The Apple Mac mini M4 is arguably the most important discount in computing. This (virtually) pocket-sized mini Mac is quick, highly effective, near-silent and prices round half the worth of the most cost effective equal MacBook Air. It’s virtually too good to be true.
I purchased one final month, my first new Mac because the MacBook Air M1 in 2020, and it’s given me that very same sense of ‘how did they do that?’ marvel.
We described it as “the best small form factor PC” in our Mac mini M4 evaluate – and with good motive. I can’t imagine how quiet it’s, how small it’s, how swift it’s at doing issues that my now-slightly creaking M1 MacBook Air struggles with (corresponding to opening greater than 10 Chrome tabs directly).
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However if you happen to’re considering of shopping for one – and also you completely, positively, completely ought to – I’ve one bit of recommendation for you: don’t waste your cash on Apple’s personal inside SSD upgrades.
Critically, don’t even take into account it. As a result of whereas the Mac mini is an undoubted discount, Apple’s storage is so overpriced that it’s a joke.
As a substitute, you’ll wish to purchase an exterior enclosure and NVMe storage. That’s precisely what I did, and it’s saved me a fortune.
The issue: Apple SSD storage is just too costly
(Picture credit score: Apple)
The straightforward reality is that Apple expenses an excessive amount of for SSD storage. Like approach an excessive amount of.
The bottom Mac mini M4, with 16GB RAM and a paltry 256GB SSD, prices $599 / £599. And whereas it actually is without doubt one of the greatest bargains in computing historical past, that’s regardless of the storage on supply, somewhat than due to it.
Doubling it to 512GB prices one other $200 / £200, and bumping it as much as 1TB doubles that once more.
The utmost SSD measurement obtainable on the bottom M4 is 2TB – and for that you simply’d pay a whopping $1,399 / £1,399. That’s $800 / £800 further for one more 1.75TB of SSD storage.
There’s no 4TB mannequin obtainable on the bottom M4, however if you happen to step as much as the M4 Professional – which has different advantages, corresponding to a extra highly effective 12- or 14-core CPU and 16- or 20-core GPU – you possibly can improve to a 4TB or 8TB SSD.
For that privilege, you’ll pay an astonishing $600 / £600 further for the leap from 2TB to 4TB, after which an additional $1,200 / £1,200 to take you to 8TB.
Swipe to scroll horizontally
Mannequin
Storage
Value US
Value UK
Mac mini M4 16GB
256GB
$599
£599
Mac mini M4 16GB
512GB
$799
£799
Mac mini M4 16GB
1TB
$999
£999
Mac mini M4 16GB
2TB
$1,399
£1,399
Mac mini M4 Professional 24GB
512GB
$1,399
£1,399
Mac mini M4 Professional 24GB
1TB
$1,599
£1,599
Mac mini M4 Professional 24GB
2TB
$1,999
£1,999
Mac mini M4 Professional 24GB
4TB
$2,599
£2,599
Mac mini M4 Professional 24GB
8TB
$3,799
£3,799
You may simply calculate what Apple is charging per GB for its upgrades, so I did simply that.
Swipe to scroll horizontally
Mannequin
Further storage (GB)
Further value ($/£)
Price per GB ($/£)
Mac mini M4 16GB / 512GB
256
200
0.78
Mac mini M4 16GB / 1TB
488
200
0.41
Mac mini M4 16GB / 2TB
1000
400
0.40
Mac mini M4 Professional 24GB / 1TB
488
200
0.41
Mac mini M4 Professional 24GB / 2TB
1000
400
0.40
Mac mini M4 Professional 24GB / 4TB
2000
600
0.30
Mac mini M4 Professional 24GB / 8TB
4000
1200
0.30
So, leaving apart the leap from 256GB to 512GB – which is simply ridiculously unhealthy worth at 0.78 US {dollars} or kilos per gigabyte further – you’re usually paying 30-40 cents/pence per GB.
How does that examine to third-party storage? Not effectively.
Our greatest SSD shopping for information lists 9 choices, which have all been completely examined and TechRadar-approved.
Primary within the checklist, the Samsung 990 Professional, at present prices $100/£90 for 1TB – which works out at round 10 cents / 9 pence per GB. Soar as much as the 4TB mannequin and the worth per GB drops to 7.5 cents, or 6 pence.
Think about that the 990 Professional is without doubt one of the costliest choices and you may see the distinction right here – it’s roughly 1 / 4 of the worth of going direct with Apple.
