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Desktops and mini PCs · Apple Mac mini

Apple Mac mini M2 Pro

11owners with an opinion
71%of verdicts positive
5/2positive/negative since 2024
1.5 yrslongest happy owner
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for performance and value; criticized for reliability and software.

What owners wrote

Likes itOwned 1.5 years
I bought a Mac Mini M2Pro 32G 18 months ago for $1900. It is sufficient to run good up to and including 40B local models that are quantized. When local models don’t cut it, I like Gemini 2.5 flash/pro and gemini-cli. There are a lot of good options for commercial APIs and for running local models. I suggest choosing a good local and a good commercial API, and spend more time building things than frequently trying to evaluate all the options.
Likes it
I rode a 2009 MacPro5,1 (¡galliently! into the future, with capable GPU upgrades) until Jan23's M2Pro mini debut (which I still use as my main Mac). Apple Silicon is certainly incredible (I also have a base-model M4mini, but it severely lacks RAM/ports so I don't really use it much/eWaste); my only Silicon-purchase-regret was buying a beautiful new 2024 MacBookAir (15") – heavily discounted $850@CostCo – but with only 8GB of RAM (it is functionally worthless, other than for watching it destroy your SSD with page-outs as you casually stream YouTubies...). In 2024, only 8GB of RAM (soldered onto the board because fuck you )!
Doesn’t like it
It just works. I can't point to a single thing that Windows 11 does particularly well. With my Mac mini M2 Pro, there's just too many bugs. It needs an annoying turn-off-turn-on workaround for it to even output to the second monitor. The liquid glass update initially made things even less stable. Linux I swore off years ago, no distro ever survived either their system updates or my dissatisfaction after a year or so. So here I am using Windows 11, and thanks to the more powerful hardware, it's pretty fast and smooth, outputting at 240 Hz. The Xbox app is bad and I don't like the Microsoft store, but other than that I have no major complaints.
Doesn’t like it
I'm logged in to my Microsoft account, so I've not seen any of that. The only thing that I recall popping up is those setup screens that appear after some updates for no good reason. I also don't recall any particularly buggy experience with Windows 11. Meanwhile my Mac mini M2 Pro is having issues all the time. From the start I could not even use my second monitor without turning off and back on the primary monitor first for the second to come on.
Likes it
This morning I was looking to maybe replace my Macbook Pro 2018, which had the horrible keyboard and finally seems to be crippled enough to not be fun to use anymore — now this! However, I have been disappointed by Apple too many times (they wouldn't replace my keyboard despite their highly-flamed design-faux-pas, had to replace the battery twice by now, etc.) Two years ago I finally stopped replacing their expensive external keyboards, which I used to buy once a year or every other (due to broken key-hinges) and have been so incredibly positively surprised by getting used to the MX Keys now. Much better built, incredible mileage for the price. Plus, I can easily switch and use them on my Windows PC, too. So, about the Macbook — if I were to switch mobile computing over to Windows, what can I replace it with? My main machine is still a Mac Mini M2 Pro, which is perfect value/price. I like the Surface as a concept (replacable keyboards are a fantastic idea, battery however, super iffy nonsense), and I've got a Surface Pro 6 around, but it's essentially the same gloss-premium I don't need for my use. Are there any much-cheaper but somewhat comparable laptops (12h+ battery, 1 TB disk, 16-32GB RAM, 2k+ Display) with reasonable build quality? Does bypassing the inherent premium of all the Apple gloss open up any useful options? Or is Apple actually providing the best value here? Would love to hear from non-Surface, non-Thinkpad (I love it, but) folks who've got some recommendation…
Likes it
The Core2Duo were the first Intel Macs worth a hoot . IIRC, you could get this CPU in the white MacBook, along with an education discount and iPod rebate. I rocked dual Xenons until early 2023's M2Pro mini (the energy savings are substantial, with minimal GPU performance degredation).
