It's still annoying that Apple insists on placing all of the ports for its desktops on the back of the computers. Returning from last year are the gigabit Ethernet jack, HDMI port, four USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader, and audio in and headphone jacks. The FireWire 800 port has finally been jettisoned (the 2012 Mini was the last of the Macs to include the aging interface, though Thunderbolt-to-FireWire dongles still exist), and there's a second Thunderbolt 2 port in its place. A separate piece of black plastic on the back of the unit houses the fan vent and a reasonably impressive complement of ports, which has changed only a little from last year.
The front face is broken up by a small white power LED and an IR receiver, and the sides are perfectly smooth.
It's an unadorned, flattened aluminum box with sharp edges and rounded corners. Visually, the Mac Mini looks the same as it has since Apple stopped shipping SuperDrive-equipped models back in 2011. To evaluate the computer's SSD performance, we've also equipped our review unit with a 1TB Fusion Drive, a $200 upgrade-we won't be recapping how this feature works, but our deep dive is over here. We'll provide benchmarks representative of the $499 Mini, too, but know ahead of time that it uses the same guts as the base-model MacBook Airs and the $1,099 iMac. We typically like to review the base models of computers when possible, but in the Mac Mini's case the upgraded $699 configuration is more interesting, and it's the one you ought to get if you care about performance (more on that later). The 2014 Mac Mini is more interesting than that but unfortunately for people who have been waiting for this refresh, it's more notable for the stuff it's missing than its upgrades. If that was all that was happening, the Mac Mini would be a welcome-if-overdue update to the desktop. Desktops and laptops haven't advanced a whole lot in the last year, so for the most part the Mini is just getting 2013's upgrades a year late. Apple went through all of its Macs last year, updating them with new Intel Haswell CPUs and 802.11ac Wi-Fi adapters and faster SSDs and (sometimes) Thunderbolt 2, while the Mini sat and waited for an upgrade that never came.Īpple quickly announced a new Mini at its media event in October, two years after the 2012 Mac Mini was introduced. It's easy to feel sorry for the Mac Mini. HDMI, 2x Thunderbolt 2, 4x USB 3.0, audio line-in minijack (digital/analog), audio line-out/headphone minijack (digital/analog), SDXC card slot
Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0
Dual-core 2.6GHz Intel Core i5-4278U (Turbo Boost up to 3.1GHz)ĨGB 1600MHz LPDDR3 (soldered, upgradeable to 16GB at purchase)ġTB Fusion Drive (128GB PCIe SSD + 1TB 5400 RPM HDD)
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