me 10 years is quite amazing. But, I agree that Apple silicon is in a relatively rapid growth period. The frustrating thing is the non-upgradability of memory, pushing you to think of paying extortionate prices for more memory to last longer. Lots to think about.
Super helpful!!! Thank you for this and all of your videos.
For sure and thanks for watching.
Totally getting the 12 core, 24gb RAM, and 512gb SSD, hard to get more computer for that kind of money!
They are nice computers for sure.
@@craigneidel I see it as a better longterm investment for my needs, setting up a music composition workstation with orchestral libraries etc. Will require a bunch of external drives as well, but that's always how I set these things up anyway.
sure buddy. ..I get you.. GPU's is so heavily overrated.. who needs that jazz..nahh we will bruteforce it with CPU all the way.🐢
I bought base specs Mini M4 and paired with external Samsung 970 via Thunderbolt4 case... internal and external storages now have exactly same speed, more than enough for my needs ;-) regarding cons, the case is hot! hence I added extra heat sink and and quiet fan ;-)
Yes, no need for anything faster. Nobody really needs Thunderbolt 5 speeds and I'm sticking to that conclusion. I might test it later but I don't need it either.
I’m very average! I bought this exact model last week but haven’t yet decided what to do about external storage. My main use is photo editing and I’ve always kept my files on an external hard drive (currently a spinning disc G-tech). I use a QNAP NAS for Time Machine backups but bought a Samsung T5 1TB SSD to create a new TM backup when migrating my data and settings from my 2017 MacBook Pro just in case it took forever to do it over WiFi from the NAS.
I used it for the first time today and although it was quicker than my old laptop, it wasn’t blazingly so. Am I right is assuming that the bottleneck is the hard drive and that replacing it with an SSD would make a huge difference?
yes, the SSD will make a massive difference and be like night and day. Good luck with everything and your setup.
I would thoroughly recommend dropping the external Thunderbold storage for a 10GBit ethernet NIC (+$100) and then connecting a NAS. That way you will be able to store all your data in a centralised way with redundancy (basically using the Mini like a thin client).
Yeah but I just use Thunderbolt and it's so fast and works for me. But I know for some that is a good option.
So, correct me if I’m wrong, what if you connect two of these USB 4 or Thunderbolt 4 enclosures to the back of the Mac Studio / Mac mini thunderbolt 4 ports with the same two 1tb nvme ssds, say WD SN850X and set these both drives in MacOS through Disk Utility as Raid 0 - wouldnt this make these 2 enclosures/drives into a single 2tb drive while also providing over 6000 sequential speeds? or am I missing something here? Wouldnt this effectively make this setup as fast as the high tier internal ssds? and it would still be cheaper than paying the Apple tax? I dont see any reason why this wouldnt be possible, but I havent been able to find concrete information online about this.
Thunderbolt 4 has some overhead and limitations. I'm not sure you would get over around 3300 MB/s but. Give it a try to see what happens.
Subscribed. Been researching on reddit and watched a bunch of videos about the M4 vs M4 Pro mostly care about the ram. Then I found your video. I went with Costco config M4 512GB/24GB Ram for $800 something after discount. Mostly use it for basic 4K editing with Final Cut. Hope it will last 5 years then I can upgrade. Buying the base M4 Pro seems great with the same Ram and SSD but it’s too powerful which I do not need. It’s $1400 too where I can save almost $400 just going with the standard M4. Thank you!
You got it and good luck with the new mini. Also thanks for the sub.
Dummy question: If the read speeds are roughly the same, wouldn't that mean that both ssd's will be about the same speed when opening big files and running programs etc.? With the only major difference being the speed at which they can transfer a big file to something else (write speed). I'm reasonably uneducated when it comes to the differences so clever people please help!
Technically speaking, the bigger the ssd, the bigger their cache & IOPS rates are. So the end result being exponentially faster small files (i’m talking a couple KB/MB) transfer rates.
It’s helpful in a lot of ways. You can get big files (movies/archives) fast transfer rates even on a classical HDD tho if that’s your main use case
Yes, to tell you the truth most won't notice a difference between 3000 and 4000 MB/s at all. Maybe with file transfers and they could be a bit quicker but overall anything over 3,000 is hard to notice in my opinion and using many fast drives.
