This mini is mighty

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.