Apple’s been pouring its design magic into handhelds lately, but now the lowly Mac mini joins the ranks of unibody hotness, complete with a glossy, almost liquid-looking black Apple logo on top. The smooth aluminum brick has zero screws or visible seams, just a round black hatch on the bottom that pops off with a twist, letting you upgrade the included 2GB of DDR3 memory to a maximum of 8GB. Gone and not missed is the sweaty pleasure of prying open a previous-generation mini with a putty knife.
The unibody mini is only 1.4 inches high, measuring 7.7 inches square and weighing 3 pounds. It’s even shed the bulky power brick for a built-in power supply and a regular old cable. It’s more efficient too, consuming under 10 watts of power when idle, which Apple says is 25 percent better than the last generation. Even the package is smaller, roughly the size of a takeout salad container.
But good things come in small packages, including a zippy 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor. The integrated Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics processor shares its 256MB of memory with the main system RAM, but we saw respectable performance, clocking 47 frames per second in Call of Duty 4. Of all the machines we’ve tested this year, only the Core i5 MacBook Pro beats that benchmark--pretty impressive for an entry-level Mac.
The mini’s ports include one FireWire 800, four USB 2.0, Ethernet, an SD card slot, and two video-out ports: Mini DisplayPort and HDMI. It can simultaneously support a 1920x1200 HDMI or DVI display and a 2560x1600 Mini DisplayPort or VGA screen, giving you lots of options whether the mini lives in your living room or office. Making its first appearance ever on a Mac, HDMI provides both 1080p video and 8-channel 24-bit audio in one cable. Apple also includes a video-only HDMI-to-DVI adapter.
The new unibody mini provides a hatch on the bottom that you can quickly pop off to upgrade the RAM.
While bumping up the specs, Apple also bumped up the price. This mini starts at $699 (2.4GHz processor, 320GB hard drive), $100 more than the last version (2.26GHz, 160GB hard drive). The pricey DDR3 RAM is getting cheaper all the time--the full 8GB upgrade runs $500 from Apple or (at this writing) around $290 from Ramjet.com or Other World Computing (macsales.com).
Unfortunately, Apple considers the RAM the only user-serviceable part. It’s a shame to have that huge hole in the bottom and still not be able to upgrade the hard drive, which only comes in 320GB and 500GB capacities.
iFixit.com has DIY instructions, but you have to move a lot of parts--including the logic board, which sounds incredibly nerve-wracking to us. And the port placement--everything on the back--makes it awkward to plug in flash drives and SD cards, depending on where the mini is stashed. Moving the power button, SD card slot, and two of the four USB ports to the front would help, even if it would mar the mini’s perfect form.
Follow this article's author, Susie Ochs, on Twitter.
The new Mac mini’s strong consumer-level performance, beautiful design, and good value make it a tempting choice, especially if you find the iMacs’ and MacBooks’ standard screens far too glossy. If replacing the hard drive were an Apple-approved upgrade, it’d be just about perfect.
2.4GHz Core 2 Duo Mac Mini
COMPANY: Apple
CONTACT: www.apple.com
PRICE: $699
SPECIFICATIONS: 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB DDR3 SDRAM, 3MB shared L2 cache, 320GB 5,400-rpm SATA hard drive, Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 shared with main memory, 4 USB 2.0 ports, FireWire 800 port, SD card slot, Mini DisplayPort, HDMI port, audio in, audio out, built-in speaker, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n AirPort Extreme, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
Great performance for the value. Easy-access RAM slots for a maximum of 8GB. HDMI out.
Inconveniently located SD card slot and USB ports. Hard drive isn’t upgradeable.
teejaysplace
August 04, 2010 at 1:17pm
This review fails to mention the lack of a certain optical technology, which on any other day, is hardly news. However, on this particular day, Apple opted to include an HDMI port, seemingly reinforcing the point that this *might* be a perfect multimedia center, if only...
ElZor47
August 03, 2010 at 11:38am
I would buy one today if I could figure out how to hook it up to my old stork-neck iMac, using the iMac's keyboard and screen with the Mini's processor, optical drive, hard drive, graphics card, etc.
The iMac is still so beautiful I don't want to get rid of it, but performance-wise it now leaves a lot to be desired. With the Mini the performance is all there, but it needs a keyboard and display. Seems like a perfect match to me.
viscara
July 26, 2010 at 11:27pm
Apples never stops amazing me... Such a punch in such a little package that runs circles around the competition PC world... And does so much more for your buck.. Picking one of these little gems up to sit next to my TV box so I can now watch my netflix and surf the web in between commercials... Apple I love you more and more.. I am so glad I switched 4 years ago from the other side... I am so much more happier now.
Emmett The Crab
July 26, 2010 at 12:58am
The HDMI out is great, but I'm rinning mine ln a 42" Plasma TV at 1080i and the fonts are way too small from the couch. There doesn't seem to be an easy way to adjust all font sizes up, either. I want it in 1080i, but I want the icpns and fonts to be bigm because we're sitting about 7 feet away.
Davidwp
July 27, 2010 at 10:13am
You certainly are running SNO LEOPARD. You are also probably using a mouse with a scroll wheel. If you go to the Universal Access Preferences
1. Use the Seeing tab
2. Click on the options button to the right of ZOOM
3. Check the "use scroll wheel for zooming". You will probably, want to specify the Alt-Shift control keys.
4. Quit the preferences.
Thereafter, when you are on a page with text too small to read, you press the control keys and turn the scroll keys till the text and images are the size you want. That should help with your image on screen.
Release the control keys and then you can move about the page.
Regards:
markomd
July 25, 2010 at 4:36am
It sure is a sweet little unit. If purchased from the Apple Recon store, it is a tremendous bargain. All you need is a keyboard, a mouse, and a monitor– good cheapo system. But overall it's still not as convenient as my MacBook Pro, and the net cost difference is less than $100 if they're both configured properly.
randoo53
July 23, 2010 at 10:33am
I love how this looks but let's get this into the hands of a World of Warcraft player (Susie??) and tell us how high we can adjust the settings before the scene starts getting choppy. (Dalaran is the benchmark here)
I would consider giving up my 20" imac for this!
ilikeimac
July 23, 2010 at 10:18am
Strangely, my home theater receiver treats the audio from the Mac Mini's HDMI output differently than the optical audio output; with the optical audio the receiver provides more options for processing the surround sound and mapping a stereo or 5.1 signal to my 7.1 speakers, but with the HDMI there are just a few options and audio tends to come from just the front speakers more often.
So my impression is that there's something inferior about the HDMI audio. I hope it's just a result of this being Apple's first use of HDMI, and that it can be fixed with firmware or software updates.