Thanks guys that’s super helpful
For sure.
I bought the mini m4 pro. Should I buy the same SSD and enclosure or do you recommend something else for tb 5?
There are a few Thunderbolt 5 enclosures but I'm not sure anything over 3000 MB/s is needed with external storage to be honest. So I would not spend the money personally. I may for my channel but that would be the reason.
I'm a stock trader and i do heavy web browsing like 20 to 30 tab on Crome so m4 base variant sufficient for mi or i should go with 24 gb ram???
I think 16 GB can handle 30 tabs for sure but if you are using the computer to make money and considerable money maybe go with the 24 GB to be sure. But I think 16 is fine as I have that many tabs open just fine.
Great video
A real reason to order the 512 GB model
Yes, it's quite a bit faster in my testing which was surprising (SSD I mean).
The set up seems good ....but......how do you do regular backups of the files stored on your external SSD? Is there a simple way to back up the files on the SSD automatically or is the only alternative to back up manually?
You can use Time Machine to backup multiple different drives. You can also make it back things TO multiple different drives too, which is handy if you want to have a copy that's taken off site.
Yes time machine
I got an M4 mini with 24GB memory and 1TB SSD. The writing speed is about 3060 MB/s and the reading speed is about 2943 MB/s when tested with Blackmagic Disk Speed Test. With AmorphousDisk test, both speeds are a little bit higher, 3260 MB/s and 3172MB/s, respectively.
That seems too slow for the 1 tb version. I have seen many other people getting more so not sure why you are getting only 3k
@@craigneidel Looks to me Apple puts gen 3 spec SSDs in the mini and air with the base processor and gen 4 spec SSD‘s for the pro processors and higher.
Maybe, but they tier them for sure as part of their ladder approach.
I'm seeing very similar speeds on my M4 Mini with 32GB RAM and 512GB SSD. Write/read are always right around 3000. Now I'm wondering why I'm not seeing the higher write speed of ~4000.
@@JayCal6 That won't happen with the M4Mini and the base CPU setup, it's PCI 4.0 x Gen 3 speeds in these. The Gen 4 is used on the M4Pro CPU's. Those who have pulled the SSD's from the two different models shows the SSD's and connectors are indeed different.
Did you do a video on how to move your home folder to an external drive if so, can you send a link?
I have not done that yet but may do that in the future.
There's a good guide to doing this on the Mac Sound Solutions channel. Different processes for converting an existing setup, vs. configuring a new Mac out of the box.
I just did a video on this topic and why you may not want to move home directory to external drive.
Finally, your Mac Mini has arrived. I’ll be following your videos closely to decide which version to buy.
Thank you. Being a smaller channel I can't get all of them but I'm hoping to get the Pro model soon. But the M4 is crazy fast for what it is.
Is that external ssd drive T4 or USB3.2?
It's 40 Gbps speeds.
I don't care much about the ssd or ram speed as they are already fast enough for me. Is there anyway to get a DDR4/5 stick, put it in some closure, plug it to the thunderbolt 4 port and make the MacOS use it as additional ram?
You can't upgrade the ram on these.
How about TimeMachine FROM the external drive? Is it possible to back it up with the internal drive to a NAS?
Yes, I'm sure that can be done.
Did you use the thunderbolt port in your external SSD test? Do you get the same results using one of the non-thunderbolt USB-C ports? I’m considering the studio display and would need to use the thunderbolt port for that full time. Thanks for the review!
Yes, the Thunderbolt port is needed.
A really useful video. Thanks
Thanks for the feedback. These M4 minis are great.
At 7:10 How is it that the writing speed is 50% faster than the reading speed? Shouldn't it be the opposite?
And the reading speed of the 512 GB is 3,000GB/s, which is NOT "double" than the 256 GB, but exactly the same.
Yeah.. I said that. It was like 100 faster on the one. Not sure but tested 20 times and my drive is performing this way.
How about booting from an external drive? I boot from an external drive on my Mac Mini M1 and get close to the speeds from the internal...using the 990 might match the internal speeds of the M4....plus you are saving the internal from wear...
