the product positioning of Mac Mini is the entry-level MAC device, which means that consumers can experience the excellence of the Mac OS system ecosystem with the least money. So what's the change of Mac Mini this year? How are you doing? Let's take a look at the details of the new Apple Mac Mini!
Before the evaluation, let's show you the basic configuration of this Mac Mini:
1、 Design continues from the previous generation, and technology is not lazy
For the MAC product line, Apple's changes in appearance design have always been conservative, as has the Mac Mini. The latest Mac Mini of 2018 basically continues the previous generation of 2014 Mac Mini in product design. The most intuitive difference lies in the color change from silver four years ago to deep space gray, which makes the new Mac Mini look more deep and low-key.
In terms of size, the 2018 Mac Mini is the same as the previous generation, with a specification of 3.6cm * 19.7cm * 19.7cm and a weight of 1.3KG, which is small and exquisite for a host. The body of Mac Mini is square, round, regular and simple. There is only one metal polished Apple logo on the top, which is in good accordance with the simple and cool style of MAC series products. The metal surface of the Mac Mini body has been sandblasted delicately, which has a good sense of quality both in appearance and touch.
When it comes to the metal on the surface of the body, it's worth mentioning that, like the latest MacBook Air, this year's Mac Mini is made of 100% recycled aluminum metal. It home learned from apple that the recycled aluminum here is not only from the recycled aluminum materials of Apple's old equipment, but also from the remaining aluminum materials in the production of other equipment, mainly from these two sources, so that apple can achieve the goal of not mining new aluminum, so as to reduce carbon emissions by 45%, which is Apple's new achievement in green environmental protection. However, if recycled aluminum is used, I believe many netizens will be more curious about how Apple makes recycled aluminum of the same quality as new aluminum materials? It home learned that Apple has set up a team of metal material experts to solve the technical problem of recycling aluminum for new equipment. The main challenge here is how to keep the beautiful appearance and uniform plating color when using recycling aluminum for new products, as well as the sorting and purification of waste aluminum. To solve these problems, apple can meet the quality requirements of new products by using recycled aluminum for Mac Mini 。
The bottom of the Mac Mini is a round plastic bottom cover with a matte feel and a 'mac mini' logo printed on the surface. This bottom cover is detachable, which is convenient for users to add memory or geek God to do more in-depth DIY. Here, it is small and does not need to be disassembled first.
As a mini computer without a monitor and mouse, mac mini has plenty of interfaces. At the back of the fuselage, there are various interfaces from left to right, including power button, power interface, Ethernet port (optional 10GB Ethernet port), four thunderbolt 3 (usb-c) ports (speed up to 40 Gbps), HDMI interface, two USB 3 ports (speed up to 5 Gbps), 3.5mm headphone port, and long strip shaped heat vent under many ports Compared with the previous generation, this cooling vent is much larger.
In general, this year's Mac Mini has always maintained a high standard and high quality in terms of appearance technology. The simple design language is integrated into the small body, which makes it pleasant to see whether it is placed at home or on the desk, and improves the modern and fashionable sense of the environment.
2、 Performance exceeded expectations
In practice, the Mac Mini's wiring is very simple, because it is only a host, so you need to prepare at least one monitor and a set of keyboard and mouse. Connect the power supply to the monitor through an HDMI cable, and then connect the keyboard and mouse. After everything is done, press the power button, you can start it.
After some initial settings of Mac OS, I came to the system desktop of Mac OS. For this mac mini, it home editors are more concerned about its specific performance level. So first, I used geekbench for a run.
From the result 3, the specific CPU model of 2018 MAC min is Intel Core i3-8100b, with single core running score of 4718 and multi-core running score of 14168. By contrast, the Intel Core i7-8559u processor of the 2018 13 inch MacBook Pro has a single core running score of 5321 and a multi-core running score of 18908. In terms of running points, the results of I3 processor of 2018 Mac Mini can satisfy the it home editor.
Next let's test the read-write performance of the hard disk. The Mac Mini used by it home is a 128GB PCIe SSD. Xiaobian uses blackmagick disk speed test to test. The average write speed and read speed of Mac Mini hard disk are 644.0 MB / s and 2530.6 MB / s, respectively. According to the data tested by netizens, the average read speed and write speed of 2014 Mac Mini 256gb SSD version are 718 MB / s and 654 MB / s respectively. It can be seen that the read-write performance of the new Mac Mini hard disk is significantly higher than that of 2014.
Of course, running score is only a part of performance test, more importantly, it is the actual experience. There are quite a few users of Mac Mini who are video editors. I believe that the users who intend to buy Mac Mini are more concerned about the video rendering ability. In the test, the it home editor uses the video editing software final cut pro to edit and render four 4K / 25p prores raw video streams, and outputs the 4K resolution mpg4 format video. The video duration is 21 seconds, and the rendering duration is about 3 minutes. During the rendering process, the Mac Mini fuselage can feel obvious heat, but not hot. The highest temperature measured is apple log on the top of the fuselage Near o, it can reach 38.8 ℃. At this time, the Mac Mini is very quiet. I didn't hear the sound of fans in the cooling port.
