$899 M1 Mac mini vs $2,549 iMac 5K - Ultimate Comparison By Max Tech

We've been testing apple's m1 max for about two weeks now and so far we've been totally blown away by the performance of the m1 chip, which has exceeded my expectations, even though I was the one who was hyping up Apple Silicon like crazy way back since July. So in this video I want to compare the new m1 Mac mini to the 2020 5k iMac, to see if the m1 can take the crown of the best bang for the buck mac away from the iMac back in August. This iMac blew us away because in many cases it outperformed apple's, 5 000 iMac Pro, and it was so good that we recommended it to people, even though we knew Apple Silicon was coming later in 2020. We honestly didn't think that the first generation Apple Silicon chip could outperform this crazy iMac. So before we put both of these machines through our full suite of benchmarks and tests, I want to mention a couple of very important differences in terms of the Io. They both get two thunderbolt ports, but the iMac gets 4 USB 8 ports.

The Mac mini also gets a HDMI 2.0 port. Since it doesn't come with a display like the iMac does, and that's a pretty important difference, because that 5k display built into the iMac is incredibly good worth about 1300 dollars by itself. But the benefit for the Mac mini is that you get to choose the external display that you hook up to it as well as the mouse and the keyboard which, unfortunately aren't included now moving on to the specs, our m1 Mac mini, has 16 gigabytes of unified ram compared to 64 gigs of ram on the iMac, which we installed ourselves for only 250 bucks from Amazon instead of paying a massive 1 000. If you buy the ram directly from apple, our Mac mini also comes with the 256 gig SSD, compared to 512 on the iMac. So if you match it up, the price goes up to eleven hundred dollars compared to two thousand five hundred and fifty dollars for the iMac.

If you upgrade the ram yourself now as we get into our testing, keep that ram difference in mind, because it's going to answer whether apple's unified memory is more efficient than traditional ram getting into CPU performance with geek bench 5. The m1 has around 38 faster raw single core performance, which is incredibly impressive. Since the 2020 iMac held the previous record in this test in terms of multi-core, the iMac is around 17 faster because it basically packs eight high performance cores compared to just four on the m1 getting into a CPU stress test. Cine bench r23, the iMac really starts to shine being around 54 faster than the m1, because this test fully maxes out the CPU for 10 minutes straight compared to geek bench 5, which averages out a bunch of different tests. However, I do want to point out that the m1 Mac mini was completely silent during the entire 10-minute cinemas test, while the fans on the iMac were fully maxed out after only 30 seconds into the test.

That's because the iMac hit a sustained temperature of 97 degrees Celsius, not Fahrenheit Celsius throughout the entire test, while the m1 Mac mini stayed at around 71 degrees Celsius being able to keep itself cool with the fan being at idle. Now, if you're wondering how that's possible you're about to have your mind, blowing the m1 chip ran that test at a sustained 13 watts of power compared to 125 watts of power on the iMac almost 10 times more, and if we take these cine bench scores and divide them by the wattage. We find that the m1 Mac mini got over six times the score per watt compared to the iMac, which is absolutely incredible, and this alone should be making intel change their pants because apple's just getting started with their m series of chips. Before I get into the graphics, I want to test the speed of the SSDs using the black magic disk speed test and in terms of write, speed. The Mac mini's 256 gig SSD, was surprisingly faster than the 512 gig one on the iMac and in terms of the read speed, it gets even better being around 400 megabytes per second faster, which is really impressive for a small drive like that.

Getting into geek bench 5's metal, graphics, test, the iMac destroys the m1 Mac mini by almost 2 times, because it of course comes with a dedicated, GPU testing, a more realistic gaming benchmark. The iMac was around 73 faster in terms of the fps, which sounds impressive. Until you hear just how many watts of power it was using to achieve that performance, the IMAX GPU used 90 watts of power and the m1's integrated GPU used only 5.6 watts. Yes, you heard that correctly only 5.6 watts, while fully maxed out converting that into performance per watt in that test, the m1 Mac mini, scored 14 fps per watt, while the iMac only got 1.5 fps per watt, that's 9.3 times more performance per watt, which is absolutely bonkers, but of course having to use more power, isn't as big of an issue as it is for laptops, but it does help with the heat and fan noise issue. Now, before I get into the real world tests, like Xcode logic, Lightroom and final cut, I want to test out web browsing performance in the speedometer 2.0 browser benchmark in safari. The m1 Mac mini, scored, 45 higher, which means that web browsing in general is gonna, be much more snappy on the m1.

But on top of that, we've noticed that safari on the new m1 chips is incredibly efficient in terms of the ram. So you don't need as much as you used to now for all of you, music producers out there we tested the new Logic Pro benchmark, which you can find on. Google and the iMac was able to run 125 tracks without overloading compared to 90 tracks on the m1 Mac mini. However, the m1 was completely silent. The entire time compared to the fans kicking up quite loud on the iMac, so that could be a dealbreaker for a lot of you, music, guys out there.

