The
Mac mini has long been the oddball child of the Mac family: it's the only consumer-level machine from Apple that isn't a fully-integrated experience, and it's the only Mac to have had a sub-$1,000 sticker price in some time. But people love this little weirdo, and they love to do weirdly awesome things with it -- we've seen Mac minis stuffed into everything from old
G4 Cube shells to
volleyball-playing robots to
pianos to...
DeLoreans. Yes, DeLoreans. And, of course, people have longed been connecting Mac minis to HDTVs and using 'em as a media players -- it's small, quiet, relatively powerful, and it's a real computer, so it can play virtually any video file you throw at it. And now it's gotten even more attractive as a home theater PC, since Apple's given the
newest Mac mini a striking unibody makeover, NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics, and -- a first for any Mac -- an HDMI port, making it a dead-simple addition to your HDTV. On the flip side, the base price of the only stock consumer configuration has gone up to $699, and to be blunt, much cheaper PCs have had HDMI ports forever. So is the mini worth the premium? Is it the ultimate small PC for the living room -- and beyond? Read on to find out.
Hardware
The new mini represents the first major redesign in the product's history since it was first introduced in 2005. That's partially a testament to the minimalist good looks of the previous design, of course -- it's managed to blend in with every Apple design trend of the past five years. By the same token, the new design promises to have equal staying power: it's at once both simpler and more deeply considered. Obviously the major portion of the case is the aluminum unibody, which is thinner than the previous-gen at an inch and a quarter, but slightly bigger around at seven by seven inches square. Apple tells us the new and old minis are essentially the same size by volume; you might think of the new mini as being a flattened-out version of the old. In fact, the new mini looks like nothing so much as the Apple TV -- but we'll get to the heart of that comparison later.
The new mini doesn't actually sit flat on a surface -- it actually rises up off the ground by a few millimeters on a circular pedestal. This is for two reasons: the front lip houses an air intake, which is vented out the back, and it also creatively conceals a WiFi antenna, which would otherwise be stifled by that all-aluminum enclosure. Bluetooth and a second matching WiFi antenna are also located on the plastic back panel for 360-degree coverage. We tried the mini all over the house on our 5GHz WiFi network and suffered zero problems, so it seems like this little trick was effective for us -- we'll see how others with larger or more complex WiFi setups fare.
About that pedestal: as you might have noticed from our
hands-on photos, flipping the mini over reveals a circular access door, which you can twist off to get at the RAM. It's hard not to marvel at the sheer Apple-ness of the panel the first time you interact with it -- other companies simply don't make computers like this. Unfortunately, you can't get at anything other than the RAM once the panel is off, as the hard drive isn't user replaceable. That's pretty silly, in our opinion: hard drives have a nasty habit of failing, especially when you run 'em non-stop in servers and video playback machines, and we'd much rather have a hard time upgrading the RAM once at the outset than feel helpless about replacing a glitchy hard drive.
Round back there's a pretty standard array of ports: four USB, FireWire 800, gigabit Ethernet, an SDXC card slot, mini DisplayPort, HDMI, mic in, and audio out, which supports optical out as well. Apple says the idea is for the mini to be able to plug into most everything out of the box, so there's an HDMI-to-DVI adapter packed in the box, and you can obviously score a VGA mini DisplayPort adapter as well. The HDMI port itself is said to be "HDMI 1.3-compliant," and it'll carry up to eight channels of audio and run displays up to 1920 x 1200, although it doesn't support the little-used Deep Color. As with the previous mini, you can use both display outputs simultaneously; the mini DisplayPort supports a max res of 2560 x 1600. Oh, and this is the first time Apple's done an SDXC slot, so that's nice -- expect to see that on other SD-equipped Macs as time goes on.
