MacMini 4 or 4 Pro

[gmfotografie]

Hi Guys,

my 2017 iMac has died ;-)

Go for the MacMini 4 or 4 Pro?
Digital Mediumformat, analog Mediumformat with HihRes Scanning

What can you suggest me?

All the best michael

 

[Will Deleon]

A base M4 Pro will take you a long way. I’d upgrade your storage for sure.

 

[MGrayson]

The M4 Pro is the sweet spot for price/performance in the M4 line. If I were to upgrade my MacBook Pro, I'd go with that processor even though the M4 Max is more powerful.
The regular M4 is (better than) ok, but doesn't support Thunderbolt 5. I mean, neither do any of my peripherals, but might as well future-proof.

 

[Godfrey]

My current system is a 2018 Mac mini i7 (3.2Ghz 6-core, 32G RAM, 1T drive) running macOS Sequoia 15.1.1 at present, bought in Jan 2019. It's running fine for most of what I do, but I've been noticing that latest LR Classic is getting a bit sluggish with M10-R, M10-M, and CFVII 50c raw files. My internal storage is getting a little thin on free space due to stuff I need to keep on it (and all my photo files are on fast external media already).

I checked all the specs and looked at a lot of performance evaluations. If I were doing a lot of video editing, I'd choose the mini M4 Pro immediately ... but I don't. I do only light video editing, infrequently. More RAM and more storage are worth more to me, the incremental performance improvement for what I do with the M4 Pro cpu isn't worth the $400-500 premium.

(... And since nothing else I own is Thunderbolt 5, eh? I'll cross that bridge when I get to it and have a few more T5 needs; I don't believe in future-proof, I just believe in getting the best fit at the time I'm buying. )

I ordered a Mac mini M4 with 32G RAM and 2T storage. I might update all my USB 3.1 drive enclosures to TBolt4 as well.

G

 

[MGrayson]

Huh. $400. More than I thought.
I should mention that I decided not to upgrade my M1 MacBook Pro, as it is more than fast enough.

 

[Godfrey]

Actually, it's more than that. There are two mini M4 Pro configurations. The next RAM config after the default 24G on the Pro is 48G vs 32G for the std M4. So going to the M4 Pro + 48G RAM + 2T storage runs $2399 or $2599 depending which of the cpu configs you order. The mini M4 top end with 32G RAM and 2T storage is $1799 ... so either +$600 or +$800 for one of the M4 Pro configs above what I ordered.

There's a lot of benefit to the M4 Pro version IF what you're doing needs that additional compute power, but I think I'll be quite happy with what I've ordered. My now-old mini i7 is still a good machine, as is my 2012 mini, but all these things have their Time.

The mini I ordered is a custom config: it should be here on Wednesday.

G

 

[Doppler9000]

might as well future-proof.

Hmmm, perhaps “future resistant”?