M2 Pro Mac mini review: Apple’s Goldilocks desktop for semi-professionals

Apple's Mac Studio was its most interesting desktop in years. It lacks the internal expandability of the Mac Pro, but the raw performance and power efficiency of the M1 Max and M1 Ultra plus a great port selection make it a viable option for plenty of people who would have bought a fully loaded 27-inch iMac or a low-to-mid-end Mac Pro in the Intel era.

But the $2,000-and-up desktop is still overkill for a lot of people, even for pros and power users. There was a lot of room between the cheapest Studio and the best M1 Mac mini for a cheaper-but-more-capable system, something for people who could benefit from pro-level performance and extra ports occasionally but who don't need them often enough to justify dropping the money on a Mac Studio.

Enter the new Mac minis. Both the M2 and M2 Pro versions are augmented in ways that will benefit multi-monitor multitasking workstations, and they can do so for substantially less money than the Studio—the M2 mini starts at $599, $100 cheaper than the M1 mini and cheaper than any Mac mini has been since 2014. Apple sent us the M2 Pro version of the mini to review, and for many price-conscious power users who prefer or require macOS, it injects just the right amount of Mac Studio performance into the mini's 13-year-old design.

Design: A 2018 throwback

The new mini (middle) has the same ports on the back as the Mac Studio (bottom) and the 2018 Intel Mac mini (not pictured). Compared to the standard M1/M2 mini (top), that means two extra Thunderbolt ports.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The M1 and M2 Mac minis are impossible to tell apart from the outside. Both have the same measurements, the same finish, and the same array of ports: two USB-A ports, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one HDMI port, a gigabit Ethernet port (configurable to 10 gigabit), and a headphone jack.

The M2 Pro version adds an extra pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports, which makes it look exactly like the old 2018 Mac mini from the back (technically, the M2 Pro mini is an upgrade for the 2018 mini, which Apple continued to sell throughout 2021 and 2022). I wish the 2018 mini's space gray finish was an option here instead of the standard silver, but it's a minor cosmetic complaint.

Apple puts ports on the front of the Mac Studio, but not on the mini.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

As for functional complaints, I wish the Mac Studio's acknowledgment that ports on the front of a computer can be useful was extended to the mini. There's certainly less space inside a mini's case than the Studio's, but this is 2010's case design with 2023's parts inside it—USB-C ports and card readers have been worked into tighter quarters. Apple Silicon-era Mac designs have subtly tilted Apple's design philosophy toward function over form, with their front-mounted ports and HDMI and MagSafe connectors and reliable keyboards, and it'd be nice to see the mini get a dose of that, too.

The design is otherwise unsurprising. The M2 Pro model has a marginally higher-wattage internal power supply than the regular M2 (185 W, up from 150 W), which accounts for the tiny difference in weight between the two (2.6 pounds for the M2, 2.8 pounds for the M2 Pro). The weight difference is much smaller than the one between the M1 Ultra and M1 Max versions of the Mac Studio, suggesting that both versions of the mini use the same fan and heatsink design. In our testing, the M2 Pro mini runs just as cool and quiet as the M1 mini did.

Performance: Meet M2 Pro

Apple's reviewer's guide highlights some M2 Pro features.

Credit: Apple

That's impressive because the M2 Pro is a major speed upgrade, whether you're comparing it to the old M1 Mac mini or the cheaper non-Pro M2 version. Apple sent us a not-quite-fully-loaded version, with the fully-enabled M2 Pro (four little CPU cores, eight big CPU cores, 19 GPU cores) but 16GB of RAM instead of 32GB.

A brief primer for people unfamiliar with Apple's processor naming scheme: "Pro" is the second rung on a four-rung ladder. Compared to the regular M1 and M2, the Pro chips add additional CPU and GPU cores; "Max" is the next rung up, offering similar CPU performance to the Pro series but with boosted graphics performance. There's no M2 Ultra chip yet, but the top-tier M1 Ultra was (literally) double the M1 Max, and we expect the M2 Ultra to be the same way.

Compared to the M1 Pro, the M2 Pro adds a pair of efficiency CPU cores and up to three extra GPU cores, and it comes with additional architectural improvements all around. Compared to the vanilla M2, you get either two or four extra high-performance CPU cores and between six and nine extra GPU cores, depending on whether you get the fully-enabled M2 Pro or not.

The upshot is that the M2 Pro is a solid step up from the M2, and the fully enabled version even gives the M1 Max in the Mac Studio a run for its money. Because we don't have a regular M2 mini to review, we've used scores from an M2 MacBook Pro where we have them—both Macs should perform similarly.

If you compare the M1 mini to the M2 version, you get a solid but not life-changing CPU and GPU performance bump across the board. The M2 Pro, on the other hand, is around twice as fast as the M1 in the old mini. Given that the M2 Pro mini can also support double the memory of the M1 Mac mini, the new minis are usable for photo and video editing and print publishing workflows that the M1 could do but was not ideally suited for.

Slower than Intel and AMD but dramatically more efficient

The M2 Pro looks fine next to modern CPUs from Intel and AMD, but it's not setting records. Across all of our tests, it performs something like an upper-midrange desktop CPU, like Intel's Core i5-13600K or AMD's Ryzen 7 7700X. That's where the "Pro" tier chips exist in Apple's lineup, too—faster than the no-adjective M2 but slower than the Max or the presumably forthcoming Ultra. (For details on how we configured our PC testbeds, check the reviews for those processors.)

