In the September issue of Mac|Life, we reviewed the brand-new unibody Mac mini, awarding it 4 stars. But the amount of space we had to work with didn't really lend itself to a deep-dive into the mini's performance, and the results of our real-world testing suite. Luckily we have a website to deal with just this kind of problem...

Below are the results of our testing the mid-2010 2.4GHz unibody Mac mini with 2GB of RAM. We also compared it with the other Mac mini we currently have access to, but we need to point out that it's not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison, because the 2.4GHz unibody Apple sent us to review is the entry-level Mac mini, the stock configuration. And the late-2009 mini we're comparing it to here is the higher-end SKU Apple used to offer. (Now they only sell one standard Mac mini, with build-to-order upgrades available, and the optical-drive-free Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server.) It's the late 2009 2.53GHz Mac mini, with 4GB of RAM.

Yes, our older Mac mini has double the RAM and a faster Core 2 Duo processor than the brand-new unibody mini we just reviewed. Virtually all the other specs are the same, from their 1066MHz frontside bus, 3MB on-chip shared L2 cache, and the RAM's speed and type, 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM. The newer mini has a better graphics chip--the Nvidia GeForce 320M--than the late 2009 mini's Nvidia GeForce 9400M, which you can see in our Call of Duty 4 framerate test. But both graphics chips share their 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM with the main system memory.

The results were hit and miss. Often the older mini, with its faster processor and 4GB of RAM, won out, but not always. In our iMovie Import test, QuickTime Pro Conversion test, GarageBand Send to iTunes test, and the Call of Duty 4 Framerate test, the newer mini bested its older sibling. Still, it's more changed on the outside than under the hood, with a sleek aluminum unibody enclosure, the easy-to-open panel on the bottom, and a new HDMI port alongside the MiniDisplayPort, giving you more flexibility when connecting to an HDTV or other modern display.

Full results are below.

iMovie Import Test
(Importing a 2GB DV file into iMovie '09)
Mid 2010 2.4GHz Mac mini: 2:30.9
Late 2009 2.53GHz Mac mini: 4:31.0
Winner: Mid 2010 Mac mini is 79.6% faster

iDVD Test
(Burning that 2GB DV file to a DVD)
Mid 2010 2.4GHz Mac mini: 15:04
Late 2009 2.53GHz Mac mini: 11:59.7
Winner: Late 2009 Mac mini is 25.6% faster

QuickTime Pro Conversion
(Using QuickTime 7 Pro to convert a DV video to H.264)
Mid 2010 2.4GHz Mac mini: 14:57.1
Late 2009 2.53GHz Mac mini: 18:03
Winner: Mid 2010 Mac mini is 20.7% faster

iTunes Convert to AAC Test
(Converting an album of WAV files to high-quality AAC)
Mid 2010 2.4GHz Mac mini: 1:27.6
Late 2009 2.53GHz Mac mini: 1:24
Winner: Late 2009 Mac mini is 4.3% faster

GarageBand Send to iTunes Test
(Exporting a GarageBand track to iTunes)
Mid 2010 2.4GHz Mac mini: 24.4
Late 2009 2.53GHz Mac mini: 29
Winner: Mid 2010 Mac mini is 18.9% faster

iPhoto JPEG Import Test
(Importing 196 JPEGs to iPhoto '09)
Mid 2010 2.4GHz Mac mini: 43.7
Late 2009 2.53GHz Mac mini: 37.7
Winner: Late 2009 Mac mini is 15.9% faster

Photoshop CS4 Actions Test
(Performing a set of Actions on a 100MB PSD file)
Mid 2010 2.4GHz Mac mini: 44.1
Late 2009 2.53GHz Mac mini: 27.7
Winner: Late 2009 Mac mini is 59.2% faster

Adobe InDesign PDF Export Test
(Exporting a 2-page PDF from an INDD file)
Mid 2010 2.4GHz Mac mini: 5.5
Late 2009 2.53GHz Mac mini: 5
Winner: Late 2009 Mac mini is 10% faster

Call of Duty 4 Framerate
(Frames per second)
Mid 2010 2.4GHz Mac mini: 47
Late 2009 2.53GHz Mac mini: 34.8
Winner: Mid 2010 Mac mini is 35.1% better