Make no mistake, the Apple Mac Mini M4 is great. At STH, we review a ton of systems. We started our Project TinyMiniMicro reviews during the pandemic and then expanded to do more mini PCs. At this point, we have looked at more than 100 small form factor PCs, and the Apple Mac Mini M4 is great, but it is not a mini PC. There are some things it is great at, and some that it is borderline useless for.
Apple Mac Mini M4 Overview
Of course, for this one we have a video as well:
We always suggest opening this in its own tab or app for the best viewing experience. A special thanks to the STH YouTube members for subscribing and helping us buy these.
As a quick background, we purchased two Apple Mac Mini M4’s. The first, was an absolute barebones unit with the 16GB of memory and 256GB of storage configuration. In 2024, both feel quite weak. On the other hand, we purchased this base configuration for $550 after a coupon, although it normally retails for $599. If you can take advantage of the education discount, this is only $499 which is stellar.
We also purchased a higher-spec model with 24GB of memory (+$200), a 1TB SSD (+400), and 10Gbase-T networking.
The Pro was a bit expensive, but we have the M4 Max Macbook Pro 14″ as well that we discuss a bit in the video.
Apple Mac Mini M4 Hardware Overview
The first thing one will notice with the Apple Mac Mini M4 is that it is small. Here is the M4 with the previous generation Mac Mini.
On the front, we get two USB Type-C ports. These are USB 10Gbps ports. There is also a headset jack.
On the rear, we have three Thunderbolt ports. On the base level Mac Mini M4, these are Thunderbolt 4. On the M4 Pro, these are Thunderbolt 5. Notably, there are no Type-A ports, so if you use a keyboard and mouse with a dongle, you will need a hub of some sort.
We also get the power input, a HDMI port, and the wired networking port. Unfortunately, this is a 1GbE port, but for $100 you can upgrade this to 10Gbase-T (Marvell AQC113) which is great.
Even with this being so small, we get an internal power supply that is really nice. The bottom power button, less so.
For a CPU, we have the base M4. The M4 Pro is really exciting, but it is also much more costly and that flips the value proposition quite a bit. The M4 is a 10-core CPU with 4 P-cores and 6 E-cores. There is also a 10-core GPU and a 16-core NPU. The M4 is an Arm-based Apple Silicon CPU, and it is frankly great.
16GB of memory is the new baseline for Apple. On a $599 model, 16GB is not great, but it is also way better than 8GB that we saw on previous models. Still, upgrading Apple memory is more like $200/ 8GB which is roughly 8x what one would pay on the Windows/ Linux PC side.
The 256GB SSD originally I thought was completely silly. Then I asked my wife how much storage she was using on her Mac Mini M1, and she was using only 119GB or so. Given we often have 200GB+ of source files for video projects, 256GB seems way to small for me, but that is also a bias since many are perfectly happy with 256GB. For many of our readers who have NAS units, perhaps the 256GB with a 10GbE network upgrade is a better value. Or perhaps 512GB with 10GbE. In ether event, $200 to upgrade from 256GB to 512GB is also eye-watering. If you can get by with applications on 256GB, then for files, a 4TB Samsung T7 Shield is not much more than Apple sells a 256GB upgrade for.
One bummer here is that Apple is still using WiFi 6E. Given Apple’s product cycles, we would have liked to see WiFi 7.
Next, let us talk performance.
That part about what good is a M1 8GB is very poignant today. Moreso what happens when Apple stops with updates? Is that M1 done unless you hack Linux onto it?
I do not agree with “The Apple Mac Mini M4 Sets the Mini Computer Standard”.
Mac Mini M4 is nothing special. It is classic Apple – design first(missing USB-A, power button on the bottom, (not)upgradable SSD,..)
…except the SSD actually is upgradable, with some disassembly pain.