Inside, the mini is very similar to the $999 MacBook: our tester was the lone standard configuration, with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, an NVIDIA GeForce 320M GPU, 2GB of RAM, and a 320GB hard drive. It's not a ton of computer for $699 -- you can get any number of Core i5 PC towers with similar GPUs for the same money -- but as usual, that's not really what Apple's going for, and what you lose in raw computing power you gain in saved
power power, as the mini draws less than 10 watts of power at idle, lower than almost every other competitive machine. What's more, the new 85-watt power supply is now built right in, so there's no power brick, which is quite nice, especially for home theater and other nonstandard installations. (In fact, the power plug is the same as the Apple TV, so you can swap in the mini right in place.)
The mini is also exceptionally quiet: we never heard the fan kick in, even while we played games or watched videos. That's not to say the fan wasn't going, but just that we never heard it. Given our recent experiences with incredibly obnoxious MacBook Pro fans, we're marking that in the plus column. The mini was also laudably cool -- we never felt it get even slightly warm after a full day of testing.
Of course, there's one very notable hardware omission here: a Blu-ray drive. It's sort of amazing that Apple will happily sell you a $700 computer with an HDMI port that doesn't support the best, easiest and highest-quality consumer HD playback format available, but for whatever reason the company just doesn't offer any machines that do Blu-ray, even though it's a member of the Blu-ray Disc Association. When we pressed them about it, Apple told us they just don't see customer demand for BD drives because the format has yet to take off. We obviously disagree, but that's the final answer -- maybe the mini's newfound affinity for HDTVs will finally push Apple to offer Blu-ray in the future.
Performance
At this point the performance characteristics of a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo Mac with a 1066MHz bus are pretty familiar territory; Apple's had similar basic hardware in its lineup
since 2008. The new mini adds the NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics processor to the mix, which is a more potent successor to the familiar 9400m from the previous model -- it's still integrated graphics, but it's reasonably fast integrated graphics.
Needless to say, the new Mac mini was more than capable of basic tasks like browsing, word processing, and running iTunes. And unlike the Atom- or Ion-based nettops you might consider putting under your TV, the mini is also more than capable of running HD Flash video without any hesitation -- and it'll be even better when
Flash 10.1 "Gala" ships with hardware video acceleration for Mac OS X. The mini can also play virtually every other video file you might throw at it using either QuickTime with the open-source Perian component or other popular video apps like VLC or Movist, which is our new favorite. We didn't have any issues playing 1080p files from a variety of sources, and we wouldn't have any hesitation doing a little light iMovie work on the side. On the straight benchmark front, the mini put up a Geekbench score of 3385, which is right in line with what we'd expect.
Where the mini does struggle is gaming performance. Although the GeForce 320M can handle less taxing games and lower resolutions just fine, it can't hang once you crank things up -- we averaged between 17-20fps running Portal at 1920 x 1200 with the default settings, and about the same when we ran it at 1080p connected to our TV. If you're willing to step it down, though, you should be fine -- we got 30fps running Half-Life 2 Episode 2 at 1280 x 800. Passable, but if you're a hardcore gamer you're probably not looking at Macs anyway.
In the living room
So this is where it gets interesting -- people have been using the Mac mini as a basic HTPC for years now, and the new model's HDMI port certainly makes it seem like Apple's given the little guy its blessing to invade the living room. It's not quite that simple, though -- and if you were hoping to just drop in the new mini in place of an aging Apple TV, well, you've got some surprises coming. First, you should note that all the HDMI port really gets you is a simpler interconnect story; otherwise you're still dealing with a full-on computer, not an integrated media device. Second, the fact that you're using a real computer means that you need some sort of keyboard and mouse to do anything of value -- sure, you can click through Front Row using an Apple Remote, but that's a pretty limited experience compared to even the Apple TV, and you didn't just pay $700 for a limited experience. Apple was pretty upfront about this: they told us that the mini's HDMI port is about offering flexibility, not making a play in the living room, and that mini customers who wanted to hook it up to a TV were probably savvy enough to find their own software and input methods. In fact, the only HDTV-specific piece of software on the mini is a new underscan slider in the Displays preference pane, which lets you dial in the size of the image on your TV. Apart from that, you're on your own here, Chico.
