Review: Mac Mini (2012) for Graphic Design, Photo Editing & Video Editing

There's roughly two parts to this Mac Mini review.

First part looks at the specifications and the second at how it performs in the real world with regards to creating graphics, photo editing and video editing.

Configuration

Apple's 2012 release of Mac Mini comes in three configurations:

• 2.5GHz dual-core Intel Core i5
• 4GB memory
• 500GB hard drive
• Intel HD Graphics 4000
• OS X Mountain Lion

• 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7
• 4GB memory
• 1TB hard drive
• Intel HD Graphics 4000
• OS X Mountain Lion

• 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7
• 4GB memory
• Two 1TB hard drives
• Intel HD Graphics 4000
• OS X Mountain Lion
• OS X Server

I bought the middle configuration but customised it with a 2.6Ghz quad-core and 1TB Fusion Drive. The set I'm buying is for mainly for photo and video editing, stuff that I do at home. Since I create graphics for newspaper, I'll also comment on its ability to perform under daily deadlines. I'm not really interested in numbers so you won't see much benchmarking - go to Macworld or Barefeats for those. I'm only interested in how predictable the computer is. Whether under stress will it start to show strange things, such as screen redraws, inability to switch from one app to another, missing palettes in software, inability to save files, inability to launch apps. I've an office computer (WinXP) with better specs than the Mac Mini but shows all those problems.

Customisation of the Mac Mini is only available from the Apple store online. Other retail or online stores are selling only standard configurations.

The (non-exclusive) advantage of the Mac Mini is of course the ability to pair it up with your own display. Apple displays and that from the iMac are brilliant, but not excellent. If you work for print, and require colour accuracy for reproduction, you have to get a non-glossy screen. If you don't need that level of control over colours, the iMac might be a better buy. Personally, I prefer non-glossy screens. I can't even stand the gloss on my iPad. If you're putting your computer facing light source or windows, there will be gloss.

Processor

The base model has a dual-core, the middle and server editions both quad-cores.

Not all applications take advantage of the multi-core. So depending on what you do, you might not spend more on the extra processing power.

Some applications that use multi-core: Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture, Final Cut Pro, After Effects, Premiere Pro

Some applications that do not support multi-core: Sketchup, iLife (includes iMovie, iPhoto, etc).

If you're looking at the Mac Mini for entertainment, e.g. watching shows on your HDTV, a dual-core model is sufficient.

For computing needs and production work that requires rendering, I would recommend the quad-core.

The quad-core starts at 2.3Ghz and is really fast. You can also upgrade it to 2.6Ghz but I'll only recommend it if you work more on videos.

So far from my usage, I found out that the processors have maximised usage during initial runs — that would be 100% for software that can use quad-core. Once the processor starts to heat up, the CPU usage drops. So even if you have upgraded to 2.6Ghz, you might not get 2.6Ghz worth of processing power. I've noticed that this pattern during my photo batch exports and video renders.

Hard Drive and Fusion Drive

The default hard drives are 5400RPM, but you can configure them to either a Solid State Drive (SSD) or the new Fusion Drive.

Both the SSD and Fusion Drive are noticeably and significantly faster than default hard drives.

Traditionally speaking, the hard drive has been and still is the bottleneck of computing systems. Installing SSD is the easiest way to speed up any computer system.

My Mac Mini has a 1TB Fusion Drive and boots to the desktop in around 10s. That's faster than my 2006 Mac Pro with a Crucial M4 SSD. It's the

The Fusion Drive is actually 2 drives: a 128GB Samsung 830-based SATA III SSD and a 1TB 5400RPM hard drive. Storage space is 1.12GB total.

The Fusion Drive feels like a single 1TB SSD. You get snappy performance for opening applications, opening and saving huge files, copying files from USB3 or the SD card slot. Overall user interface is very responsive.

For the price that Apple is selling their Fusion Drive, they should be providing a 256GB SSD instead. On the bright side, 128GB is more than enough for storing the OS, applications and handling daily file transfers. For example, 500 RAW photos at 30MB each is only a 15GB import. After you finish working on those photos and don't access them for a period of time, they will be transferred automatically to the slower 5400RPM hard drive for storage, releasing the SSD storage capacity. It all happens behind the scene without you realising.

Fusion Drive technology is software-based. In theory, if you're adventurous enough, you can buy a separate SSD, fix it into the Mac Mini, and use a third party code hack to enable Fusion Drive.

I've read comments from people saying they like to have manual control on where their files go. As such, they opt for a separate SSD and hard drive. They put their working files on the SSD and then move them to the hard drive after finalising. But I don't know what happens when they have to edit the finalised version, which happens all the time. All these manual file moving is just a waste of time, which is why I favour the Fusion Drive option. There's not much point to the technology if it doesn't save time.

If either one of the Fusion Drive parts fail, the whole drive fails. That's no different from a single hard drive. In other words, get an external drive for backup.

I've also tried filling up the SSD portion and proceeded with the usual tasks, e.g. importing RAW photos. Everything still feels snappy until it hits the boundary where the data starts loading onto the hard drive instead of the SSD. Past that boundary, when you open up files, they still feel snappy, even for 1GB+ Photoshop files. But let's face it, when you open such a big file, you will expect it to be slower.

If you're using the Mac Mini to watch shows, then there's no need for the Fusion Drive. If you're using it as a main workhorse, then it's recommended.

RAM

The default unit comes with 4GB of RAM, specifically the DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600Mhz (PC3 12800).

