Gadgetory

when I first laid eyes on the 2018 Mac Mini the first words out of my mouth were make it bigger and I actually wasn't the only one so I got myself all pumped up to be like yo so it's not so many anymore is it you know what we should just call it the Mac but but as it turns out they actually didn't make it bigger it's just been so long since Apple has updated them pack mini that either you think of this or this or this which is the original Mac Mini not this I guess we've just been spoiled by the Intel nook and all the third-party derivatives but so you know what I'm actually gonna stick with it this product shouldn't be called the Mac Mini it should be called the Mac but that might not be a bad thing speaking of Mac our sponsor Mac Weldon Mac Weldon makes great underwear t-shirts socks wallets and more they believe in simple shopping and if you use to code tech tips you'll get 20% off at the link below so we stumbled upon the first reason that this is a Mac not a Mac Mini during the ordering process unlike previous Mac Mini models the 2018 Mac is not cheap it starts at $7.99 for the quad-core experience with a piddly eight gigs of RAM and 128 gigs of storage now obviously I'm no pleb so I poked around on the ordering page some more and ended up ponying up for the second reason that this is a Mac the desktop class 6 core processor option yes my friends starting at 1099 us you can get the same performance as your DIY PC building chump roommate in a device this big the unboxing experience certainly was pretty legendary but things were looking up from there and isn't it beautiful the thing weighs only about 3 pounds and is completely clean aside from the glossy Apple logo on the top oh well around back we've got this air vent that apple says doubles air flow over the last gen and above the i/o which impressively is nearly identical to the iMac pro and includes four Thunderbolt three ports which have all kinds of uses display USB external docks whatever we've got HDMI USB a and a headphone jack hey is that where they've been keeping them anyway what we've also got is the main event for me right here a 10 gigabit networking port and this is not only available on the Mac but even reasonably priced at about a hundred bucks for the upgrade so now we can finally edit 8k footage over the network without needing an iMac Pro or an expensive Thunderbolt 2 10 gigabit networking adapter so why don't we do it ah Mac OS my old friend Mac OS not my favorite in no small part though due to my lack of familiarity with it but to its credit it's actually remarkably smooth on this machine with its mere eight gigs of ram with that said the experience isn't all it could be with a more reasonable amount of system memory and I've got some good news with about half an hour and a handy dandy guide off of I fix it anyone with a screwdriver should be able to perform a memory upgrade on the twenty eighteen Mac remember that's what I'm calling it by themselves so I called in a friend to help me out he knows all about disassembling Apple products it's actually easier than you might think to get inside this thing you just need the right tools here are the steps the bottom lid just pops right off the antenna plate is just a few screws make sure though that you mark where the larger ones go for reassembly later you unscrew the Wi-Fi connector and carefully pry it up then unscrew the fan pry its connector up and remove it these two cables need to be carefully removed then you can take out the two large TR ten screws that keep the motherboard fastened to the chassis give the rear i/o plate a gentle push and it'll pop up and then out there's a cage around the RAM to reduce the mi but forty six screws later and we have regular old sodium slots just repeat this process in Reverse once the run is in and you're done but I have some bad news too remember how I mentioned that you should buy as much storage as you will need when you order yeah about that so the let's call them rumors about Apple blocking and third party operating systems from the Mac Mini and other t2 chip enabled devices turns out to be false but only from a literal standpoint thanks to the t2 chip Linux isn't blocked from booting only from installing so if you fire it up into recovery mode and disable secure boot you can still boot Linux if you're into that even with the t2 chip but without access to the internal storage so we're booted back up here let's go into about this boom there it is 32 gigs of DDR 4 memory so at least the ram upgrade worked and this was just with random memory that we had lying around in our warehouse so all that's left now then is to see how the 2018 mac stacks up with the competition in terms of its performance we're gonna test it alongside the MacBook Pro 2018 the MacBook Air 2018 a Hades Canyon nook and a similarly priced desktop PC also while we aren't focusing on games today we're gonna throw a few in there just to round out our testing as one might expect well relying on integrated graphics does the Mac no favors even at 720p medium details it absolutely chugs in shadow of the Tomb Raider meaning that you're basically Sol for all but eSports titles and even then it's not a great experience until you plug in an external GPU via Thunderbolt 3 just bear in mind though that only AMD graphics cards are officially supported in Mac OS anyway that's not why you're buying a Mac and when it comes to productivity thankfully the Mac here occupies a niche much closer to the 2018 MacBook Pro than the 2018 MacBook Air thanks to its hefty CPU horsepower but while it does beat out our Hades Canyon nook in CPU performance it sadly doesn't come close in GPU and loses out entirely to our similarly priced stock desktop except actually for one case where Mac OS is aggressive boost factors in though this lack of performance compared to a full-size desktop would be a much bigger problem in our eyes if it wasn't for the Mac's diminutive form factor speaking of which by the way it does have a reasonable looking ventilation hole but it got really hot like really hot while it was working hard like over 90 degrees hot which comes a little too close to literally smoking the competition for our liking I mean stock chips start to throttle around 85 degrees or so and yeah the Mac manages to keep it going above base clock with surprisingly minimal noise so that's good but remember it's got that t2 chip that we're all familiar with by now so if some component of your system dies a heat death or the board flexes or something especially as dust accumulates inside over the years remember Apple might not upgrade this thing for four years so even if you buy on every release cycle at least the good news is that it sips power compared to our desktop I'm just saying I would recommend setting up Time Machine just to be safe which honestly is a pretty good way to sum up the whole experience one giant asterisk yeah it's a small Mac but you're gonna have to deal with no dedicated GPU when similarly priced kits have them yes it's fast but it's thermal solution while improved is not designed for sustained loads yes its upgradable and cleanable but only if you have the right tools and that upgradable thing it only applies to RAM not the internal storage that has held ransom by the t2 chip like it really seems like Apple designed this new generation of Mac with something like Final Cut or Adobe Premiere in mind where the IGP can accelerate some of the transcoding work and then the CPU cores themselves can handle the much bursty ur timeline editing work that's even more apparent with the inclusion of 10 gig Ethernet for connecting to a high-speed Nats though we're not saying that's the only thing it could be used for because on that subject you could actually use this thing as a high-speed Ness thanks to that 10 gig Ethernet though for the price and considering that you'd need a separate Thunderbolt enclosure for true mass storage well yeah it's not a great value in spite of the compromises though per Apple tradition there's nothing in this form factor that quite matches the capability and the connectivity of the 2018 Mac and the price while higher isn't entirely outlandish either so if you need its unique blend of form and function or if you just plain need a Mac and don't feel like paying more to have a screen pre attached to it seriously actually this occurred to us only while we were finalizing the script for this video this is the only thing that runs Mac OS and doesn't include a screen that has been refreshed by Apple in the last five years anyway it's a pretty neat little machine just make sure you keep regular backups of all of your files though I mean that's a pretty good advice across the board speaking of good advice our sponsor Squarespace if you need to create a gorgeous website without the hassle some advice would be to try it out there all-in-one platform makes it easy to get up and running quickly 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