That said, the mini is a capable little HTPC once you get it set up and going with the software of your choice: we obviously tried out Front Row and Boxee, which both worked flawlessly, and we had no problem playing back a 1080p MKV over HDMI once we installed Perian. Since the mini can output up to eight audio channels over HDMI, it's technically possible to run a full 7.1 surround system from it, but getting
DTS audio output in OS X from anything other than a DVD is seemingly impossible, so if you're a stickler you should be transcoding to AC-3 surround and sending that to your receiver. Like we said, you can't just hook this up to a TV and go -- you've got to baby it a little if you want the best experience. Of course, all this would be a lot easier if Apple would just offer a Blu-ray drive, but we digress.
Update: Turns out VLC will send encoded DTS output over HDMI, but you have to specifically tell it to do so under the audio menu. Huzzah!
That's really the only hardcore home theater testing we did -- other, simpler things like playing back Netflix and Hulu obviously work just as well as they do on any other Mac, and you won't run into any problems. Of course, you can also purchase or rent movies and TV shows from the iTunes Store; we didn't run into any problems doing that, obviously.
And that's really it -- the Mac mini is just a Mac, albeit one that's really easy to hook up to your TV. If you want to take the leap into having a full-on computer in your living room, it's a fine way to start, since it's small, quiet, cool, and fast. Just know that getting the best experience isn't necessarily plug and play -- unless you're willing to spend some time monkeying around with semi-obscure utilities like Audio MIDI Setup, putting a mini under your TV might cause more problems than it solves.
Wrap-up
Apple tells us its goal with the Mac mini was to make a small, flexible computer that would fit into whatever environment people wanted it to go -- the company seems quite chuffed with the number of people who put minis into cars, for example. By that measure, the new Mac mini is a raging success -- it's one of the most perfectly-executed small PCs we've ever encountered, and it can indeed hook up to almost anything and accomplish nearly any task. If you've got $700 and you need a small Mac, you're going to be pretty happy with a Mac mini.
On the other hand, $700 ain't cheap. You'll almost certainly get more bang for those bucks in the PC world, although you'll sacrifice some fit and finish. It's also fairly easy to find a $700 HDMI-equipped PC with a Blu-ray drive, which is a striking omission from the mini -- especially since it seems so perfectly suited to the living room. No, the mini isn't the perfect HTPC, although it's close. But if you can live without Blu-ray and you can afford the price tag, the mini promises to be just as lovable an oddball as its predecessor.
posted June 18th 2010 8:00PM
I'd consider paying the $700 asking price for this if it had a Blu Ray drive. Its otherwise very nice, just overpriced.
And I'd only consider it because I already have a suitable remote, OS, apps, etc that I would need. For those who are starting from ground zero, this is too costly.
this post / set of comments has confused me more then ever now. I was originally waiting on the refresh to purchase a mini for my htpc, but there hasn't really been much of a positive feed back from anyone about the new mini. Seems like the biggest con is price and blu-ray. I def don't need the blu-ray since my content is all digital and I do get a 50 dollar discount.. however that doesn't put much of a dent into the orignial price. I guess no one has anything positive to say about buying the new mac mini?
I most definitely want one. But for now I'm good with my current setup which is my MacBook Pro hooked up to my HDTV and using Air Mouse as a track pad and key board on my iPhone. What I really want is the underscan feature on the new MacMini.
I thought about a mini as a HTPC, but then I woke up and bought a $700 quad core PC and hooked it up to my TV.
The biggest problem is the heat of the hard drive. No matter what Apple does, it's not going to change the fact that modern high density hard drives run hot. The mini, obvious, barely has enough cooling power. It may be enough to cool the hard drive running for a while, but unless you can cool the drive down further, it will probably die much sooner than a computer with more cooling mechanism.
I always see it as thus; if you don't like Windows and can't be bothered with Linux, then the price of Apple's hardware is largely irrelevant. I paid £1600 for my iMac nearly 5-years ago and it still works perfectly, and I can still run Tiger, which I love. To me that means much more than fretting it was poor value compared to Windows equivalents.
