Customer Ratings & Reviews

Extremely Fast Mac in a small case. Runs super cool and blows the doors off the 2011 iMac I replaced. M1 chip is amazing. Most software works and more will be updated over time.

Extremely fast computer...its astonishing something so powerful can fit in such a small package. Highly recommend this device for anyone who wants a Mac but doesn't have $2k to spend on a MacBook.

I bought this for my wife when her old Mac Air decided to quit working. The M1 chip is pretty amazing. You are not going to be rendering 4k videos in any hurry, but for everything else it does a great job.

If you are looking for a budget friendly way to get into a base Mac desktop, this may work for you. Keep in mind you will need to either buy or already have all the peripherals: keyboard, mouse, and monitor. I was able to get into a setup for a few hundred dollars less than a 8-core iMac, as the mini is 8-core. Yes the iMac is beautiful, and you get everything included with all the essential bells and whistles, but with some creative use of price breaks and Apple Store credits I am happy with what I have. (remember an 8-core iMac will run $1500 before added apple care). All that being said, this is a very capable desktop Mac with a relatively small footprint. The block is a little larger than I expected, but at roughly 8"X8" and a little over an inch high, it certainly beats the old towers. Yes I am locked into what I bought as far as drive size and memory, but at $699 (can very depending on current deals) I can live with that, especially when one can easily go into the 2-3 thousand range (and higher) for some of the many Mac and MacBook choices. The base 256GB/8GB is plenty for most casual users that just do emails, web activity, document work, and some photo work. There are plenty of ports available to external drives etc. if needed, and that is a nice change from a MacBook with a bunch of dongles. And the last point is why I bought this. I use my iPad for most daily activities, and my computer when I really need a keyboard. I found my last MacBook quite limiting the few times when I really needed to get some more serious work done as the screen was never quite large enough. My iPad gives me all the mobility I need as I don't need to do any serious work while mobile. The most expensive peripheral will be the monitor, and it is critical to do your homework here, as some monitors don't work well with an M1 Mac. I found this out the hard way, already having a monitor that worked well with my Windows partition on my old Intel based MacBook, but when hooked up to an M1 Mac did not work well at all. Fortunately I found a Dell on sale that works nicely as a budget friendly option with an M1 Mac. Again, do your homework on this critical piece and don't assume the monitor you already have will be a good match. Bottom line, if you have the money, by all means look for a beautiful iMac (better if on sale) and everything will be included. If you are patient and willing to piece together a Mac Silicon system yourself, the mini is a great choice.

Amazing performance! The mini is perfect for the graphic design work my husband and I do at home. Fast as lightening and we love the compact design. Super happy with this purchase.

Powerful computer,competes with $1,000+ computers in different tasks,great affordable price for an amazing machine.If you were looking for a budget desktop computer, this computer will support your work for years to come.

This Mac Mini sets the bar of all previous ones. This M1 chip is fast. I can do all of my online Learning at much faster speed with this Mac Mini. It worked right away with my Samsung U28E590. The price is right on this Mac Mini.

Love my little mini Mac. Easy to connect to internet, mouse, keyboard and easy to operate. Lot faster than my old mini Mac. Just need to update my internet speed.

