Deal | Apple M4 Mac Mini with 16 GB unified memory scores $200 discount ahead of Christmas
Memory and storage prices are seemingly aiming for the moon, courtesy of AI giants scooping up almost every DRAM chip coming out of fabs. Prices have increased to the point that Apple's prices for Mac computers have started to appear shockingly close to reasonable, making Micro Center's current deal on the M4-powered Mac mini even more attractive.
To be precise, a select set of Micro Center stores are offering a sizeable $200 discount on the M4 Mac mini, dropping its price down to just $399. This is a store-only deal, so customers will have to find out whether or not their local Micro Center has the M4 Mac mini in stock.
Apple M4 shines bright in CPU performance
The 10-core M4 SoC powering the Mac mini is, simply put, a superb performer for daily tasks. Synthetic benchmarks paint an overwhelming positive picture, with the M4 trading blows with the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS in Cinebench 2024's multicore test. Our in-depth review of the Mac mini paints a rather positive picture, with hardly any room for complaint when it comes to performance
The M4's 10-core iGPU allows for respectable performance, roughly in the same league as a Radeon RX 5500M Mobile GPU. Gaming on macOS is a hit or miss, with the majority of popular titles simply unavailable natively on the platform.
Perhaps the biggest downside to the Mac mini is its soldered memory, and locked-down storage. The 16 GB of unified memory is fine for now, but may not be enough two or three years down the road. The 256 GB of storage, on the other hand, can be upgraded with reverse-engineered third-party modules, but not every consumer will be willing to go that route. The I/O on offer is as follows:
- Dual USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C
- Triple Thunderbolt 4 Type-C
- HDMI 2.1
- Gigabit Ethernet
But for folks who are convinced that they can live with the aforementioned flaws of the Mac mini, Micro Center's ongoing sale is an excellent option. That said, those who would rather pay extra to have the computer delivered to their doorsteps, will likely have to make their purchase from Amazon, where the Mac mini is currently available for $479. Either way, interested customers are definitely advised to refer to our detailed review of the mini PC before making their purchase.
Disclaimer: Notebookcheck is not responsible for price changes carried out by retailers. The discounted price or deal mentioned in this item was available at the time of writing and may be subject to time restrictions and/or limited unit availability.
Source(s)
Micro Center (linked above), spotted by SlickDeals
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