The new Mac Mini is great, buy the old one now

• The redesigned 2024 Mac Mini has impressive specs, with a more powerful M4 chip, hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and Thunderbolt 5, starting at just $599.

• However, the older M1 and M2 Mac Mini models still hold up, making them perfect, cost-effective entry points into Apple’s ecosystem, with years of macOS upgrades ahead and Apple Intelligence support.

• These older Mac Mini models are cost-effective “hobby machines” for projects like file and media servers, media centers, game emulation, testing Apple’s ecosystem, or installing Linux.

The M4 Mac Mini is smaller and faster, with a new cooling system, more ports, and the same $600 price tag as the outgoing model. It’s great. So why buy the old model instead?

Do you really need the latest and greatest?

You should always buy the right tool for the job, as long as it fits your budget. So if you buy a MacBook, we recommend it get enough storage space for the entire life of the MacBook. This is a less pressing issue when it comes to the desktop Mac, as you can easily expand storage with static solutions like external drives.

The big advantage of the 2024 Mac Mini lies in its raw power: a more powerful chip, with more cores, higher clock speeds, hardware-accelerated ray tracing, a better GPU and AV1 encoding. It’s a $599 masterpiece.

But if all you need is a Mac to surf the web, answer emails, and do some office work, then the M4 is overkill. There’s nothing wrong with having enough grunt under the hood in case you need it, but you have to ask yourself if you’d rather have the money in your pocket.

The Mac Mini is a hobbyist’s dream

There are plenty of people who rely on the Mac Mini as their primary computer. It fits virtually anywhere and does everything an iMac or MacBook can do. It runs on macOS, pairs exceptionally well with an iPhone or iPad, and allows you to bring your own peripherals and displays.

It’s perhaps the most customizable Mac experience, because it forces you to think about what you really need to get started. For that reason it is also the perfect hobby Mac.

The Mac Mini is a headless wonder. It’s much smaller than an iMac or even a MacBook because it doesn’t have a built-in display. It doesn’t take up as much space as the Mac Pro or its more capable cousin, the comparably chunky Mac Studio. It’s great for set-and-forget projects, or putting a Mac in an unusual spot.

Best of all, you don’t need an M4 with 16GB of RAM and Thunderbolt 5 to get creative with a Mac Mini. An older model with an M1 or M2 processor will do just fine (you might even conclude that an Intel model is suitable for this, although we think now is the time to go for Apple silicon).

So what exactly is a hobby Mac? It’s a file server that you can configure once and then place in your office or place next to your router access to all your files across the entire network. It is a computer ideal to use as a Plex or Jellyfin server to broadcast media across the entire network, to virtually any device thanks to uPnP.

An HDMI connector allows you to connect your Mac Mini to your living room TV and install XBMC or Stremio for use as a media center. Unlike the laggy software on your smart TVthese apps absolutely will fly on a Mac with a desktop processor. An old Mac Mini also makes for a powerful one Home Assistant server.

There’s plenty of overhead to install emulators such as RetroArch or OpenEmu so you can emulate systems 8-bit classics to modern 3D platforms such as the Xbox and PlayStation 3. You can even play real games if you want to get creative DirectX to Vulkan translation as part of Asahi Linux.

Speaking of Asahi Linux, this bold open source continues to move forward so you can too install a native ARM-based version of Linux on your Mac directly. You won’t find a better machine for gaming with Linux support than an old M1 or M2 Mac Mini.

Since the M1 and M2 chips in these older machines still provide excellent performance, there’s no reason why you can’t perform multiple of these tasks on the same machine. Run a Home Assistant server, share files, serve media and play Marvel vs Capcom 2 from the same machine.

Your perfect first Mac

The Mac Mini has always been seen as a great entry-level model, especially for PC users. You already have a display and a set of peripherals, and a Mini gets you in for about the price of an iPad.

So what’s better than a cheap, small form factor desktop computer? An even cheaper one of course! Entering the second-hand market to satisfy your Mac curiosity makes for an even lower-risk investment.

The M1 and M2 models may be bigger and slower, but the existence of a newer model doesn’t suddenly make them obsolete. They’re perfect entry points into Apple’s desktop ecosystem, especially since they’ll likely be getting macOS updates for years to come.

What’s more, all you need for Apple Intelligence is an M1 processor. So if you want to dip your toes into Apple’s vision of the future, an old Mac Mini is the cheapest way to do it.

Watch those prices tumble

By launching the new M4 Mac Mini with the same $599 price tag as the previous generation, Apple has raised expectations about what to expect from the second-hand market. The company could have easily raised the price, as it did with the 2021 and 2022 MacBook Pro and MacBook Air redesigns, but instead made the excellent decision to stay put.

Although Apple computers are rarely described as cheap, the Mac Mini has always offered the best value for money. Now that you can get a Mac Mini on the base model with a 10-core CPU M4 chip and 16 GB of RAM; resellers will have to price their goods accordingly.

The only caveat here is that it may take some time for it to trickle down to the second-hand market. There’s no harm in approaching resellers, making an offer, and politely pointing out that their list price is way too high considering what Apple is now offering.

Things are only worth what people are willing to pay for them, and with Apple putting downward pressure on prices with such a reasonably priced upgrade, you can expect prices to drop quite quickly.

Take advantage of the upgrade

Prior to the company’s October 2024 announcement, the smaller and faster M4 Mac Mini felt like one of Apple’s worst-kept secrets (which is becoming a bit of a theme). In reality, the machine had been anticipated for months, if not years.

The old Mac Mini had remained largely unchanged since the first unibody designs of 2010. The 2024 M4 Mac Mini is the first major redesign of the Apple silicon era, and there’s plenty for loyal Mac Mini owners to get excited about.

The upshot here is that the M4 Mac Mini feels like a worthwhile upgrade (unlike Apple’s USB-C Magic accessory refresh). There should be no shortage of Mac Mini owners who have been waiting for this update, which is great news for second-hand buyers hoping for an influx of cheap machines to choose from.

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Apple has stopped selling the M2 Mac Mini in its US store, but you can still find them Apple renovated for just over $400 for a base model. Expect Best Buy and other retailers to discount the older models as new inventory trickles in.

But the best place to look is local reseller websites like Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, or even eBay.