Neutral
This reminds me of two things I experienced when I added a Mac Mini (M2 Pro) to my setup. 1. When I connected my iPad Pro M1 to the Mac via a 10Gbps rated USB-C/C cable, it only connected at USB 2.0 speeds (480Mbps). However, when I used a USB-C to USB-A adapter, then a USB-A to USB-C cable to my iPad, it connected at 10Gbps. My suspicion is that when it has the full USB-C wiring on both ends, it might try to establish a Thunderbolt 4 connection, fail, and just fall back to USB 2.0, rather than trying USB 3.x? 2. On a slightly unrelated note: I found the USB-A ports (or rather, their controller) to be really unstable when using a hub, everything works fine when connecting devices directly to the Mac, but with any of the hubs I tried, I saw USB devices becoming unresponsive or resetting over time. A similar setup worked fine on my Windows PC. The most unstable was a simple (i.e. 3 USB-A ports and Ethernet) USB-C hub which I tested with an adapter ("proper" one with VL160 chip); for fun I also tested it with an ungodly chain of almost every USB-C/A adapter I had on the USB-C/TB ports, where it worked fine. Having to do a bunch of troubleshooting to set up my USB peripherals on the Mac was a bit unexpected, at least the USB-C/TB ports seem to work well (other than that iPad weirdness), so I'm happy I went with the Pro model for the additional two ports. (Note: While I didn't really approach this too methodically, I believe I tried enough combinations of cabling and hubs to exclu…
Likes it
Macs were long hindered by Intel processors to have long battery lifes AND/OR good performance. Two examples of MacBooks I had: The 12" MacBook. Great form factor, bad software (graphics driver code was especially poor), poor keyboard, lousy battery life, slow CPU & graphics. Similar size now with the 13" MacBook Air, but much better. The i9 MacBook Pro. Too heavy, not enough cooling, extra GPU chip (in the laptop) with lots of power demand, Thunderbolt chips with lots of power demand, CPU with lots of power demand, fans were often on (for example with anything which uses the extra GPU). Now a 16" MacBook Pro with Apple Silicon is virtually silent AND fast. I currently have a Mac mini with M2 Pro, a MacBook Pro with M2 Pro and the new iPad Pro M4. All are very snappy and virtually silent. They use very little idle power and don't get warm in normal use. The i9 MacBook Pro would produce a lot of heat when attached to an external screen and doing a "simple" video call, due to the power hungry additional GPU needed to drive the external screen.
Neutral
I own a fully maxed-out MacBook Air M2. I suppose, there's no point in upgrading, from the point of view of a developer? I'm not quite sure why the comparisons on the marketing page are against the M1 Air. For a desktop (which does the Docker things) I use a maxed out Mac Mini M2 Pro. Still, it's painful to see an upgraded Air which I do not own, but also a little bit warming that they don't seem to pushing a comparison with the M2 equivalent. Crazy times.
Likes it
Why use USB on a Mac [speed limited], when Lightning connections allow 40gbps transfers [1] ? Via this protocol, my M2Pro mini's internal SSD is equally fast as the external SSD [2]. [1] I personally use an nVME inside of an Acasis Lightning external device, via USB4/Lightning port. [2] For historical comparison, the stock M2Pro mini's SSD is as fast as the DDR3.1333 Ram within the MacPro5,1 [2009-2012].
Likes it
Hi, author here. I live inside a Mac mini M2 Pro, and love the fact that it only draws around 21W while running Windows on ARM inside a VM with a Teams call, so yes, there is that. But they are different animals altogether.
Recommends itHasn’t owned it
depends on your workload. RAM and passive cooling are the most likely issues but afaik an M2/M3 with 16GiB still performs a lot better than an similarly priced x64 laptop. Active cooling doesn't mean no throttling either. If you don't explicitly want a laptop, a 32GB M2 Pro Mac Mini would be a good choice I think. Personally i only have used MBPs so far. But the M-series Air are not remotely comparable to the old Intel Airs, that's for sure :)