I think you need to boot off the internal drive to able to use AI, not a biggie if you have no interest in AI though.
I heard that boot from externals on the M4 could hurt the ai stuff but I may do some testing. Maybe just making your external your home directly (right when you get Mac before you install anything) is another option.
@ yes, been following you and some others quite intensely regarding the new Mac Mini and it does seem that moving your home folder to the external drive right at the initial start up is the best and most trouble free way to go. I must say Craig is that I find your reviews and tests are to me most helpful. Not filled with meaningless theoretical benchmarks that others use but you concentrate on the real world and how 95% of use our computers and advise what will suit our computing.
Thanks Glenn. Appreciate that. I try my best. It's so hard to come out with videos on a daily basis with all the competition out there but I do my best to try and help people.
Can you do a video on the speed difference of Mac mini base model using an external SSD and without the external SSD? I’m wondering if there’s different in terms of apps and videos editing or data transfer? Thanks
I can see what I can do on that in the coming weeks. Thanks for watching.
Hi! Thank you for you video.
Do you think it can handle 3 webcams at the same time? Processing and encoding? I’m just starting to make me a streaming setup, (I sing and play music) and want to record videos to UA-cam and maybe stream live on twitch. But my imac is old (late 2017) and I need to buy a new one (i think)
My problem now is that my cpu is getting maxed out and OBS will not detect my gpu (radeon 580) because i don’t have a silicon chip?. I don’t know that much about computer specs and what I need to have. I’m not going to use the mac for anything else, than editing the videos that I make.
What to buy?
I think it should be able to handle that. The M4 should work but maybe start there and if you run into any issue return that and get the M4 Pro. I just don't think you will need it.
Thank you for your quick response. I Think I will start out with the m4 and get the version with the 512gb - but should I buy the 16 or 24 ram version? - I don’t know if its the ram that helps processing the videodata from the three webcams I wanna use, or is it just overkill for my setup with that extra rams?
Ps. You make some awesome and great videos, very informative and easy to understand, eventhough im not that good at english😅
Thank you. It's really hard for me to answer the ram thing but maybe do a test now and see how much ram you are pulling with the 3 feeds. Since every program is totally different that will be your answer and then if you are using over 16 GB you can go with the 24 GB version to be sure.
Tempted i have mac studio m1 with 2tb, just needed a portable laptop for travel might have to wait for macbook air m4
M4 air will be a great laptop.
great video. question. for logic audio and some video work. Apple Mac Studio M1 Max 10-Core CPU, 64GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 24-Core GPU, brand new for $1499 or should i just look more into a M4 mac mini pro 12 core 24ram 1tb??
Thanks. The reason I might not do the M1 is because of OS support and how that will be 4 years ago so the support won't last nearly as long. I might look at Mac mini.
@@craigneidel makes a lot of sense. i will take your advice. thank you sir :}
Thanks and good luck.
I'm bit confused about the specifications hope you will help me out... I use after effects for video editing... I was thinking of buying a 24gb ram +256gb storage varient... will this specs be ok for running AE
Yeah, I think you will be fine with that config.
How much storage space does the OS and addons take up when the Mac Mini M4 is new? My plan is to use an external drive as my Home folder.
I have a screenshot on video for exact value but it is only like 35 GB. I had like 480 left.
@@craigneidel Thank you! I do real estate videography and photography so sometimes I do stress my current machine (i9, 2TB, 32gb) but I've been hearing so many good things about this new Mini M4 that I'd like to use it as my "work horse" and leave the current Linux Mint 20 machine to handle everything else. While I do have it set up to dual boot into a separate Win10 drive, I'd rather just leave the Linux and Mac running and switch from one computer to the other using the same display but two different keyboards with either a trackball or track pad built in. When I think about the $900 I paid for the Nvidia GPU a few years ago, it kinda makes me sick when this Apple Mini M4 with better computing power is now available for less than I paid for that graphics card. I did buy during the chip shortage but I needed it so of course I paid a premium at the time. I find it amazing that this M4 is so much faster with just a 512gb drive vs the 256gb.
yes, once you get it I'm sure you will love the mini. I call Apple out where I need to but they nailed it here (except storage upgrade pricing).
