Usually, I don’t really care about the Mac Mini. It’s a respectable little PC no doubt, but even Apple doesn’t hype it as much as it’s other Macs. For understandable reasons too. Usually the Mac mini is the entry level device to Apple’s ecosystem that Apple would prefer to push to small businesses, receptions, and students for light productivity work. And especially in the Intel chip days, Apple knew it was a very forgettable machine that didn’t exactly nail much beyond the aforementioned use case. Ever since Apple’s M series chips however, it’s basically become the clearest showcase product for the power those chips have. The M1 Mac Mini was a really cool product that while not really escaping it’s niche, made it clear that Apple was giving this device a big comeback. That big comeback is the M2 Mac mini. Due to the M2 processor and it’s even beefier M2 Pro spec this little machine has gone for a simple machine for simple tasks to a sleeper hit beast that can act as an entry point into things like video and photo editing, heavy programming tasks and even some simpler AI tasks. Simply put, it’s enabled whole new use cases for a machine that most people ignored on purpose, all while starting at a price that honestly makes intel and AMD machines look like chumps. For $600 this thing can become almost everything you want in a work machine and yet a quick glance at the competition here shows that nothing in the price range (from the past year at least) performs the same. Not unless you find a cheap , powerful Intel NUC from 2020 or so maybe, but already the leapfrogs required for that are probably not what you want.

The M2 pro variant of this machine makes the $600 argument moot, considering it starts at $1300, but that’s a more graphical heavy machine anyway, which some of the stuff I mentioned doesn’t need. And of course this is Zim, so some of you may think that graphical performance means gaming too. It doesn’t. This is still a Mac after all. And in those cases if you can find a Windows PC that has similar pricing and good graphics you’ll probably be better off on the gaming front. But if we’re putting that aside you should really take note that what we have here is a machine that is great for creative work, productivity work, programming and even just as a fun , around the house PC (considering your kid isn’t too much into gaming of course). And it manages to do all this at a starting price that’s still insane for Apple. Yes to boost it to a 512 GB SSD requires $200, and yes the base SSD is slower than the upper tier ones. But this is desktop, with ports, you could attach an HDD at the back or a bigger SSD and just roll with that especially for creative work. And since it’s a desktop, the display, keyboard and mice can all be upgraded based on your workflow or requirements. All this thing needs to be is performant, and it nails that.