Overview of the Mac mini M2 and M2 Pro

And Mac mini can hide another. Apple presented not one, but two new models. While the first takes over directly you Mac mini M1with its M2 chip and two Thunderbolt 4 ports, the second allows itself to tickle the Mac Studio, with its M2 Pro chip and its four Thunderbolt 4 ports. To make you wait while we detail these machines from every angle, let’s discover them in pictures.

What looks the most like a Mac mini? A Mac mini! At first glance, the two machines are identical. The model with an M1 Pro chip weighs one hundred grams more, because its power supply is slightly larger (185 W instead of 150 W). Image MacGeneration.

The ports were already covered with adhesive tape, the foot is now treated the same. The glue is so strong… Image MacGeneration.

…that the foot left with! The Mac mini M2 can still be opened, but the main components are soldered down. In the event of a breakdown, however, you can replace the fan and the power supply. Image MacGeneration.

The Mac mini 2023 adopts Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax), and that’s good, we have just installed a compatible system in our Lyon premises. Image MacGeneration.

Before this oh so important question is asked, know that both machines come with the same gray stickers and the same build of macOS Ventura, which dates back to October. If further proof was needed that they had been ready for a long time… Image MacGeneration.

The two machines can easily be distinguished, since the M2 model has two Thunderbolt ports, while the M2 Pro model has four. These ports can now be called “Thunderbolt 4” ports, since they can accommodate two screens, while those of the Mac mini M1 could only accommodate one. The M2 model can drive up to two displays: a 6K@60 display on the first Thunderbolt port and a 5K@60 display on the second, or a 6K@60 display on a Thunderbolt port and a 4K@60 display on the HDMI port. The M2 Pro model can drive up to three displays (two 6K@60 displays over Thunderbolt ports and one 4K@60 display over the HDMI port) or ultra-high resolution displays (one 6K@60 display over one Thunderbolt port simultaneously with a 4K@144 monitor on the HDMI port, or a single 8K@60 display on a Thunderbolt port or 4K@240 on the HDMI port). Image MacGeneration.

Thunderbolt 4 ports also support USB-4 at 40 Gb/s and USB 3.1 Gen 2 at 10 Gb/s, while USB-A port bandwidth does not exceed 5 Gb/s. The 3.5mm jack can power high-impedance headsets, and the 1Gb/s Ethernet port can be replaced with a 10Gb/s Ethernet port at the command. Image MacGeneration.

The M2 chip has an eight-core processor and a ten-core graphics circuit. The M2 Pro chip features a ten-core processor (twelve optional) and a sixteen-core graphics circuit (nineteen optional). Both chips have a sixteen-core neural engine; H.264, HEVC, ProRes, and ProRes RAW accelerators; as well as a video de/encode engine and a ProRes de/encode engine. The M2 model can be configured with 16 or 24 GB of unified memory, but still comes with 8 GB as standard. The M2 Pro model comes with 16 GB of unified memory as standard, and can be upgraded to 32 GB as an option. Image MacGeneration.

The first machines equipped with an M2 chip had already made it possible to measure the architectural progress made from one generation to another (approx. 15%). Since the machines have ten-core processors, the Mac mini M2 Pro logically hooks the Mac Studio M1 Max, but the Mac Studio M1 Ultra continues to dominate the debates with its twenty-core processor. Image MacGeneration.

Of course, synthetic tests do not tell the whole story. To give just one example, Geekbench says nothing about ease of use, which is largely determined by storage speed. However, the SSD of the M2 Pro model (here 512 GB, configurable from 1 to 8 TB) is almost twice as fast as that of the M2 model (here 256 GB, configurable up to 2 TB)! Image MacGeneration.

See you in a few days for our complete test of the Mac mini M2 and the Mac mini M2 Pro.