It's like wanting a BMW, but buying a Hyundai Genesis because it's similar. But not the same.
@SWGooner
So your basing your whole Windows judgment on something from half a decade ago?
Try Windows 7. You might find (like I did) that OS X isn't so wonderful compared to Microsoft's newest offering.
the reason you won't see a blu ray, it will affect their hd movies in their itunes, big loss for apple. i just wish they should not have raise that extra £100 pound on that mini, i was waiting for 8 months for the new mac mini, now im waiting for that day when apple give a sale for 1 day
Great stuff but damn expensive in Europe :( (who would pay $1000 for a desktop computer?)
Great review. I want that sexy box right now.. But jeez i don't have 700$! If you threw in the wireless magic mouse & keyboard i'd pay 600$!
Hi All,
Caved in and bought the new 2.4Ghz Mac Mini with 2gig yesterday.
I have purchased the MAC mini for the sole purpose of a HTPC, the addition of the HDMI port was it for me.
The only problem I haven't found a solution for is Refresh Rate changes based on the Media being played e.g. 23.976, 50, 60. So as to avoid judder during playback.
Could do this no bother on XBMC under Windows but the functionality although present on the MAC version of XBMC is not working i.e. has yet to be developed.
And there is no such option in Plex. This is a real disappointment for me and I hope it is addressed soon by either Media Center. I have yet to try Boxee but I have read there is no option for refresh rate changes.
Anyone know of a way to setup a script of some kind to switch refresh rates and map to a hotkey as an interim measure?
Have also noticed that Plex seems to handle 1080p content better than XBMC on the MAC mini, i.e. CPU utilisation is higher and not as smooth on XBMC. Plex does play 1080p content perfectly, no dropped frames and very smooth - noticeably smoother than xbmc on windows 7.
Can also confirm that the Toshiba HD in the MAC mini is only SATA I i.e. 1.5Gbps and not SATA II 3.0Gbps to match the motherboard!
Cheers
I'm a huge fan of Apple and the compact little fella but I never buy one. The price isn't an issue though that is disappointing and clueless.
The real cost is the monthly fee for the higher bandwidth connection to feed this hungry kid. All because Apple is now allergic to optical drives. I'm convinced it would have a DVD drive if they could find a way to sell MAC OS X on a cheap enough USB thumbdrive.
Guess I'll wait for Steve to tear up the set top box or at least take another look at Slingbox.
The Mac mini has had a place in my living room for over a year now. It has digital audio out, infrared remote sensor, and easy to maintain. I use a harmony remote, added boxxee, and Hulu shortcuts to front row. I use Log me in free to do updates from my office. I use Handbrake to convert Video to drop into iTunes and Netflix for movie streaming in Boxee. I guess, if You have large investment of Bluerays, you have a player already. PS3 might be a good option, to fit in other peoples ecosystems. It is not for everyone, but I saved over $600 on my tv watching with an Hd antenna and my mini last year, so it's paying off this year. Cheers
@bluevaping
I totally agree with you. I am using an iMac with HDHomeRun and my 1080p projector. However, I can move my iMac to a different room now and get this mini to do dedicated eyeTV recordings. I don't have to worry that someone logged me out or quit the eyeTV software and I don't have to worry about blanking out the built-in iMac screen while watching TV shows and movies.
Where's the mention of plex?! Why only boxee and xmbc.
I've used a 2006 mac Mini as a HTPC for a while, in conjunction with the Elgato diversity. I upgraded (?) to a Topfield TF7100+HD 3-4 days before the announcement of the new Mac Mini.
Comparison
Against
The Topfield is very fiddly - lots of tiny buttons (it makes the Foxtel remote look like a masterpiece of design) and a user interface that only its designer could love. IceTV helps, but there's still some issues with channel info.
For
Picture quality is first rate - lots better that the mac/elgato combination.
