With all of the announcements from Apple last week, one product that almost went unnoticed was the new-and-improved Mac Mini.
The design is the same, but the components certainly are not. Apple decided to celebrate the release of its iPad Mini and MacBook Pro 13" with Retina Display by pumping some youth inside the chassis of its famed mini-PC.
Starting at £499, the new Mac Mini has an Intel Core i5-3210M processor, which, as we saw in last week's Dell Inspiron 15R Special Edition review, gives great performance, 4 GB of RAM and a 500 GB hard drive. The AMD Radeon HD 6630M graphics card from last year's stock has been replaced with an Intel HD 4000, which is enough to allow it to play HD video without a hitch, but not enough to really shine in video games.
On Apple's website you can make a number of upgrades for additional cost. For instance, you can choose between two Intel Core i7's, 8 or 16 GB of RAM, a 1 TB hard drive and a 256 GB solid-state drive. Just be careful what you ask for, because the price can quickly jump above £2,000
The connectivity is the same for all configurations. The Mac Mini has four USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader, a Thunderbolt port, an Ethernet port, an HDMI port, a FireWire 800 port for data transfers, a headphone jack and a microphone jack.
As mentioned, the dimensions are the same as before, but the new body weighs 1.22 kg, a full 100 grammes less than last year's Mac Mini.
> Browse through our mini-PC reviews
The design is the same, but the components certainly are not. Apple decided to celebrate the release of its iPad Mini and MacBook Pro 13" with Retina Display by pumping some youth inside the chassis of its famed mini-PC.
| Specifications | |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i5-3210M |
| RAM | 4 GB |
| Graphics chipset | Intel HD 4000 |
| Screen | N.A. |
| Hard drive | 500 MB |
| Optical drive | N.A. |
| Dimensions | 19.7 x 19.7 x 3.6 cm |
| Weight | 1.22 kg |
Starting at £499, the new Mac Mini has an Intel Core i5-3210M processor, which, as we saw in last week's Dell Inspiron 15R Special Edition review, gives great performance, 4 GB of RAM and a 500 GB hard drive. The AMD Radeon HD 6630M graphics card from last year's stock has been replaced with an Intel HD 4000, which is enough to allow it to play HD video without a hitch, but not enough to really shine in video games.
On Apple's website you can make a number of upgrades for additional cost. For instance, you can choose between two Intel Core i7's, 8 or 16 GB of RAM, a 1 TB hard drive and a 256 GB solid-state drive. Just be careful what you ask for, because the price can quickly jump above £2,000
The connectivity is the same for all configurations. The Mac Mini has four USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader, a Thunderbolt port, an Ethernet port, an HDMI port, a FireWire 800 port for data transfers, a headphone jack and a microphone jack.
As mentioned, the dimensions are the same as before, but the new body weighs 1.22 kg, a full 100 grammes less than last year's Mac Mini.
> Browse through our mini-PC reviews
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