Mac mini or Mac Studio?

TidBITS Talk
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[This is a continuation of a discussion in Apple Updates Mac Studio with M4 Max and M3 Ultra Chips - #13 by ken10]

It is time to replace my 2018 iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017). This iMac has 4.2 Ghz Intel Core i7 (i7-7700K), 16 GB RAM, AMD Radeon Pro 580 w/8GB video ram, and a 3.11 TB Fusion Drive. There are 2 Thunderbolt 3 and 4 USB 3.1 (10 Gb/s) USB-A ports.

Late last year, before the Mac mini & Studio upgrades to M4, I priced out options. I excluded an iMac because a) only 24" display, and b) tops out at 2 TB SSD. And, back then the max was 24 GB unified memory.

At that time a Mac mini with M2 Pro 12-core, 32 GB memory, and 4 TB SSD was $3,199, which was exactly the same as a base Mac Studio (M2 Max, 32 GB) with the same size SSD. So I concluded that the Mac Studio was obviously the better deal. I decided to wait for the M3 or M4 upgrade.

Now the wait is over, and I’m pricing again. The surprise is that the situation has changed: now the Mac mini is less than a similar Mac Studio.

The decision factors are: which CPU and amount of memory. The concerns are fewer ports on the Mac mini, and whether it would be powerful enough. But I do like the smaller size of the Mac mini.

I’m not doing video production or other processing that requires a supercomputer. I do run virtual machines sometimes, and I do play 3D games, although I’m not a hardcore gamer. (Currently I’m playing Firmament and need to finish The Talos Principle: Road to Gehenna.)

I was thinking it is time to double the memory – right now, just doing normal stuff I have 4 GB free. And the 8 GB of video memory is usually maxed out, so I was thinking of doubling that too. So that would mean I’m looking for 48 GB of unified memory. Or, at least 32 GB.

A big difference between the Mac mini and the Studio is number of ports: the mini has 3 TB5 and two USB-C (10 Gb/s), while the Studio has 4 TB5, 2 USB-A (5 Gb/s) and 2 USB-C. One of the TB5 ports would be used by a new Studio Display, another by a USB4 drive, and the third by a Thunderbolt drive (Envoy Express) that apparently can’t be used with USB.

The Studio Display gives 3 USB-C (10 Gb/s) ports. So even with the Mac mini, there’s a net gain of 1 port over the iMac.

So here’s what I’m thinking:

  • Go with the Mac mini
    • Bump cpu to M4 Pro (14-core CPU, 20-core GPU, 16 neural)
    • Bump unified memory to 48 GB
    • Bump SSD to 4 TB
  • Buy some more USB-A to USB-C adapters. (I do have a 7-port USB 3 hub, but some things either need to be plugged in directly or are USB 3.1)
  • Buy a Thunderbolt hub, such as the Belkin Connect Thunderbolt 4 5-in-1 hub, with 4 TB4 and one USB 3.1 (10 Gb/s) ports.

My question is: am I missing something? Is an M4 Pro fast enough to replace my iMac?

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I would tend to assume that if you’re not sure you’ll benefit from Max over Pro, you’ll likely be fine with a Pro. I would stick with the non-binned M4 Pro though to maintain CPU core count with Max (there the low-end, i.e. binned).

You seem to be leaning pretty heavily toward 48 GB RAM. I think if you are confident you need that, in other words 36 GB will not suffice, then the Mac mini is a good choice[1] because you’ll save $500 over a Studio configured to your requirements (considering you do not state you expect to benefit from Studio extras such as more external display support or added GPU power).

On the other hand, if you’re only certain that you need/want more than 24 GB RAM (and thus you’d likely be fine with 36 GB), the base Mac Studio is no more expensive than the RAM-bumped Mac mini and that IMHO gives it an edge since essentially you’re getting Max and Studio benefits (including better cooling, i.e. better sustained performance) for free.

Also, me personally, at this point I wouldn’t worry too much about ports. There are several inexpensive but quality USB-C hubs out there with support for 10 Gbps 3.2 gen 1. And TB hubs for additional 40 Gbps TB ports run ~$200, small potatoes compared to buying a fancy new Mac and new display. OTOH, if you save only a bit by going the mini route but then blow a substantial part of those savings on a TB hub, that somewhat defeats the purpose.

Other factors to keep in mind, apart from the aforementioned cooling difference, is that if you plan on getting AppleCare+, the mini’s will be less expensive (IIRC ~$70 plus tax). And there’s one or two more that I can’t remember right now — I’ll add those when I finally find the on switch to my brain (need more coffee). :wink:

  1. I have to admit, I’m not very familiar with that part of parameter space: to me and my typical work, raw CPU power has always been more important than vast amounts of RAM, but I realize there are other workflows where that is not the case — yours might be part of those. ↩︎

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It is hard to judge Apple Silicon memory requirements.

I was going for 48 GB memory because I think the base 24 GB on the Mac mini is too low, and the next jump there is to 48 GB. So I matched it with the Mac Studio. But I suppose the comparison to make is the base Mac Studio (36 GB) to the Mac mini at 14 cores, 48 GB. And those are the same price.