@@craigneidel Ordered the base model with the 512 nvme through Amazon. I guess they are flying off the shelves because my delivery time is Dec. 10-20. For anyone reading this in the future, today is 11.20.24 so up to a month to get it.
I ordered from Apple and will be here two weeks plus I like their zero percent interest rate for 12 months.
Thanks for the info Craig. Can I use my old logic tech keyboard and mouse with the mini m4?
Thanks
if it has bluetooth or a wifi dongle I don't see why not but you might need a converter if usb-A.
My Mac Mini M1 has 512 GB and I have less than 256 GB of available space left on my drive. I keep all of my photos on a separate drive so this storage is just from the OS and apps. I’m about to buy a Mac Mini M4 this week and I think I’m going to go with the 512 GB drive. Any comments?
I did the same thing so I like the extra space also.
I do not need the M4 Pro but to be honest, I do not need the M4 Mac Mini at all, I just wanted it as soon as I saw it. (My first Mac ever after 33 years being into computers.) That said, I bought the Pro version because it is noticeably faster, overall, when compared to the base M4 Mini. I did by the Pro for $1139 so it was a good deal and on sale.
Yes, that is a good deal. Give it a month or two and you will never use a Win PC again... Maybe not that extreme but they are good for sure.
Nice video as usual, Craig. Why can't I find the 1 TB model on Amazon??? Thanks.
It was on there but not sure as it could have been sold out.
@@craigneidel Thanks! That's the one I'll need to replace my 21 inch Mac from 2012,... I need the larger storage because I have 550 GB of pictures on my iPhotos App,... Cheers!
Good luck.
I have ordered the 24gb/512gb version and I have dock station with 2tb nvme and 4tb nvme
@@Moore-Ent sounds like a nice setup.
@ I’m really enjoying it… 4tb for video and 2tb for cache
My plan is to go base model and set the home and application folder up on my external.
This is replacing my PC, so I already have all the accessories I need.
I already have a MacBook M1, but I want to use that more as a media/document writing device, and do everything else on my M4 Mini. The original plan was to update to a MacBook Pro and skip out on the desktop, but now I think I'm going to hold off on that plan until a later gen (maybe 2027) - and just stick with the way cheaper combo of Mac mini M4 and MacBook Air M1.
Yes, that is all you really need.
Can. you do a walkthru on how to set up a external SSD drive to edit off of, i seen other videos but they talk about how you move your home folder files to it and then set it to it etc? All i would like to do is how to set it up for editing and thats it.
I'll see what I can do but all editing software is completely different. I would search for it on UA-cam as I'm sure those videos are out there.
I edit multi-cam 4K videos for my Pokémon channel and I am still on the fence on which one to get and what config. I currently have a MacBoom Pro with 32gb of RAM and it works really well for my use. I basically want something that will become more of a desktop instead of something mobile. Would you guys recommend I stick with the regular M4 and up the RAM? Or should I go for M4 Pro? I really don’t care about rendering time as much as fluidity while I edit on Final Cut Pro
It's hard to say for sure but I think the base with upgraded ram to at least 24 or higher would be enough. Normally I say to buy one and test it as you have normally 30 days to return it and that is the only want to know for sure since every workload is so different.
Hibernate Mode with an external ssd works well?thank you for your answer.
Thank you.
@@craigneidelYou didn’t answer him 😊😅
@@NirHason oh I didn't know he was asking and thought he was staying. Yes works fine for me
@ lol. thx for confirming (:
For sure.
Nice video and great presentation, from UK
Thanks for the nice words and for watching.
Couldn’t bring myself to spend $200 for a 256gb upgrade. Since the memory is removable I’ll wait to upgrade later. There are 3rd party companies working on that. For now running off an external 2TB drive.
That is still a very fast system so no worries. So the memory is removable or SSDs?
Yes but first party locked
Only way to hack now is solder nand chips on the removàble ssd card slot
It’s got thunderbolt. Just get an external. It’ll easy give 5000 read and write. More than the internal can.
Ok, thanks. I won't mess with that until it's perfected.
ive seen reviews where people say that this time the 515gb version is not faster then the 256gb one like ot was the case with the older macmini. So what now ? :D
All I can do is report what mine is doing here. I have tested it a number of times.