I, as most "new old school" computing enthusiasts were, was suspect about Apple's claims of the M1 being the "new big thing." Well, they sure were right. This thing is EXTREMELY fast. Like, possibly the snappiest device I've ever used. Is it the most powerful? Definitely not, my "standard" x86 desktop with more memory and a discrete GPU could most likely toast this thing in most performance benchmarks. BUT, this thing wins hands-down in the power-to-performance benchmark, at least in the "traditional desktop" respect. Maybe part of it is the insane level of hardware-software coordination going on under the hood in MacOS 11 and 12. Maybe part of it is the optimization of apps. Or, maybe it's just that Apple has actually innovated for once. Is the memory size small? Yes. Do you ACTUALLY need more than 8GB of RAM (well, UMA in this case) with the workloads the M1 is "designed" to run? No! I dunno how they've done it, but comparing this to my previous workstation (Xeon E3-1268L v3 with 16GB of RAM running Fedora Linux) the memory usage is almost A QUARTER running the exact same apps. Again, part of that may be app optimization due to a larger market share of Mac than Linux, but regardless, I'm seeing <2GB of RAM usage vs. 8+GB on Linux, with roughly the same amount of swap space being used. But enough of that nerdy stuff. Disk space is meh. I know, I bought the 256GB model, but still. Would be nice to upgrade but I think these SSDs are some special PCIe Gen4 drives so I give Apple a little slack on that. Apps open fast and when they swap they come back fast. That's pretty much all I can ask for. RAM, again, I wish was larger/not soldered but again, I purchased this particular unit (open box, mind you) and could've gone with a larger one but frankly didn't see the need. This seems to have been fixed with the M1 Pro/Max chipsets. Mac mini Pro next year? Keep in mind that is is an ARM CPU, not a traditional x86_64 like Intel or AMD. Lots of things won't work initially. Virtualization of other OSes is...not great. It kinda works, but also kinda doesn't. Soon(tm) something will be worked out. Most programs will run with Rosetta at a slight performance hit, but likely not noticeable to the average user. I'm a sysadmin so as long as the terminal and some other programs work I'm good. Build quality is usual Apple. Solid, quiet, and silver. Do I wish it was the Space Grey color? Oh well, something about "you can have it any color you want, so long as it's..." rings a bell. The system itself is VERY quiet, I can't say I've heard a peep from it besides the "BOOOONG" on startup. Thermals are great too, exhaust air is slightly over room temp but nowhere near what other systems of its size (much less horsepower) put out. Port selection is...meh. HDMI is nice but the 2 Thunderbolt ports necessitate having adapters. I personally have one HDMI going to a monitor, then another monitor hooked up via USB-C to HDMI. USB-A is a plus though, that lets me hook up my dongle for my keyboard/mouse as well as any USB storage I'd like. Haven't tested a Thunderbolt external drive yet but from what I hear they're pretty darn fast. Eventually! Networking: 1GbE is nice, but I haven't used it yet as my workstation isn't near a jack and haven't felt like adding a jack there. Wifi is fast (I think it's Wifi6 compatible but my AP isn't capable) and has good reception where other devices don't. I'd bet the whole chassis is an antenna or something like that. Get ~400Mb/s download on a gigabit connection which is pretty par for the course with a Wifi5 AP. I guess the takeaway is, this thing is probably the best bang for your buck to get into the M1 ecosystem. If you're on the fence, try it! I knew it was fast, but man, was I surprised at how fast it was. Great little system!

This is a top of the line Mac desktop at a budget price. It runs very fast and I love how quiet it is. In fact, I have yet to the hear the fan at all! My main negatives are the limited port selection a very mediocre speaker. I should also point out that for some reason I am unable to sync my iPhone to this Mac. But this will probably be fixed in a future software update.

I replaced my 7 year old Mac mini with this one. Boy, what a difference. This thing is blazing fast. Loads in an instant. What i thought was slow internet speed was a slow computer. The new M1 chip is amazing.

First time buying a Mac mini and blown away by the performance of the M1 Chip, very affordable option as I connected my older monitor and works like a charm. Absolutely love it!

Fantastic little machine! Wish upgraded RAM was available, but the base model performs far better than expected, outperforms Intel Mini with far better (on-paper) specs.

this is honestly the best workstation computer i have ever used. everything is fast, even stuff that isn't native to it. its amazing. could use some more usb ports

I think this thing awesome for 1 reason. Productivity. You have this insane amount of value with Apple products you just don’t get with windows when it comes productivity applications at the ready. I got the base model and I don’t regret it. Went from a Asus Tuf Dash with a RTX 3060 because I thought I could game and realized I didn’t care much. I have a console and switched to this M1 Mac mini because adults need to get work done. It handles everything like a boss. Now I have witnessed faster instances with older firmware so I recommend, if you don’t need to update to Mac OS Monterey to stick with whatever comes with it until the wrinkles get ironed out.

Previous Mac mini lasted 10 years. So how can I go wrong with another one? New M1 silicon chip with better performance than its more expensive cousins AND the best price point in the entire Apple lineup. C’mon!

I am a dedicated PC users and I love Windows. But, this thing is fast, affordable and quickly earning its way to my heart. The last time I owend a Mac was 12 years ago. The M1 may bring me back.

Love the Mac Mini M1. Fast and easy to setup. The only con was the Best Buy employees that I had to explain to them what a Mac Mini was.

This Mac mini seems like a great value vs performance, especially in the footprint it takes. Setup is easy - just log in with your iCloud account. It's incredibly quiet. Hopefully it is a reliable machine!

Excellent machine with flawless power. Works perfectly fine. Starts up quickly. Have a convenient size for someone who does not move around much.