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Ars Technica just published a discussion of the new M4 Mac Mini and M3 Ultra Mac Studio; there’s a discussion of Mini vs Studio about 3/4 of the way down:

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I’ll jump to your final question, is an M4 Pro fast enough. Based on what you’ve said and where you’re coming from, an M4 Pro is way fast enough. I’ll tell you my story to see if it helps you decide.

I had a 27” iMac 2019 with an i9 core and 64 GB memory, probably a little beefier than what you have now. I bought a Mac mini M4 Pro with 12-core CPU and 24 GB memory when it became available the beginning of November.

I did spend some time trying to decide on how much RAM to get, but after a lot of research, I decided on 24 GB. I figured if it didn’t work out, I could return it and upgrade.

I use it for a lot of things, but the most intensive things I do are photo processing (Photo Supreme for a DAM, and Affinity Photo for editing), moderate video editing (Shotcut), and a Plex server that is running all the time. I usually have many apps running at the same time. For all of that, I have yet to see any degradation from having only 24 GB RAM. With my iMac, the fan was on most of the time, but with the mini, I have heard it two, maybe three times, since I got it, and that was always during video encoding.

I hope this helps you with your decision.

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I too have a Plex server. Looking forward to hardware HEVC decoding; my current iMac isn’t powerful enough to transcode it in real time so I have to first “optimize” to H.264. And that breaks subtitles.

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Update

After the 2026 price changes and later new models of Mac mini and Mac Studio, I decided to get the Mac mini M5 Pro. It is the stock M5 Pro configuration except for SSD:

  • M5 Pro with 15-core CPU, 16-core GPU
  • 24 GB memory
  • 2.5 Gb Ethernet
  • 4 TB SSD (up fro 512 GB)

plus a 2026 Studio Display

I did buy some more USB-A to USB-C adapters, but right now I’m only using 2, and have 2 Thunderbolt 5/USB4 ports free.

I’ve been using it for two weeks. What I’ve found is:

  • Generally the Mac mini is plenty powerful enough
  • 24 GB has been plenty; least free memory in 2 weeks has been 6 GB. But I haven’t run a virtual machine on it yet
  • The Mac mini is utterly silent; the fan never goes over 1,000 rpm.
  • It fits nicely on the foot of the Studio Display, with room for my SSD backup drive behind it

So I while more ports would be more better, I don’t regret getting the Mac mini over the Mac Studio. In fact, now I’m thinking that I need to readjust my conceptions:

  • A Mac mini M6 may be equivalent to a MacBook or 24" iMac
  • A Mac mini M# Pro is a power-user machine
  • A Mac Studio is like the Mac Pro but without slots

The problem with the 2026 Mac mini is it came with macOS Golden Gate 27 – initially 27.0, then updated to 27.2.

My normal procedure is I don’t upgrade to macOS n until macOS n+1 is released. I’m on macOS 26 Tahoe on my MacBook Pro, and won’t upgrade to Golden Gate until macOS 28 Joshua Tree is released next year (or even later do to the Intelapocalypse).

Which would have been the thing to do, if it were possible. Golden Gate is full of bugs. So many bugs. I generally hate it. For example:

  • Dragging a file from the Downloads stack moves a completely different file
  • Safari really wanted to open new windows full screen, and sometimes spontaneously resized windows that were already open, despite the associated Settings being turned off
  • Sometimes System Settings toggles are the opposite of what the setting currently is
  • Can’t remove a custom icon from the startup drive
  • It is pretty much impossible to eject some external drives without Force Eject *
  • The Unified Log is broken; no log show command will retrieve logs from disk
  • Spotlight is awful
  • Siri AI just makes it worse
  • The one application that tries to use Apple Intelligence models does not work, because apparently the Apple Intelligence model frequently returns incorrect results
  • It still is Liquid Glassed, with bad icon design. In fact, I see some Apple icons that are either in squircle jail or were updated by a graphics intern who just took the Sequoia icon, stuck it in a squircle, and called it a day.
  • When I boot, the FileVault screen has the time zone in Pacific Time instead of Central Time where I am. So I have to wait two hours for the time to be correct before I login in. ;-)

and there’s more. But, TLDNR:

  • Mac mini :+1:
  • Golden Gate :-1:

* My theory is that it won’t let go of external drives that have the Preboot and Recovery volumes

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Roddy’s point about HEVC transcoding is the one that would push me toward the newer chip. If the Plex library is going to lean on hardware decoding, waiting for a newer mini makes sense rather than optimizing everything to H.264 first. The two-week update is useful too, especially the memory headroom and fan staying at 1,000 rpm. I would be more cautious about the OS situation, though. Running a new machine on a first-release macOS sounds like the real pain point here, not the hardware choice.

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My theory on memory is that the iMac has 16 GB RAM + 8 GB video memory = 24 GB. I thought that meant that an Apple Silicon machine with no separate video memory would use more system RAM than the iMac. But I suppose with the iMac, video data was in two places: in system RAM and in the discrete video graphics memory. With Apple Silicon, it just doesn’t need the duplication. So, in effect I do have a net increase in usable RAM.

I stopped needing to optimize to H.264 when I got an Apple TV box. The 2017 iMac Plex server could send the HEVC directly to the Apple TV with no need to transcode it first. But of course now the Mac mini should be able to transcode HEVC easily.

In case it wasn’t clear: I had no choice about Golden Gate. You are stuck with the macOS (or later) that a Mac first ships with.