The mini couldn't come close the NUC's PCIe x4 SSD or the ThinkCentre's 500GB, 7,200-rpm hard drive, which registered a blazing 309 and 138 MBps, respectively. While this rate is comparable to that scored by the iMac's identical hard drive (38.5 MBps), the Mac mini performed about half as quickly as the 69 MBps all-in-one desktop average. Our Mac mini's 500GB, 5,400-rpm hard drive copied 4.97GB of mixed media in 2 minutes and 28 seconds, resulting in a file-transfer rate of 34.4 MBps. While it wasn't quite as fast as the NUC (5:02), the ThinkCentre (4:31) or its iMac cousin (3:49), the mini edged out our 6:26 all-in-one PC average. The Mac mini performed almost identically to Apple's 2014 iMac all-in-one (5,464), which packs the same processor as the mini but with 8GB of RAM.Īpple's mini computer had little trouble with our spreadsheet test, matching 20,000 names to their addresses in 6 minutes and 17 seconds.

This score is lower than the Intel NUC's 6,039, (1.6-GHz, 5th-gen Core i5, 8GB of RAM), the ThinkCentre M83's 8,522 (2-GHz Core i5-4590T, 8GB of RAM) and the 7,013 all-in-one PC average. The Mac mini scored 5,443 on the Geekbench 3 test, which measures a machine's overall performance.

When playing around in GarageBand while simultaneously streaming HD video from Netflix and YouTube, I didn't experience a hint of slowdown. Packing a 4th-generation, 1.4-GHz Intel Core i5 processor and 4GB of RAM, our Mac mini handled basic entertainment and productivity tasks with ease. However, while its rear-facing ports help maintain the sleek computer's seamless design, they sacrifice some convenience I would have preferred to have access to a headphone slot and at least one USB port in the front. The Mac mini's port selection includes everything you'd expect from a modern PC, and the Thunderbolt 2 connections add some welcome productivity options. (Image credit: Jeremy Lips / Tom's Guide)

Apple 2012 mac mini specs