My colleague Pedro Aznar has already given us his first impressions of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro with an M1 processor, drawing the conclusion that this M1 is a chip that is not far from being a revolution. Now is the time to see if we have the same effect with the new Mac mini with M1 chip, computer that will replace my iMac already retired (with honors) from the end of 2012.
We’ve already seen the transparency and ease of adaptation of all apps when we first came into contact with laptops, so what’s the difference with this Mac mini? We are before the first desktop computer with an Apple Silicon chip, to which we already need to connect a monitor, speakers and other devices separately.
The box and unboxing of the Mac mini leaves no doubt: as with laptops, Apple does not indicate its move to proprietary chips at all. In reality we don’t even have the SSD memory and storage labelsIf we want to read the details of the machine, we have to look for the fine print. He details that we have a Mac mini “with 8 processors, 8 GPUs, 256 GB of storage and 16 GB of RAM”. Nothing more.
A small drawback: only two USB-C ports. The two extra ports on Intel Mac mini models are missed, although a future model with a more powerful chip might fix this.
In my particular case, I connected the Mac mini to the following devices:
- A 27-inch 4K monitor from LG, model 27UL500-W, connected via HDMI.
- Two-channel Creative Pebble base speakers, powered via USB-C. Since I will be using this Mac for writing articles and nothing else, my sound needs are not too great.
- An Apple Magic Keyboard and a Logitech G502 USB mouse.
- A Logitech StreamCam webcam with USB-C.
Connecting all these devices was not a problem for me. The initial setup was surprisingly quick, taking less than five minutes from when I first turned on the Mac mini and the macOS Big Sur desktop appeared. The only possible bump we can find with this Mac mini is that we will need a wired keyboard to be able to do the initial setup, something that I was able to easily solve with my USB mechanical keyboard.
By default, macOS applies the Retina effect to 4K resolution by turning it into a 1080p monitor. Personally, I preferred to scale this resolution somewhere between this 1080p (too big for 27 inches) and the native 4K resolution (too small): I kept the 2560x1440p resolution I worked with before. the 27 inches of my iMac, and Thanks to the 4K resolution, I get anti-aliasing which improves (and a lot) the general quality of the image.
The resolution change is instantaneous, none of the waiting seconds we used to see on Mac with an Intel chip, although here the warning of a possible impact on the performance of the system appears if one chooses an intermediate scaling. Personally, I haven’t noticed the slightest sluggishness in the system, so Apple has to cover its back on users looking to get the most out of graphics performance.
With general use of the system, I have noticed, and I say this without hesitation, a noticeable increase in the system in general. Intel applications run without us even realizing that they are emulated under the Rosetta layer, and already compiled apps for M1 chip launch instantly, with a snap of the fingers.
It doesn’t matter which app we’re talking about, whether it’s Twitter or Pixelmator Pro: both start up so fast that it makes no sense to time it. I am not one of those people who will always demand maximum power from this chip, but it is clear to me that I took a leap in performance as I have rarely experienced
And in raw figures? I’m going to break down the results of GeekBench, Cinebench, and the three Browserbench tests done with Safari. In all cases, only the test application was open:
Words suffice: Cinebench’s single-core test ranks above even some high-performance Intel Xeons, while multi-core has performance comparable to 12-core Intel chips. In Geekbench we have slightly better results than MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, probably thanks to the ventilation available to the device. While I have to say I heard absolutely no noise from this fan during testing, the Mac mini put up with them without spoiling. The only effect I noticed was that the computer warmed up slightly in its back area, very little. During the remainder of the activity, such as during this writing, the computer has been iceberg cold.
With no more time to work with it and while waiting for those new iMacs, I have no hesitation in saying that this Mac mini is the nearly perfect desktop for any general user who works at a table several hours a day. It has wrapping power even for those who dare to edit photos and videos, we might even recommend it for small professionals.
The only question left for me is, if this Mac mini is an entry-level model, what does the future hold? What will Macs look like with chips that prioritize performance over efficiency? The transition to Apple Silicon is just beginning and the M1 is just a snack.