The flipside is that you’ll want to purchase an exterior enclosure too, however these usually are not costly.
And nor do you could fear about it being a tough set up course of. Essentially the most sophisticated factor about all of this, if you happen to’re not notably techie, is solely the terminology round all of it.
The answer: What you could purchase
(Picture credit score: Future)
You’ve gotten two choices for upgrading your Mac mini’s storage: a conveyable SSD or an inside SSD plus an exterior enclosure.
The previous is less complicated, in that you simply simply purchase one off the shelf and plug it in to a port on the mini, however they’re usually dearer per GB and virtually actually slower.
Nonetheless, if you wish to take your storage on the street with you, this is likely to be your greatest guess; our information to the very best transportable SSDs has loads of choices.
I took the opposite route, which concerned shopping for an inside SSD and a separate enclosure, or case, to place it in; I’ll go into particulars on that beneath.
This has the benefit of being quick sufficient to rival the mini’s inside SSD – effectively, as long as you purchase the best one.
Know your ports
(Picture credit score: Future)
In the event you’re coming to the Mac mini M4 from a MacBook, the ports on supply will probably be a welcome shock: you get two USB-C 3 ports and a 3mm headphone socket on the entrance, plus three Thunderbolt 4 / USB-C 4 ports, HDMI and Ethernet on the rear.
Jargon buster
M.2: The SSD’s kind issue; small, rectangular, like a stick of gum
NVMe: The SSD sort; massively quicker than the older SATA
PCie 4.0: The interface bus commonplace the SSD will connect with. For the quickest speeds this could be 4.0, however the older 3.0 will even just do superb
Thunderbolt 4: The connectivity commonplace utilized by the Mac mini 4’s rear ports. It may well cost units, deal with two 4K shows and switch knowledge through USB
USB 4: The USB protocol utilized by Thunderbolt 4, enabling speeds of as much as 40Gb/s
USB 3.2: The earlier era of USB commonplace has a most pace of 10Gb/s. The mini’s two entrance USB-C ports have this spec
Exterior storage can plug into any of these 5 USB-C ports, however you’ll get the quickest speeds from the Thunderbolt 4 choices on the rear. These use USB 4, and have a most knowledge switch pace of 40Gb/s, in comparison with 10Gb/s for the entrance ports.
(The Mac mini M4 Professional, in the meantime, has Thunderbolt 5, which might deal with as much as 120Gb/s. That’s arguably overkill, however then so is the CPU…)
Theoretically, absolutely the quickest speeds will come from an SSD that may make the most of USB 4 – search for SSDs listed as PCIe 4.0 or ‘Gen4’, with above 7,000MB/s learn and 6,000MB/s write. The Samsung 990 Professional talked about above is one such SSD.
That stated, you received’t get these sort of speeds in real-world use, because of USB 4’s 40Gb/s restrict. You would subsequently purchase a less expensive PCIe 3.0 card such because the Samsung 970 EVO Plus. It is likely to be a tiny bit slower than a 4.0 SSD, however you received’t discover it outdoors of benchmarks.
By way of kind issue and kind, in the meantime, there’s a dizzying array of jargon related to SSDs – however there’s no should be confused by all of it.
Merely be sure to purchase an M.2 NVMe SSD, ideally Gen4 / PCIe 4.0 if you happen to can afford it, and all will probably be effectively.
The enclosure
When you’ve chosen your SSD you’ll want one thing to place it into. It’s technically attainable to improve the Mac mini’s inside storage, however this could void your guarantee, and given how simple it’s to make use of an enclosure I’m unsure it’s price it.
There are dozens of appropriate enclosures for SSDs, however all merely present a house for the storage to fit into, plus a cable to connect with a USB port.
Some have energetic cooling followers, some use passive cooling; provided that the Mac mini is sort of silent, I hated the concept of spoiling that quiet, so went with a passive choice.
As soon as once more, you’ll want to make sure the enclosure can deal with the pace of your SSD after which switch that pace to the Mac.
Subsequently, looking for ‘M.2 enclosure’ is not going to suffice – you may find yourself with one thing that solely works with USB 3.2.
As a substitute, you particularly want an M.2 NVMe USB 4 or Thunderbolt 4 enclosure. You should utilize USB 3.2 in order for you, however you’ll be restricted to a few third of the pace.