Now, let's get into photo editing with Lightroom classic which, by the way, is running under Rosetta 2 on the m1, since it hasn't yet been updated for Apple Silicon in our 50 raw 42 megapixel photo export test. The iMac was around 18 faster than the m1, which is a pretty good advantage, but we also discovered something very, very interesting in our how much ram for mac video we made back in August, this exact iMac, but with only 16 gigs of ram, took 2 minutes and 51 seconds, which is actually slower than the m1 Mac mini with 16 gigs of ram. This basically shows that yes, apple's, unified memory is in fact more efficient than traditional ram since the same 16 gigs is performing better on the m1 Mac mini in this export test. Even though the CPU is quite a bit slower, as we saw in the cine bench r23 CPU stress test, the only explanation is that apple's unified memory is more efficient, even under Rosetta 2, which is the most impressive part now moving on to our tech, Xcode benchmark built for us by maxim, pimento, which he's recently updated for Apple Silicon. This is where it starts to get very interesting for the first time in this video, the m1 Mac mini outperforms, the iMac, while having four times less ram finishing the build in 120 seconds, while being completely silent compared to 136 seconds on the iMac, with the fans basically maxed out for most of the test.

This is extremely impressive, and this shows that Xcode programmers can safely sell their old intel max to not only get better performance with the m1, but get a completely silent machine and excellent battery life. If you choose to go with one of the m1 mac books now, what I'm curious to find out is if this m1 Mac mini, will outperform our 12 core 15 000 mac pro in this Xcode test. So if you're curious about that go ahead and subscribe right now, because we're going to be working on that video very soon. Now, let's get into video editing with Final Cut Pro in the 5k Bruce x, benchmark, which relies heavily on raw graphics power. The iMac was around 50 percent faster than the m1.

However, in our five-minute 4k h.264 export test, which is the most common format that YouTubers use, the iMac was just five seconds faster than the m1 Mac mini, which we didn't expect considering the result we got in Bruce x. Moving on to our one minute, HEC stabilization test, the m1 Mac mini surprisingly, finished the test in the same exact 9 seconds, and that's because apple put a huge focus on HEC hardware accelerators in the m1. Those new decoders allow it to absolutely rip through HEC footage in both playback and export times. For example, canon's new r5 camera has a crazy 10 bit 422 HEC format that is tough to edit on most computers, but the m1 Mac mini played it back at a perfect 30 fps, while the iMac dropped a bunch of frames during playback and when exporting a 5 minute. Clip of this crazy r5 footage, the m1 Mac mini finished in just 3 minutes, compared to 6 minutes and 15 seconds on the iMac, which is incredible now, because this footage is so tough, or at least it used to be before the m1 people usually transcode it into proves.

So we tested that as well. Transcoding 30 minutes of this footage took only 13 minutes on the m1 compared to 37 minutes and 30 seconds on the iMac that's over three times longer, which is absolutely bonkers. Taking it even further. We tested out the even more tough 4k 60fps version of this footage and the m1 Mac mini, played it back perfectly, which we weren't expecting at all, because the iMac couldn't even handle the 30fps clip. So basically, what I'm trying to say here is that if you, edit, common, 4k, h.264 or HEC footage, the new m1 chip is not just good enough. It's now the prime choice because of all the other advantages you get with the m1 like the cool and silent operation, and this finally brings us to the hardcore video editing, starting with 4.5 k, redraw footage, neither the m1 mac nor the iMac can play this footage back perfectly. But in terms of exporting a 5-minute clip, the iMac was more than twice as fast because it fully relies on raw graphics power and the iMac simply has more of it, and we saw basically the same story with 8k redraw as well, with the iMac around twice as fast as the m1.

So we can safely say that, for the time being, people who are editing raw footage or doing heavy effects are much better off sticking with an intel iMac as long as it has a high performance dedicated GPU. So with all of that testing out of the way, I want to finish off with some conclusions that we can pull from this comparison. The fact that a 900 m1 Mac mini is trading blows with a 2 50 iMac that was just released three months ago is simply incredible, and it's doing it with four times less ram, which proves the point that apple's unified memory is in fact more efficient, like we saw in the photo editing test when comparing 16 gigs of ram on both machines' logic. Pro performance wasn't quite as good, but even 90 tracks is more than what most people will be running and the m1 ran them while being completely silent, which was a trend that I noticed throughout this entire video, and it makes sense because of the incredibly low wattage, the m1 chip uses only 13 watts for the CPU and 5.6 watts for the GPU now Xcode performance on the m1 was amazing, defying all odds and beating the iMac while having much less raw CPU power and even web browsing performance was significantly better and in terms of video editing in Final Cut Pro the m1, basically matched or outperformed the most expensive iMac in the most common formats that people shoot and edit hardcore raw footage and gaming performance were the only use cases where the m1 chip is not a great choice, but if you're not into either of those things, I can safely say that the m1 Mac mini is by far the much better purchase if you factor in the price, the low temps and the silent operation. Yes, software support isn't perfect right now, but it's only been two weeks, and we've already seen an overwhelming amount of improvements, which is very reassuring, and perhaps the best part knows that this is just the beginning.

The crazy performance per watt that we just witnessed in this video shows us that apple has a massive arsenal of performance that they can unleash in future higher end max, starting with the rumored 12 core m1x that we should be seeing next year. So to finish off this video, I want to say that, even though I had incredibly high expectations, I wasn't expecting the first m1 chip to perform this well compared to such an expensive iMac. But, as you just saw, it's actually a much better choice in terms of overall value. If you don't need that 5k display. So hopefully you guys enjoyed this video and if you did go ahead and click the circle about to subscribe, because we just got the best AMD Ryzen laptop in our office, and we're about to compare it to the m1 MacBook Pro and be sure to check out those two videos over there.

And we will see you in that next, video.

Source : Max Tech