Apple Mac Mini (M4) review: ever smaller, ever more powerful

What if a development was so important that we would then speak of a revolution? The arrival of the Apple Mac Mini (2024) was, unsurprisingly, the source of all the attention within the editorial team. Digital. Small, cute, quirky, everyone used their superlative to describe the latest desktop computer made in Cupertino. Its completely redesigned design accompanies the M4 and M4 Pro series of processors, also embedded in the 2024 MacBook Pros.

Good news, the American manufacturer is not changing the pricing of its Mini compared to previous models with a starting price set at €699. At this price, the Mac Mini has the M4 processor, 256 GB of storage and, new, 16 GB of unified RAM, which finally marks the end of the 8 GB models. The bill nevertheless rises very quickly as the gigabytes go by, until it costs €1,159 for the M4 model with 24 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage, almost double the entry-level price. To afford the M4 Pro, you will have to pay at least €1,649 (24 GB of RAM, 512 GB of storage).

For our test, it was the Mac Mini M4 model with 16 GB of RAM that we examined. Will it be able to be competitive despite its aggressive pricing?

Construction

Imagine, it's been 14 years since Apple changed the silhouette of its Mac Mini. Proof of this is that the very first version of its redesign served us as a perfect point of comparison to observe the evolution. With its 12.7 cm length and depth and 5 cm height, suffice to say that the machine has never lived up to its name so well.

It's simple, the computer now has more in common with the Apple TV (9.3 x 9.3 x 3.1 cm) than with its predecessor. A clue, if one were still needed, of the black magic with which the brand's engineers operate to the delight of those allergic to overly flashy electronics.

There is also nothing to complain about in terms of the finish, exemplary and still as radically closed. Waiting for any change in this aspect is certainly in vain, but we can only be saddened to see one of the strengths of desktop computers being held back by considerations that are ridiculously outdated today.

Has connectivity come a long way since 2023? Not so much… Seeing the rich rear of the 2010 Mac Mini is to deplore the vagaries of time which passes and deprives us, poor tech enthusiasts, of our SD card readers and other Mini DisplayPorts. We're exaggerating, but barely: since the Mac Mini M2, the computer has been deprived of any USB-A port. Nothing surprising in itself, because instead, the Mac Mini M4 displays five USB-C ports (two on the front, three on the back) including a Thunderbolt 4, the Thunderbolt 5 being reserved for the M4 Pro model . Moreover, we can be reassured with the survivors, such as the HDMI 2.1 port or the Gigabit Ethernet port and its 10 Gb option (€115). Some things don't change…

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Another unchanging element, wireless connectivity is still limited to wifi 6E (802.11ax) and Bluetooth 5.3. It would be a question of rethinking the future proofing of our tech investments, but it won't be today.

Testing a tech product is also a guarantee of experiencing great moments of solitude – often negative, but sometimes funny, like our visit to the semi-anechoic room to measure the sound level of the Mac Mini M4's cooling fans. It's simple, even under heavy load on HandBrake, only the sharpest ears will be able to hear its very discreet murmur, not exceeding 31 dB on the sound level meter. Our observation is similar regarding heating, limited to 27°C (29°C in the ventilation outlets located at the rear) and power consumption, measured at 3 W (!) on average in light office use and 45 W in intensive tasks. It's better than the Mac Mini M2 and its 7 W in idle. In standby, the mini-computer does not pass 300 mW (0.3 W), a little less than a PS5 in rest mode.

So yes, we cannot ignore the really surprising location of its power button, placed under the small cube, in its rear left corner. It is impossible to press on it without slightly lifting its corner to allow the passage of a knuckle. Obviously, this raises a feeling of cheapso much so that one wonders what could have motivated such a decision. Nothing dramatic however, knowing that standby consumption is derisory.

Performances

The M4 of our Mac Mini is equipped with 10 CPU cores (4 for performance, 6 for energy efficiency), 10 GPU cores and 16 cores for its Neural Engine dedicated to artificial intelligence tasks. The same number as the previous generation M2, except for the lower number of CPU cores (8 cores), but much more efficient.

Thus, on our test protocol, the Mac Mini M4 almost doubles the CPU performance index to 90 against 53. It is also far ahead of the M2 Max, although equipped with four additional cores, thanks to its performance in single core.

If the Mac Studio's M1 Max and Ultra maintain a clear advantage in GPU computing, the M4 nevertheless represents an impressive generational leap in versatile tasks, meeting the requirements of a wide spectrum of users. Office tasks or content consumption pose no problem; neither do the creators' heavier operations, such as exporting videos in 4K or modeling a scene in Blender.

Faced with the latest mobile CPUs from Intel and AMD, the Mac Mini M4 is on par, for example against the Ryzen AI 9 370 HX (12 cores, 24 threads) of the Asus TUF Gaming A16. However, it is much superior to the Core Ultra 7 256 V (8c/8t) of Lenovo's Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition.

Far from being a competitive beast for gamingthe M4 shows good performance on the benchmark of Shadow of the Tomb Raider. At 1200p with the preset set to Very High, the title reached 39 fps on the Mac Mini M4, a little less than double that of the Mac Mini M2. Enough to ensure a few occasional sessions on less demanding titles, far from the greedy AAAs. As for the SSD, its performance remains average, with 3.3 GB/s reading and 3 GB/s writing.