Conclusion
If you're a fiddler (dyndns, ftp etc.) you'll get some good mileage from the Toppy.
Question
If anyone has upgraded to a new Mac Mini and is using the Elgato Diversity - has the picture quality markedly improved?
It's sad that this $700 computer-without-a-screen has less features, less power, and a crappier video card than my $800 laptop purchased over a year ago.
But hey! I give Apple credit for the HDMI port! I sold my MacBook and gave up on Apple because I was sick of paying so much and being shorted on basic things like HDMI, Lightscribe, card readers, Blu-ray Disc support, Express Card support, Firewire, multiple USB ports (the MacBooks only have two; My ASUS has four) and a decent video chipset.
Dropping Apple was the smartest move I made in 2009. There's just nothing that can justify their price-versus-feature ratio right now. OS X is good, but compared to Windows 7, it's not *that* good. It's not good enough for me to pay lots more for less hardware.
Apple has embraced their whole "niche computer" thing a bit too seriously, and now they're purposely making low-end computers with high-end prices. They're the Sharper Image of computers. It's sad.
My first iBook was pretty awesome compared to the PCs of the time. My last MacBook was an underpowered, overpriced, shiny toy that choked on games and required a $30 optional dongle to connect to any standard display, whether it be VGA or DVI... And forget about HDMI. It couldn't do that at all, unless I went from Mini DisplayPort to DVI to HDMI.
Apple computers are cool looking, but weak for their price category. In this economy, it takes a real sucker to keep buying them.
@ZeroCorpse
Shorted? lol Yes Apple makes you pay a premium but for things you need. Express cards are being phased out like it or not on every computer, Lightscribe (really!?), Card Readers (Ever heard of wireless or a USB card reader for $5), Firewire? Everything is USB 2.0 or soon to be 3.0 and Macs have Firewire 800.
The Bluray I understand to a degree but remember Apple has spent millions on backing their iTunes store for digital downloads only. Plus, Apple probably doesn't have the technology to let users stream or download 1080p movies (at a reasonable size) yet. Bluray is great but Apple might be reading the market correctly on this one because everything is going digital.
My biggest complaint then would be the HD, I understand the notebook HD to cut down on space and power consumption but 320GB isn't enough. To make up for the Bluray Apple should have put a 1TB HD and possibly an ESATA. Then Apple could truly justify the lack of Bluray player.
It really should have Blu Ray if it is going to have anything, and push it heavier on the home entertainment crowd by showcasing how easily integrated it is. Make it $499 - especially where you still need a mouse & keyboard, or at least have a packaged deal that includes them & a monitor without adding over $300 to the final price, so someone could actually get true Apple / Mac experience for well under a grand. This sort of thing keeps people, especially first time buyers, going to PCs when they would have given Mac a shot. Consumers who get an Apple product & like it are likely to get another, and better model next time. They really need to focus the Mini on the budget minded and skeptical consumers.
Read the article, interesting enough.
But like a couple of guys already said, Atom/Ion pc's with flash10.1 can play flash 1080p no problem.
If they dropped a Blu-ray drive into this and kept the price point the same, they would sell millions. I feel like plenty of people would ditch their stand-alone Blu-ray players and go with this. I know I certainly would.
I have a 1st generation Panasonic Blu-ray player that I've been wanting to upgrade. To get a new Blu-ray player and a stand-alone Mac for the living room at $700? Yes please.
it works and it does look very very nice, but I still find it easier to just plug in a laptop.
In the UK the mini used to only cost £499 which was not bad for what you got in the set-top box style PC market. Though the new price of £649 has just flung it head first over the edge of ridiculous pricing. The cheapest 21.5" iMac is only £320 more and you get more RAM, Faster CPU, MagicMouse, BT Keyboard, bigger disk drive, webcam and, the best thing about the iMac, that gorgeous IPS LCD Monitor. Granted the bottom end iMac still ships with 9400M graphics and lacks HDMI but considering what you get with it and that you can buy Mini-Display to HDMI adapters I don't see why anyone would get a mini, unless they just HAD to have that half eaten logo under their television sets. I love Apple, but this just seems like a waste of space to me. Lower the price back to £499 at the very least then I'll give it a thumbs up.
i got this the first day it came out, actually i was the first person to buy it at the apple store on W14th st in Manhattan, I got to say, it's well worth it, the best apple computer I have had to date. I had iBook, and MacBook, now I have this, and it's amazing! I love how it's easy to connect to mySony Bravia HDTV just with HDMI! But what ever, you read everything on here so you know what's on it!