I’m surprised nobody has done a test in the Apple storage read/writes on 256, 512, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, 8TB. It looks like the more you have, the faster they are.
Yes that's what I did kind of. I just can't afford to buy all of them or I would need to remortgage my house.
I love this new Mac mini M4. Off-topic question: Can I use an Ethernet cable Cat. 8 on the new Mac mini M4? Thank you in advance (I have 1Gigabit, I know a Cat. 6a cable would be enough but usually newer is better and has lower or no interferences (EMI, Electromagnetic interferences))
I think that should work but I have only tested Cat 6. But don't see why not.
CAT 5E can easily handle 1 Gb. CAT6A and CAT7 can do 10Gb. CAT8 is complete overkill for 1Gb. Just buy a shielded CAT 6 and you are good.
Why not get 256 model plus that external SSD + enclosure? The stock 256 SSD is plenty fast enough for most things.
For sure but if you run out of space then things slow down. So I like to have headroom and 512 is still pretty small. But 256 can work for some.
Great review!
Thank you
please test some slower external ssds like 5000mb/s, this samsung one might be overkill ?
I'll try but they will be about the same. I have experience testing thunderbolt 4 on my channel.
@@craigneidel thanks for reply , so you agree 7000mbps is overkill and waste of money. Which speed you suggest 5000mbps or less ?
Yes, I think the Thunderbolt 5 enclosures are overkill for almost everybody.
Any feedback would be appreciated. I’m thinking of picking up the Mac Mini with 256 GB internal storage. I’m not a video editor nor do I need super high performance as I am now retired and most of my work is spreadsheets, watching UA-cam, having multiple Safari tabs open simultaneously, etc. I’m trying to understand the advantage of adding an external SSD and placing my home folder and/or apps there. Also, if I add the OS to the external SSD what purpose does internal drive serve at that point?
If you make your home folder the external drive your OS stays on your internal drive. That is really want you want and you really don't want to boot off the external in 2024 otherwise I think things like ai won't work etc. So I just wanted to clarify that changing your home directory to the external doesn't mean your OS is there. Only you can answer the question if 256 is enough space. The OS will use 35 GB and then programs and data.
@ Thanks a bunch! Makes sense. I’d rather keep my OS on the Mac Mini hard drive and data on an external drive.
Just note that even if you put the home folder on the external drive you need to make sure the external drive is super reliable and won't sleep etc. Otherwise it will error out. Thanks and good luck with things.
There was a UA-camr by the name of David Lewis that recommended the $1,299 configuration of the Mac Mini with the standard M4 chip, 24GB of RAM, 1TB SSD, and the 10 gigabit ethernet port as the perfect sweet spot for almost all users. I wonder what your thoughts on that would be.
Yeah, but for most users that is another $400 bucks and then you are in the M4 Pro space. People that need 24 GB usually know they do but for the 90 percent who do normal computer tasks I think the 16 is fine. I mean I can even 4K edit just fine.
Just subscribed. Have watched a few other M4 mini reviews, really like yours. Question, I think the answer is no but will ask to confirm. With an external SSD like in the video or similar, is it possible to store internals on it? Like applications or iOS files? How about mail and messages?
Yes, you can do that a few ways. I may do a video on that in the future but yes you can basically make the external your home directory.
Great comparaison
Thank you for watching.
I am a bit too late but very interesting video man ❤
Thank you for watching it.
Do you guys get the regular Ethernet here or 10 Giga Ethernet?
I got regular but I'm not doing heavy networking.
I’m coming from a pc. This will be my first Mac. I’m a basic user but I do get into some heavy excel files that can bog down my PC with 32gb ram, cpu speed of 3.6ghz . I’m considering the base m4. What are your thoughts. Would be 512 be better?
Side note; I plan to add a 2TB ssd tb4 to use as my home folder. Does that make a difference?
That seems good but maybe go with the 512 GB as you will be happier in the long run since some things will need to run on that and you don't want to push it. I would look for some sales. I heard Costco has that version for under $700 now on sale.