But where AMD and Intel opt to maximize performance, Apple prioritizes power efficiency. Our Handbrake video encoding test provides a decent way to show how much power a CPU will consume when performing any intensive test for an extended period. The M2 Pro might encode our test video a bit slower than either of those x86 processors, but it also uses around half as much energy to finish the job.

As measured by macOS' built-in powermetrics command-line tool, the M2 Pro's average power usage when fully loaded is around 36 W, whereas the Core i5 can use between 65 and 150 W and the Ryzen 7 between 90 and 136 W. (A Mac mini review is not the best place to unpack the intricacies of how Intel's and AMD's platforms handle power limits, but the very short version is that the lower figures represent how these CPUs might perform in an off-the-shelf system from HP, Dell, or Lenovo, while the higher figures show how they perform in custom-built PCs configured for maximum performance.)

This isn't a laptop review, but the M-series chips were designed for laptops first, and that's where the benefits of Apple's approach become more obvious. When allowed to use as much power as they want, Intel's desktop CPUs are clearly faster than Apple's. Intel just has trouble providing anywhere close to the same performance at lower power levels.

Comparing Macs to other Macs, the M2 Pro uses roughly the same amount of energy as the M1 mini while completing the encoding job in roughly half the time.

If you did want to say something negative about the M2 Pro's power consumption, it's that the average power consumption when running Handbrake is a little higher than what you'd see in the M1 series (remember that the M1 Pro and M1 Max have similarly configured CPUs, so the power consumption figures should be comparable-ish). The M2 is also a little more power-hungry than the M1.

All the M1 chips could easily increase their power budgets and still run cooler and more efficiently than contemporary Intel or AMD chips, and that's what the M2 series is doing so far. Looking at the amount of power used, the M2 series also keeps things more-or-less even with the M1 series, consuming a little more power but doing the same work in less time.

The M2 mini gets better, too

Despite having two fewer Thunderbolt ports, the M2 version of the mini does get some small but important upgrades, including the ability to drive a pair of 5K Thunderbolt or USB-C displays (instead of forcing you to use the less-capable HDMI port to drive a second display).

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

We've focused on the M2 Pro version of the mini in this review because that's the model Apple was able to provide us ahead of time and because it's the more interesting of the two. But there are a few things (beyond the M2's raw speed improvements) that Apple has added or changed about the basic Mac mini.

The M2 mini still supports a maximum of two external displays, the same as the M1 mini—this is one of the few limitations of these Apple Silicon chips relative to Intel's (otherwise inferior) integrated GPUs. But where the M1 model required you to use the HDMI port for one of those displays, the M2 mini will let you connect both to the Thunderbolt ports if you prefer. This means you can use a pair of USB-C or Thunderbolt displays and that both displays can support resolutions higher than 4K. Apple says the M2 will handle one 6K display at 60 Hz and one 5K display at 60 Hz, so the $599 mini can drive a pair of Studio Displays or other 5K screens, while the old M1 mini can only handle one.

The maximum amount of RAM has increased, too, from 16GB to 24GB (though it adds a total of $400 to the cost of the computer). If you really need that much memory, you should probably be considering a step up to the M2 Pro version of the mini anyway, but for the workloads that benefit specifically from extra memory, it's nice to have the option.

Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 (up from 5.0) round out the M2 mini's upgrades over the M1 model. Though the old mini's Thunderbolt 3 ports are technically "upgraded" to Thunderbolt 4, all the supported protocols and transfer speeds stay the same.

The missing link

The M2 Pro version of Apple's 2023 Mac mini.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

In the absence of a 27-inch Apple Silicon iMac or an Apple Silicon Mac Pro, Apple's Mac mini and Mac Studio desktops need to serve just about every person who wants a high-performance Mac desktop. The M1 iteration of the lineup left a big gap between the highest-end mini and the lowest-end Studio, and the M2 Pro version of the mini slots well into that gap.

I wish the new minis had ports on the front, as the Studios do. And pricing is still on the high side for the M2 Pro version. If you upgrade to the fully enabled 12-core M2 Pro and 32GB of RAM, the new mini costs $1,999, the same amount as a (mostly more-powerful) entry-level Mac Studio with the same amount of memory and storage, more ports, and 10 gigabit Ethernet.

But Apple got the baseline Mac mini configurations mostly right. The $599 M2 version could use more than 8GB of memory, but even with its specs, it's a capable computer for people who mostly browse and edit documents and occasionally dabble in editing photos and videos from their iPhones. The $1,299 M2 Pro version has enough extra processor power and memory to satisfy experienced amateurs or price-conscious freelancers, and it's fast enough to play a game or two (for the few that run in macOS).

A modern Windows desktop will give you more performance, memory, storage, and flexibility for the money. But if macOS is a requirement (or even just a strong preference) or energy efficiency is paramount, the M2 Pro version of the mini should be just right for power users who can't quite justify the cost of a Mac Studio.

The good

• The extra performance of the M2 Pro opens up new possibilities for the previously barebones Mac mini
• 32GB RAM ceiling, up from 16GB for the M1 mini
• Cool, quiet, and energy-efficient
• Better external display support across the board, even for the regular M2 mini
• A pair of extra Thunderbolt ports, compared to the M1 and M2 minis
• $599 starting price for the regular mini is the lowest since 2014

The bad

• Pricing for high-end mini configs interacts awkwardly with pricing for low-end Studio configs
• Upper-midrange Intel and AMD desktop CPUs are faster and cheaper, though they also use more power
• Same design again (if you care about that sort of thing) with no alternate color options

The ugly

• Fumbling around to plug everything in