@kostya1000 You could have gotten the similar Dell Zino HD WITH a bluray player for $284 shipped though:
http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/35950/dell-zino-hd-amd-dual-core-athlon-x2-3250e-3gb-ddr2-250gb-hd-blu-ray-romdvrw-radeon-hd-3200-win-vista-home-basic-64-bit
How much did yours come out to grand total?
@kostya1000 Would you mind checking to see if the audio out works while the HDMI audio is working? Thanks, Shane
Does anyone know if it allows audio out the HDMI and the audio out port simultaneously? I would like one audio source (analog) to go to my Russound for the house audio and the other to go to my home theater receiver. I currently have the older mac mini and the apple TV to accommodate this same thing and it would be nice to sell my gear and replace with just this single new mac mini. Any help is my appreciated.
@Ducman69
I bought mine for $650 refurbished from Apple. I really have no need for the Zino because I have a Bluray player in my PS3. Call me an Apple fan boy or a snob, but the Zino looks terrible/cheap. The Mini's processor is no giant but the AMD Dual Core Athlon X2 3250e is made for basic basic work. I have an Acer with the SU 4100 and it can only handle basic streaming and office work. So if you ever wanted to edit basic video or produce music the Zino would be off limits. Plus converting video on a Zino or any kind of machine with a low powered processor will take forever. The ESATA ports are nice and the loads of USB 2.0 ports but besides that those systems are lame. Media playback on Windows 7 is terrible compared to Plex or Front Row.
.
I ws waiting till the next update for this Mac, but got screwed over big time.
I was hoping for a faster machine. Sure, the processor is nice and carries the load, but not enough. The internal memory is to poor; in this day and age, 4 gigs is standard. But then again, Apple wants to screw you over any change they get. And now that Valve has put up there soul for rent, Apple should have made a big push in gaming and put in a dedicated GPU.
But the biggest grief for me is the price. They jumped from $ 499 to $ 699. This might not be an issue for you guys in the States, but here in the Netherlands the price went from € 499 to € 799. With the current exchange rate, this amounts to $ 615 (for the old € 499 price) to $ 985. So your 200 bucks that bumped the price became a 350 bucks bump for us. And we were allready paying more!
In the end, Apple is all about the profit (just look at their quarterly margins) and screws over anyone who isn't American.
Noticed something interesting when sniffing around. Am using the Mac mini as a "hub" connected to the TV. Also use several wireless speakers in the house. Usually Bluetooth audio streaming is awful, but using the new Mac mini, I was blown away. Quick comparison with my Air and even iPhone, this is night and day. So I started snooping around and noticed in Terminal that they list something called "nonA2DP" for Bluetooth stereo streaming. Standard BT is really poor quality, but they are using something different over the BT link....anyone else notice this? I'll keep digging but they are using something of higher quality for sure....maybe lossless, or the apt-X codec for better quality. If so, it's about time!
Does anyone know if it allows audio out the HDMI and the audio out port simultaneously? I would like one audio source (analog) to go to my Russound for the house audio and the other to go to my home theater receiver. I currently have the older mac mini and the apple TV to accommodate this same thing and it would be nice to sell my gear and replace with just this single new mac mini. Any help is my appreciated.
Wait, this got a 9/10? It's $700 at least, doesn't have an i3, i5, or i7 option, and no blu-ray drive. For something that is supposedly going to be your HTPC, this is seriously overpriced and under-specced. A 9 is utter ridiculousness.