@@craigneidelwell, I ended up getting the 512 with 24Gb ram using Apple discount program 100 off. I received a gift card in the mail today that I used to bring my total down to 650 out of pocket. Maybe I won’t need the extra ram, this being my first Mac I was unsure of 16gb. All my pcs have had so much more than that.
@@howellcpcan you please tell how did you get this whole discount and gift card?
@@bilalafridi324my wife is an educator (not that Apple verified), the gift card was just a good timing. It had nothing to do with Apple.
Nice work on that.
I went with M4 Pro fully maxed out CPU 2TB storage and 24GB of memory and upgraded Ethernet port….hoping 24GB of memory is enough. No way I would ever do less than 2TB of internal storage ever but that’s me.
Yeah, but that cost more than the rest of the Mac mini to add that so it's just so expensive.
@@craigneidel I know and I hate spending money...maybe I should have snort more conservative but then I thought about the thunderbolt 5 ports too being a good thing.
I always say get what makes you happy and then you won't regret your purchase. That is fine.
Hey Craig, hello from Phoenix Arizona well the weather finally cool off down here dare I say it’s even a little chilly although we’re gonna be back up to 78 today so we’ll get down to below freezing for a few nights in January anyway I was just thinking about the new Mac mini and what the bestspecifications would be to get and then your video pops up amazing
Thanks and good luck with everything. Yeah, finally cooling off out in the AZ.
That extra storage was very tempting, but for my modest use case the external storage was the best way to go. I have a 2TB external drive based on the recommendations of one of your past videos.
Yes, no problem with that.
Mine is arriving today! ❤
Nice, and good luck with everything.
@ thanks!
@@craigneidelIt just walked through the door! This thing has some weight to it! Nicely built too!
@@craigneidel This thing hauls!!! Everything is way faster!!! I use my Apple Watch to open it and it's instant!!!
Yes, they are quick for sure and I'm loving mine.
I’ll go for the base, in Sweden where I’m located it’s close to 800 usd and 1200 for 512gb. I’ll use externals for storage.
Wow, yeah that is expensive so I would go with the base then.
Love the Qwiizlab enclosure, unfortunately can't get hold of one in the UK. Nobody has any. Amazon out of stock saying they do not know when it will be back. Which usualy means never with them.
I posted link to alternate that is the same.
I hope 512 is good enough for you. I’m one of those people who don’t like external drives sitting around.
But I know many people like em to keep the cost down. ✌🏻
What configuration u get
Yeah, we are all different but $200 for 256GB is hard to swallow.
@@craigneidel 😭
£200 for add a 2TB external drive or pay Apple £600 to upgrade the internal drive from 512Gb to 2TB - so only an increase of 1.5TB. It’s a no brainer.
I spent the money on getting the Pro with extra ram.
Ordered 24g and 1tb storage plus I have 12tb ssd external (3-4tb) for photo storage which not near as fast as yours but lot faster than I have now with HDD 8 tb WD.
You should be all set and good luck.
The SSD speed thing was also true on the M2 minis. Its the only reason I did 512 on my M2 model.
It's nice to have the headroom also.
I'm trying the same setup (Evo plus 990 + enclosure 40Gbps) with a Macbook M4 pro. I'm getting 3500 MB/3200 MB, but the problem is that it's hot even when idle. Samsung support told me that the Evo was created to be used internally, directly attached to the motherboard, and therefore, they cannot confirm if it will work/be detected when used via an adaptor/HUB. Even if it was initially working, they cannot confirm its long-term usage if connected externally. Anyone having the same issue?
I'm not and I don't see why that would matter too much. They might just be trying to cover things etc. but I don't see why it would not work in an external SSD enclosure. They said the same thing with a 2.5" Samsung I bought 7 years ago and I still boot my 2017 27" iMac off that one.
@@craigneidel You mentioned that your drive is running cool. Could you tell me its temperature when idle? Unfortunately, I can’t check the temperature of mine using Samsung Magician because the drive status shows as "N/A," even though it’s running. Also, I can’t install AmorphousDiskMark since it’s not available in my country’s App Store.
I can't really do individual requests all the time as I am so swamped to even respond to the two hundred posts per day. I can only say that it get's warm sometimes but not super hot at all.
thank you for your help!
For sure.
