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Desktops and mini PCs · Apple Mac mini

Apple Mac mini 2014

5owners with an opinion
60%of verdicts positive
3/1positive/negative since 2024
11 yrslongest happy owner
2happy after 3+ years

Praised for reliability and noise.

What people wrote

Likes itOwned 11 yearsStill going
I know you are making a flippant and pointless comment, but I’m compelled to respond. Of all the laptops I’ve owned my 2020 MacBook Air is still my personal daily driver, my 2010 Mac mini still works fine for running my 3d printer, my 2014 Mac mini works great for crafting and my 2020 iPhone SE2 is still getting OS updates and is sending this message. Are they repairable? Not easily. Do they still work, absolutely. Having used a bunch of non apple laptops and devices at home and work I would say the Apple products last at least 2x as long before breaking or hitting enforced obsolescence.
Likes itOwned 5 yearsStill going
I got an old Mac mini 2014 like 5 years ago, 2nd hand, installed Debian on it, and after the first few days smoothing out bugs, it's worked rock solid since. On 24/7. Never heard the fan ever spin up either. Not sure if that's just broken in Debian or the fan just doesn't speed up unless really hot. But either way, seems to not effected it thus far. I mostly went this route vs Pi because I didn't want the pain of working with ARM. x86 "just works" with 99% of things. Where are a lot of cases with ARM you end up compiling code just to do what you're after. Anything off the popular apps. Things are better now, but still a risk.
Doesn’t like it
the first laptop I bought with my own money after college back in 2010-2011. Needed one for work, so I "splurged" on a $600 ASUS laptop. The battery tanked around the time the 1-year limited warranty expired, so I had to keep it plugged in for nearly the entire time I had it. It was slow as hell (no SSD) and weighed a ton. That POS met its fate to an e-waste recycler around 2014. Another regret is my first Apple computer. A 2014 Mac Mini that replaced that Asus laptop. 8GB of ram and the slowest "hybrid" HDD drive. I hated using it so much until I figured out how to boot it off of an external SSD. Then I started to understand why people like MacOS.
Likes it
That’s sort of why this is on my mind. I’ve just replaced an old Cubieboard (RPi1 alternative - about 2W) running Pi-hole and an old temperamental gigabit router (~10W) with a 2014 Mac mini (plus second Gigabit adapter) - which uses about 11W (a really efficient computer for its age!) It’s less than the old combo drew - but I wonder if I could be accomplishing the same with an (or even a couple of) SBCs - and if that would ‘pay for itself’ (environmentally well as financially) after a couple of years.
Doesn’t like itDoesn’t say they own it
Just a small quibble — the intel Mac mini dropped upgradeable ram in 2014, with one of the worst apple product refreshes ever. The 2014 Mac mini was worse than the 2012 in almost every way — my theory is some engineer realized they could save money by essentially slapping a MBA logic board in the Mac mini, and that’s what happened. 27 inch iMacs had easily accessible ram upgrades until they were discontinued. 21.5 iMacs (post 2012 refresh) did also have upgradeable ram, but it was a pain to do (dimm slots were on the back of the main logic board, meaning you essentially had to remove every other component and the logic board). 2012-2015 MBP Retinas could have the storage upgraded because it was a discrete SSD. I think they were largely proprietary or specially made, but they could be upgraded. MBAs up until 2017 could also have the storage upgraded. I wish that ram was upgradeable on apple silicon systems, but I understand why it’s not (I assume it’s an integral part of the SoC).