Where the old mini had a proliferation of Thunderbolt 2 and USB-A ports, the new one has four Thunderbolt 3 USB Type-C ports and just two USB 3 Type-A ports. Only at the rear do the symptoms of modernisation appear.
2018 mac mini review Pc#
However, that configuration costs a scarcely believable £3,859, putting it on a collision course with workstations and powerful gaming PCs.īest mini PC 2021: The best compact PCs from just £10 Clearly, Apple doesn’t see the mini as limited to a standard desktop role. You can choose much more powerful innards at the point of purchase: it’s entirely possible to specify a new mini with a six-core 3.2GHz Core i7, 64GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD (not to mention 10 Gigabit Ethernet).
![2018 mac mini review 2018 mac mini review](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54a8c619e4b0d05e1aae752f/1548270162184-X767X7JZLH2TWMNRDDLE/Ports.jpg)
Not that the Mac mini is limited to that configuration. It’s a marked price difference for what looks an inferior spec. For comparison, the Mac mini I have on test here costs £799 and comes with a quad-core Intel Core i3-8100B, 8GB of 2666MHz DDR4 RAM and a 128GB SSD. This comes in a number of different configurations, but the one closest to the baseline Mac mini costs £691 and comes with a dual-core Intel Core i5-7200U processor, 8GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD and a 1TB HDD. One of our recent favourites is the Asus VivoMini. There’s now a huge range of models, of all shapes and sizes, to choose from. In the years since the mini was last updated, the Windows-based competition has grown impressively. Mac mini (2018) review: Price and competition It comes with a power cable and nothing else: as with a regular desktop PC you have to supply your own keyboard, mouse and monitor. As always, it’s a compact desktop computer that runs macOS out of the box. The essential premise of the Mac mini, however, hasn’t changed at all. Just like the 2018 MacBook Air, it’s also now built entirely from recycled aluminium. It comes with all-new internals and much better connectivity than in 2014 – and the price has risen significantly. The new 2018 Mac mini clearly reflects how the tech marketplace has changed. READ NEXT: Our guide to the best mini PCs you can buy today Mac mini (2018) review: What you need to know Who’d have thought, four years ago, that a top-of-the-range iPhone would cost you nearly £1,500? That’s a long time in computing terms and a lot has happened in the intervening years: Intel has run through four new generations of CPUs Apple itself has launched seven new iPhones the iPad has gained a “Pro” suffix – and technology, in general, has increased dramatically in price. In fact, this is the first time Apple has touched its much-loved compact computer since way back in 2014.
2018 mac mini review update#
Like the new MacBook Air, it’s a major update to a platform that’s spent the past few years languishing in the wilderness. The new Mac mini is part of a one-two revival punch from Apple in 2018. While the compact computer's other specs remain the same to its 2018 iteration, storage has been bumped to 256GB for the £799 model and 512GB for the £1,099 model.
2018 mac mini review upgrade#
Update: The Mac Mini has received an upgrade to storage in 2020.