Later, it home continued to test mac mini's hard disk read-write and GPU rendering performance. Here, Xiaobian uses Photoshop to open a. TIF file with a size of 3.9gb, observes the opening time, and then carries out Gaussian blur processing with a radius of 30 pixels to observe the processing time.
The test results show that it takes 50 seconds to open a 3.9gb. TIF file with Photoshop on the Mac Mini. As a contrast, the 2018 13 inch Apple MacBook Pro takes about 38 seconds.
It takes about 32 seconds to process and render the 30 pixel radius Gaussian blur of the file, while 13 inch MacBook Pro takes 13 seconds to process.
It is worth mentioning that during these works, the Mac Mini is still quiet as a whole, without the sound of fans, and the surface temperature of the body is not hot.
In general, the performance of the 2018 Mac Mini still exceeds the expectation of the it home editor. No matter the objective running score or the actual high-intensity use scenario, they can cope with it stably. Of course, compared with the MacBook Pro Series, the overall differentiation between product lines is still clear. It should be noted that the overall configuration of this Mac Mini in the hands of it home coder should be the lowest in this year's configuration options, that is, the entry-level version. It is enough to meet the daily work and life and light video editing and rendering needs. If you are a professional worker, you can consider to configure a higher version.
3、 Simple and stable experience
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, the positioning of Mac Mini is the entry-level product of Mac OS ecology. The use scenarios are more at home or in the office to deal with daily work. Of course, Apple also said that users can use multiple Mac Mini stacks to form a cluster, and work together to handle some ultra-high-intensity tasks. At this time, the performance will be multiplied. However, this kind of use case tends to be specialized, so it will not be expanded here.
Can 2018 Mac Mini pass thunderbolt 3-terminal? Connect two 4096 x 2304 resolution (60Hz) displays, simultaneously through the HDMI 2.0 terminal? Connect? 4096 x 2160 resolution (60Hz) display? Device, that is, three 4K displays are connected at the same time.
In addition, you can choose to connect a 5120 x 2880 resolution (60Hz) display through the thunderbolt 3 port and a 4096 x 2160 resolution (60Hz) display through the HDMI 2.0 port.
In the actual use test, we connected a 2560 * 1440 resolution display from Philips, which is naturally no pressure for Mac Mini.
The 2018 Mac Mini is pre installed with the Mac OS Mojave 10.14 system. In view of the inherent smoothness of the Mac OS system, the Mac Mini experience is also quite friendly during the use process, and the daily office, entertainment and so on can't feel the Karton completely, and the Mac Mini itself is very stable and quiet. During the period when the editor used it as the main equipment for work, almost no fan whine was heard.
However, it should be noted that there is no microphone on the Mac Mini, so it is impossible to interact with Siri directly through voice. If you need to use Siri, you can connect the microphone outside.
In one test, we used three browsers including Safari browser to open a total of 35 web page tags, open final cut pro to load four prores raw 4K videos, use Photoshop to open the 3.9gb. TIF file mentioned above, open Apple music online to listen to music, open QQ, open the numbers table application of MAC OS, use WPS to open 15 word documents and put them in it During this period, it frequently switches between different applications, simulating scenes that are heavier than the daily workload. The simulation process is smooth as a whole. When the application is switched, you can feel a subtle frame drop, which does not affect the experience. At this time, the Mac Mini is still quiet. It can be seen that even the entry-level 2018 Mac Mini is able to handle most of the daily work.
In addition, 2018 Mac Mini only provides the option of independent memory upgrade in DIY. If you have a high demand for memory in performance, you can also purchase a memory installation by yourself. When replacing the memory module, the plastic bottom cover at the bottom of the Mac Mini needs to be removed with a pry companion, and then the internal metal cover plate needs to be removed with a TR6 Torx safety screwdriver. The specific removal process is not shown here. It needs to be reminded that there are risks in independent memory replacement. Large companies can go to Apple authorized service providers to upgrade their memory.
If you are a video editor, you may also need to be equipped with a usb-c adapter, because this year's Mac Mini has canceled the SDXC card slot, so the video material you take in the camera needs to be imported into the Mac mini device through the adapter. It House asked Apple about this, and apple said that it had also considered this issue, but finally thought that it might be more important to give users more flexible choices and better performance. For this reason, apple provided four powerful thunderbolt 3 ports (usb-c support).
Four, summary
The Mac Mini you have experienced this time is an entry-level model. The price starts from 6499 yuan. It can be said that you want to experience the latest device. This price is the lowest threshold to enter the Mac OS ecosystem. Compared with the price of 3588 yuan of 2014 mac mini, it is obviously a lot more expensive. At the same time, the new Mac Mini also has a comprehensive upgrade in performance. So if you're buying this year's MAC min just to meet your daily commute needs, it's all you need. Just for one thing, 128GB of storage requires you to clean the hard disk regularly.
From Apple's point of view, the importance of the Mac mini product line