It’s still a block of milled aluminum with the same rounded corners, satin finish, and shiny Apple logo emblazoned on the top. The big changes here are all under the hood, as Apple opted to leave the overall design of the Mac mini (M1, 2020) unchanged from the previous model. Jeremy Laukkonen / Lifewire Design: Same sleek aluminum chassis The lack of support for Bootcamp meant I wasn’t able to completely leave my old hardware behind, but there’s no getting around it: this is some impressive hardware at any price, let alone a price tag that’s cheaper than the previous iteration of the hardware. I was able to spend about a week with an M1 Mac mini as my main work machine, plugging in my keyboard and monitors, with my primary rig left to gather dust for the duration.ĭuring my time with the M1 Mac mini, I paid close attention to performance, of course, with a special eye to how well it handles non-native apps and apps that were designed for iOS. While I was a bit skeptical of Apple’s decision to leave Intel behind, the promised performance of their custom silicon left me eager to dig in and see how that raw power really translates into real-world situations. It can’t run Windows apps via Bootcamp like an Intel Mac, and there will be some growing pains as developers switch gears and start catering to the new hardware, but that hardware offers tremendous raw performance, excellent potential in the long term, and more than acceptable real-world performance in the short term. It’s also the most affordable way to dip your toe into the brave new world of Apple Silicon, even though it’s powered by the exact same chip found in the much more expensive MacBook Pro. The Mac mini (M1, 2020) is the first Mac desktop to receive Apple’s new ARM-based M1 chip.

Lifewire purchased the Mac mini to evaluate its features and capabilities.

Mac mini m1 handbrake