You can get cheaper RAM from third party sellers. Apple overcharges for their RAM.

The usual brands for RAM are Kingston, Crucial, Corsair and Transcend. The difference is price. I don't expect performance to be significantly different, at least not in a noticeable way compared to the Fusion Drive. I got the cheapest.

Add more if you like to leave multiple (and I mean a lot) applications open simultaneously. One good gauge on how much RAM to get is to open the Activity Monitor and look at your typical memory usage.

An extra stick of 8GB RAM will give you a total of 10GB after removing the 2GB stick inside. If you need more, you can get an extra stick.

Intel HD Graphics 4000

The integrated graphics card can drive resolution up to 2560 by 1600 from high-end 27 and 30 inch LCD monitors. However to go beyond the 1920 by 1080 resolution, you need a mini Displayport to Displayport adapter (cheap), or a Dual-link DVI cable (expensive).

I'm using a Dell U2711 LCD monitor. General performance is satisfactory. Expose animation is quite fluid even at 2560 by 1440 resolution — I'm using a mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable from Accell.

I don't play games to I can't comment in detail from the gaming perspective.

I tested the 3D capabilities with the Sketchup modeling software. With Sketchup, the graphics card can handle high polygon scenes without significant lag. In the scene above, there are 5 high-polygon models each about 8MB in size. There's some slight lag during panning, but nothing I would complain about.

A dedicated graphics card would of course be more appropriate for Maya, Autodesk, Lightwave, Cinema 4D or Zbrush. That's where the more expensive Mac Pro and iMac will come in.

Video RAM ranges from 512MB to 768MB depending on how much DDR3 RAM you add.

Art and Graphic Design

I work on various Adobe graphics applications, mostly Illustrator and Photoshop.

Launching applications is fast and they are responsive. There's no screen redraw even when working on several huge files. I attribute that to the Intel HD 4000 which is quite a performer despite what other people might say.

For art and graphic design, the Mac Mini handles flawlessly. If you work with multiple applications or on huge files (500MB Photoshop or Illustrator files anyone?), it is recommended to get more RAM. There's no lag or spinning beach balls when working on several huge files at the same time.

If you're short on RAM however, applications can behave strangely. E.g. Adobe Illustrator will fail to save files, unless you quit other applications to release memory. Adobe Photoshop might show up blank palettes. When that happens, I've to quit other programs to release the memory so that I can save or export files. Get more RAM!

For Photoshop users, you can add RAM to the point where you don't even need the scratch disk. You can also increase the number of history states and display cache that can be recorded.

The Mac Mini is perfect for art and graphic design since they are just 2D.

One downside that's not really related to Mac Mini is user habits during graphic design. Just because you can make the file big doesn't mean you should. I prefer linking into Illustrator files rather than embedding.

Photo editing

The Mac Mini 2012 is also a great machine for photo editing. You can pair it with any monitor of your choice which is important if you require absolute colour accuracy.

The USB 3 and SD card slot are blazing fast at importing photos. I tested the SD card slot with a UHS 95MB/s SD card and it can import files at the speed of the card. If your camera cable is only USB 2, you might want to use the SD card slot, assuming you have a fast SD card. Class 10 SD cards are much slower to import, of course.

Lightroom 4 takes advantage of multi-core. I'm guessing Aperture performance should be similar.

I use Lightroom and importing files is snappy thanks to the Fusion Drive. Thumbnails are promptly generated and cached, and you can scroll through hundreds of them without lag.

Edits happen instantly on screen.

JPEGS are exported with ease and speed thanks the the multi-core.

Video editing

I've moved the video editing review section to another page.

Glitch and issues

Sometimes the screen will blackout for 1s or 2s while I was working, then it would come back on. There are many similar complaints by other users online so this isn't an isolated case. I hope Apple will provide a firmware fix to it. It seems to affect those people who use HDMI — I use the HDMI to DVI adapter. But from what I've gathered online, people are saying that Intel's been working on this problem since June and there's still no where near to fixing it, resulting in Apple shipping a less than perfect machine.

Speaking of HDMI, I tried the HDMI output and the colours are too washed out, and bright, especially on a LCD monitor. That's after advanced calibrating using the System Preferences. With HDMI on HDTV, the colours are fine.

The Mac Mini does become warm when exporting photos from Lightroom and during video encoding. Probably because it's much more processor intensive.

Another issue, I had set the Quicksilver app to start during startup but it doesn't start instantly compared to my Mac Pro.

Overall recommendation

I had bought the Mac Mini as a backup to my 2006 Mac Pro. Now, I'm thinking of using the Mac Pro as a backup instead.

It's able to handle intensive graphic design, photo and video editing at ease.

The middle model, upgraded from dual-core to quad-core in the current update, is probably the most significant upgrade among the three configurations.

Apple has added some rather important features that should have added a long time ago, namely, the USB 3 ports and the SSD & hard drive combination (now working together as a Fusion Drive). Those two components make the computer fast and responsive. Even the integrated graphics card turned out to be quite good.

I highly recommend the Fusion Drive for medium to semi-heavy production needs. You can then add RAM yourself when you find the need to. The 2.6Ghz quad-core upgrade is probably for those who edit video a lot. The unit can run quite hot if it's rendering continuously, and I'm not sure if the fans are enough to cool the unit, but the processors do slow down when things get hot.

The Mac Mini today has a good performance over price ratio.

The potential deal breaker is the blank screen problem. It gets annoying very fast, even if it happens once a day.