Mac Mini (2014) review

The Mac Mini has always been a popular choice for those looking for their first Mac system and their first foray into the OS X operating system. The Mac Mini has always been the cheapest Mac, though even with a £100 price cut to the bottom-end model it still comes in at £399 for a small monitor-less PC. We got sent to mid-range model to test, which costs considerably more at £569.

It may not be cheap, but in terms of design it's great. The new Mac Mini 2014 uses the same chassis as its predecessor, no complaints from us there. Encased in a 36mm thick aluminium unibody chassis, it's a sleek and elegant system. The Mini is made from a single block of aluminium and it shows through the lack of joins and its beautiful curved edges. It’s not as small as some compact PC systems, such as the Cyberpower Fang Mini; it is small enough to easily hide away. As it’s so lovely to look at you may well want it on show.

Aside from an Apple logo on its top, there’s little to distract. A small white LED is on the front, as is an IR receiver, but other than that there isn’t anything else on the front or sides. All of the system’s connections are tidily hidden away on the back, which you might find inconvenient if you plan on regularly connecting USB devices or reading from SD cards. It does maintain the system’s clean, uncluttered appearance, however. 

There are four USB3 ports and two Thunderbolt 2 ports, so you’re not left wanting for high-speed transfer potential. There’s the aforementioned SDXC card reader as well as Gigabit Ethernet for wired network connections. The new Mac Mini now also includes built-in 802.11ac Wi-Fi that should also improve your wireless networking speeds if you have an 802.11ac router. There’s just HDMI for connecting to an external display. 

As with all Mac Minis, the system isn’t supplied with any peripherals, so you’ll need to have your own keyboard and mouse, as well as monitor. You might find that Apple’s own mice and keyboards make for the best companion peripherals due to their OS X dedicated shortcuts. They also match the design nicely if that’s important. 

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You are able to configure the Mac Mini starting with a dual-core 1.4GHz Intel Core i5 processor with 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard disk for £399. At the other end is a dual-core 2.8GHz Intel Core i5 with a 1TB fusion drive and 8GB of RAM for £799. Our middle model includes a dual-core 2.6GHz Intel Core i5, 8GB of memory and a 1TB hard disk for £569. All of the systems use Intel’s ‘Haswell’ processors and it’s also possible to configure the two higher-end models further with SSDs and more RAM.

It’s worth noting that unlike previous models, the memory is not upgradable. While you could easily twist off the base to upgrade the RAM on older models, the Mac Mini 2014’s memory modules are now soldered to the motherboard. This is a shame, so you’ll need to be sure on how much memory you’ll need at the time of ordering.   

Putting the Mac Mini through our application benchmarks that look at image editing, video transcoding and multitasking it managed an overall score of 62. This isn’t stratospheric performance by any means but it shows the Mac Mini is sufficient for most desktop tasks. The Zotac ZBox EN760 Plus, a similarly priced Windows mini-PC, only managed 47 although in fairness it made up for lacklustre application performance with surprisingly good gaming prowess for such a diminutive system. The Mac Mini had decent boot up and shutdown speeds but would be improved if you opt for the Fusion Drive or SSD options.

The Mac Mini system we reviewed was equipped with Intel Iris integrated graphics. Our usual benchmark games of choice aren’t available on OS X so we had to use Call of Duty 4. Playing the game in 1,920x1,080, 4x anti-aliasing and High graphics only managed 20fps, which was poor. Turning off any anti-aliasing will grant you 40fps but you’ll need to drop to 1,280x720 resolution if you want a silky smooth 60fps. The Mac Mini isn’t much of a 3D gaming system but will be able to handle older and simpler titles, such as indie games from Steam.

The Mac Mini comes pre-installed with OS X Yosemite, the latest version of Apple’s operating system. Some of the OS’ main upgrades will be better felt by those who own other Apple devices such as the iPhone. There’s Continuity that allows interoperability with Apple’s iOS devices by allowing you to answer calls from your Mac as well as send and receive SMS messages. You can also use Handoff that allows you to send over your app’s current state between your Mac and iOS device, so you can resume where you left off. This works with most of Apple’s apps and developers can build compatibility into their own apps.

In the end, the Mac Mini 2014 is a worthy follow up. It’s kept what made its predecessor so good and reduced the price - at the bottom end at least. It’s a shame that upgradeability has been sacrificed but otherwise the Mac Mini 2014 is an excellent compact system and a good introduction to OS X if you’re a newcomer, or a great PC to put beside your TV if you want more flexibility than an Apple TV can provide.