What I purchased
(Picture credit score: Samsung)
SSD: Samsung 990 Professional M.2 NVMe 4TB
By way of the SSD, I ended up shopping for the Samsung 990 Professional M2 NVMe in its 4TB guise. This value me £257 – which works out at 6 pence per GB.
That is positively overkill for the Mac mini M4, in that I’m solely getting about half of its potential pace, with USB 4 being the bottleneck.
Nonetheless, I figured that I’ll effectively improve the Mac within the subsequent couple of years, and if I do the Samsung SSD can come alongside for the experience. Plus, we gave it 5 stars in our Samsung 990 Professional SSD evaluate, so it might appear impolite to not decide this.
As I stated above, you may spend much less on a PCIe 3.0 SSD and never lose an excessive amount of when it comes to efficiency. Both approach, you’ll positively get monetary savings over taking the Apple improve.
Enclosure: OWC Specific 1M2
For the enclosure, I went with the OWC Specific 1M2, which value one other £149.
This is without doubt one of the highest-rated USB 4 enclosures round; we awarded it 4.5 stars in our OWC Specific 1M2 evaluate, and on Amazon it has the identical rating from greater than 200 person evaluations.
It’s a fantastically made factor, with a wholly steel physique coated with fins that make attainable its passive cooling. It’s not small – in regards to the size of the Mac mini itself, albeit far more slim – and weighs about 250g, however that didn’t fear me because it isn’t one thing I’ll be shifting round very a lot.
(Picture credit score: Future)
Extra importantly (to me), it seems to be nice subsequent to the Mac mini; lots of the cheaper enclosures are black plastic affairs, however I’d somewhat pay barely further for the aesthetics.
It additionally has rubber toes on the underside that maintain it steady, plus a USB-C port wherein to plug the all-important (and equipped) knowledge cable. I can’t reward it sufficient.
Placing all of it collectively
I’m no stranger to SSD or RAM upgrades, however even an entire novice will discover the OWC Specific 1M2 simple to arrange – not least as a result of there’s a super-helpful video tutorial on the OWC web site.
You’ll have to take away a few screws, then slide off the underside of the case to disclose the NVMe slot inside. Take away yet one more screw, insert the SSD, push right down to make contact with the thermal pads, put the screws again in and also you’re away.
The entire thing takes about 5 minutes, max; it’s actually not an advanced course of.
Subsequent, you’ll have to hook it as much as one of many Thunderbolt 4 ports on the again of the Mac mini, then format the drive to be used.
Be sure you select APFS, until you wish to additionally use it with Macs operating an older model of macOS (wherein case go for Mac OS Prolonged) or Home windows (ExFAT, usually).
(Picture credit score: Future)
Efficiency positive aspects
(Picture credit score: Future)
Any SSD will probably be quick sufficient for most individuals, notably if you happen to’re used to an old-school laborious drive. Nonetheless, if you happen to’re taking place the exterior route somewhat than shopping for an Apple improve, you’ll need your resolution to be a minimum of similar to the inner SSD.
It’s price noting that the SSDs in Apple’s mac Mini M4s range in pace relying on the scale; the 512GB SSD is about 30% quicker than the 256GB mannequin, in line with discussions on Reddit a minimum of, and the 1TB mannequin is quicker nonetheless.
I’m solely utilizing the 256GB mannequin, in fact, and get a pace of round 2,000 MB/s write and a couple of,800 MB/s learn, based mostly on BlackMagicDesign’s Disk Pace Check.
The Samsung 990 Professional plus OWC 1M2 combo, in the meantime, provides me 3,100 for each write and skim – so, barely quicker than the inner SSD.
Nor does it get too scorching. The 1M2 does a improbable job of maintaining it cool while in use, and whilst you can really feel it heating up, it’s by no means uncomfortably heat.
(Picture credit score: Future)
In actual life, the distinction in pace between the inner and exterior drives is irrelevant; both one can copy a 5GB file in a matter of seconds. However psychologically, it’s nice – not solely have I saved myself a minimum of £400, however I’ve even improved the efficiency, too.
The result’s that I can deal with my exterior storage virtually as if it’s inside. I’ve folders on it, I’ve functions operating from it, I’ve heaps and many music and images saved on it – and I’d by no means understand it wasn’t sitting contained in the Mac mini itself if I didn’t take a look at it. It’s probably the greatest upgrades I’ve ever made.
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