Gadgetory

hi I'm rich brown with CNET today we're gonna look at Apple's new Mac Mini so this is the $7.99 Mac Mini config but it also has a $250 upgrade to Apple's new fusion drive so that means this is a quad core Core i7 Mac with 4 gigs of RAM in a terabyte hard drive as well as 128 gigabytes solid-state drive now aside from the fusion drive there's actually not that much different about this new Mac from the last version does have Intel's most recent Ivy Bridge CPUs in here so that's nice you get a good speed benefit and Apple has also brought core i7 down here when before you could only get Core i5 at least in the non server models otherwise though the system is basically identical on the outside there's still no optical drive so apples sticking with that no surprise there and on the back the ports are exactly the same you've got power Ethernet firewire 800 HDMI Thunderbolt 4 USB ports audio in and headphone out you also have the SDXC card slot now there are actually some interesting things here now these are USB 3 ports not USB 2 so it's a lot faster than the previous version and that's nice the Mac Mini also know has some ports that you won't find on the new iMac specifically the firewire 800 and the 2 audio ports there's only a single audio port in the new iMac but the big technical difference of the system really is the fusion drive so what that is essentially is a way to give you all the speed benefits of a solid-state hard drive as well as all the big storage volume benefits of a standard Drive now there are some other similar hybrid hard drives out there that work in a similar way but the way Apple has it set up is that it's really kind of a seamless process with fusion the idea is that fusion will automatically speed up access to your files that you use most frequently I found in our testing that it actually works pretty well especially with file rights file reads are a little bit harder to tell apps like Photoshop and certain games have characteristics that get in the way of the file system and make it more than just about load speed there's CPU calculation and stuff that goes on in the background so if usually can't always be as effective as maybe you want it to it's also kind of a pricey upgrade it costs 250 bucks and it pushes the $70.99 config up 2049 dollars that's pretty expensive for a Mac that's generally considered to be a budget priced option overall though I know that there's a passionate niche of Mac Mini fans out there and they tend to find all kinds of creative uses for the system and I expect it will certainly appreciate faster drive access even if you don't opt for fusion the core i7 chip provides a nice speed boost and makes this actually pretty competitive compared to Windows PCs in the same price range of course it also has apples hallmark attention to design and this is still one most attractive pcs out there so overall Apple has improved the value of the Mac Mini as well as the general appeal thanks to its faster performance fusion drive is also a nice touch for the enthusiast who might want it turmeric Brown this is Apple's new Mac Mini