I'm not sure what is going on with that 256 vs 512 SSD but the extra cost for the 512 is worth the upgrade. And after my old 2020 Mac Mini trade in. Total cost was less then $550.00 So it was a no brainier for me to get the 512 SSD 2nd tier model.
i will just have ti wait till they come out with newer Docking Stations for the M4. As now I'm stuck with the older model .Satechi USB C Hub. Just to have USB abs card readers.
Yeah, it will be fine as long as you don't fill up the 256 GB too much as that can slow things down. But just wait for docks.
For some reason read speeds of 256GB model is around the same 3000MB/s as your 512GB model.If to transfer User Folder and All no system app to the external SSD and run it from there than if read speeds are the same around 3000MB/s than OS system speed will be almost the same even if to buy 256GB base model.
Yes, but when you do that you need to make sure the external is super solid and won't sleep or have issues or you could get some data corruption. Since the home folder needs to always be visible to the OS.
I did the same(512), pretty happy with it. Great video, do one with what to do on a fresh machine , any tips / tricks?
I have a few video ideas lined up but that could be a good one for sure.
oh now I know, Mac Mini also means slow and mini disk performance. My 6 years old PC has Samsung M2 SSD with 3400 MB/s and Mac Mini Standard has SSD with 2000 MB/s. That's the reason I would never change my old PC for a new Mac Mini. With my Intel I5 CPU I have all the CPU power that I need for my programs.
Then use windows. Nobody is making you switch but trust me if you did you would love the mini. So snappy on everything it's a pleasure to use even 599 version.
Has anyone found the speed figures for the M4 Mini Base Chip with 1 TB or 2 TB internal storage (are they the same like the 512 GB or is there an additional uplift)? So the smart config seems to be 24/512/10 Gig as the 10G capability is dirtcheap compared to other upgrades at apple (if i allready pay 200 or 400$ premium i should pay the 100$ for the faster network anyway even if morelikely you won't have a 10 Gig Ethernet at home but probably a 2,5 Gig Ethernet. But you convinced me to add at least the 200$ for the storage.
And just recognized completely fall into the apple trapanother additional 200 and i have the Mac Mini M4 Pro, so i keep my M1 MBA 16/512 and wait until apple release a base model without crippled storage.
They should be faster for sure. Like 4 or 5K read and rights I think I saw.
Good info!
Thank you.
You should really mention what amount your testing with when talking about speedtests as a lot of the examples flooding around ain't apples to apples.
Mini 4 will vary a lot depending on size. in blackmagic
with low black magic t4estsize fx 1GB your around 3000 in both read & write. on Mini 4 base 256gB and with 5GB your also around 2800MB in read.. so the only gain on 512GB drive is your write for an added systemcost of +33%...
33% of the full cost, aitn peanuts
I tested it with 1 GB to 5 and the speeds on mine were very similar within 100 MB/s.
I just picked up the M4 Mac mini 512GB SSD model that you just received, because the entry level 256GB SSD model was too limiting for me. The Apple store carried that 512GB M4 model in stock, unlike many of the Build To Order models with long wait times. My Write Speed on my 512GB model is only about 3,000 MB/sec with the same Read speed as yours on Blackmagic. I guess it depends on which particular RAM supplier Apple uses when they made your particular 512GB model.
Yeah, I'm not sure and I thought it was unusual on the speed of the disk but I have not tested it many times and it still comes back that fast. But, at the end of the day most won't notice a difference between these speeds.
I get a 2800 MB/s on 2TB external NVME SSD for the Mac Mini that's plenty fast for me.
Yes, that is more than fine.
Black Friday sales (or if you are just a Best Buy Member)... you can get the Base M4 Mini for $550. so $744 is still almost $200 more if you are comparing "Apples to Apples" (see what I did there?)
Both are discounted which is fine.
The thing that concerns me is whether the AI stuff that is coming will eat the extra RAM and leave us right back where we started.
I don't think that much since most of Apples ai stuff you need to ask for like completing a email or creating an image. I mean during that time it would be using the memory for a short period.
Its fast if you have enough memory for your task depending on your use case otherwise your SSD will be used for swap slowing the cpu gpu npu osx apps data multitasking down
Yes, but again this video is for most users out there not power users.