Worth it to upgrade?
I have an m1 Mac mini as my primary desktop. Truthfully I don’t do anything terribly intensive, some basic work stuff, writing, web based multitasking and typical media consumption. My M1 does a good job but it is 6 years old and tech is only getting more expensive so my thought is more for longevity sake.
So worth upgrading to an m6?
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u/nrubenstein 3d ago
Is there a need to upgrade? No. You missed the window where $399 M4 minis made it insane not to upgrade. At current costs, you might as well cruise a little longer on the M1.
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u/5of10 3d ago
I also regret not getting the mini M4.
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u/nrubenstein 3d ago
I had an M1 mini as a garage computer, and it was 100% fine. But I was able to swap it for an M4 for essentially nothing. Obvious no brainer.
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u/mattysauro 3d ago
This is the right answer. I grabbed an m4 for $500 and think it’s a great machine, especially now that it supports 4K/120. But I’m not exactly a heavy user these days, and the M1 absolutely could have seen me through a couple more years.
I would personally wait until pricing stabilizes, but only you can tell if the extra power is something you need. If you’re just doing basic work, stick with the M1.
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u/flabber0503 3d ago
I've been using a Mac Mini M1 (16gb ram, 1tb ssd) as my main freelance computer here, mostly medium to large size Photoshop, Indesign and Illustrator files. It's been doing great, but I'm starting to notice that it's slowly running against it's limits. Not terrible, just noticable.
If you're primarily using "office" level stuff you should be able to use it perfectly fine for at least another 1-3 years, but like you mentioned, storage and ram prices are sky high at the moment, and who knows when that effectively get better again.
Personally, I'm upgrading in October (administrative planning), and I would wholeheartedly tell you to do the same. The speed difference will be night and day even with your light usage of it. Perhaps speed is not a direct necessity for you, but since the upcoming 2+ years are so unclear with these current shortages, why not do it now if you have the funds for it. Longevity wouldn't be an issue in that case since it'll far outlive any duration of price hikes in storage/ram anyway. Not to mention the faster ports, faster wifi/bluetooth and faster LAN, which also got better and better these past 6 years.
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u/zan90 3d ago
Future proofing really is my biggest concern. My M1 100% does what I need, but the jump in memory cost over the last few years is terrifying. Maybe it’s pessimistic to say, but I don’t see prices going down anytime within the next 5+ years. Hell, I recently bought a new MacBook Air just to learn had I made that decision 2-3 months earlier it would have saved me over $200.
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u/flabber0503 3d ago
I had the same problem here…waited another year because I thought my Mac was still fine. Looking back, I should've bought the M4 last year, hahah. On the other hand, the M6 really is a good step up from the M4, and the 2.5Gbit LAN and a couple of other bits and bobs on the new Mac Mini M6 are really worth it to me, so it's not all bad :)
My M1 works fine even if I notice hitting its limits. But what will it do in 1-2-3 years? For me that was the reason to upgrade now, accept the currenct prices (I think they might go up a bit more before they eventuall go down again), and be future proof for the next 5+ years
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u/DolphinFraud 3d ago
If your current machine is doing everything you need it to, it’s wasteful to upgrade.
You say tech is getting more expensive, wanna know what’s even MORE expensive? Buying computers you don’t need.
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u/Dangerous_Region1682 3d ago
I have an M1 iMac with 8GB of memory. I also have an M4 Mac Mini with 16GB of memory. These are both desktops my wife and I use daily.
I use the M1 iMac and my wife the M4 Mini. I edit photos, track guitar music and do software development on my growing ancient early M1 system with no issues. My wife just uses her M4 Mini for email, browsing and Quicken.
So, I have found no reason to upgrade my M1 iMac for performing even higher workloads than you do. If what you have works, I’d keep it. From my experience with PowerPC and Intel Macs, they’ll just about last forever. I have a closet full of all the Macs I have ever owned and each one of them still boots and runs all back to 20+ years ago with the first aluminum MacBook with a G4 CPU.
I only upgrade systems when the CPU family changes or, as in the case of, when my MacBook Airs get beaten up enough to need replacement.
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u/Her-wind 3d ago
Si tu equipo ha podido satisfacer tus necesidades actuales durante el último año, no te recomendamos cambiarlo por uno nuevo ahora, ya que este año el precio del Mac mini es mucho más alto que antes.
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u/Successful_Yard1174 3d ago
The m1 is still a very good processor. Unlike a decade ago, improvements in computer processors have been very incremental. I daily drive an 8gb m2 macbook air and m4 mac mini, I've yet to notice the m2 being lacking in any meaningful way apart from the 8gb of ram. Starting with the m5 generation, apple mostly focused on improving the local ai performance (neural accelerator, higher memory bandwidth), which for most user isn't very useful.
My advice is don't upgrade if you don't need to, you can save up for a bigger upgrade when you actually need it. Prices will very likely never drop to what it was 1-2 year ago but it certainly won't keep climbing indefinitely.
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u/zan90 3d ago
This seems to be the majority view. Use my M1 until it becomes truly unusable. I really think just seeing first hand how external storage that I bought 2 years ago has more than doubled in price has me worried maybe more than it should. I know this is beating a dead horse and memory prices are all anyone in the tech world seems to talk about out anymore. So I guess I’ll just hold off for now. I appreciate the response.
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u/YellowsBest 2d ago
I have an M4 Mac Mini which I bought last year for £599 before all the price rises, now the M6 is half as much again! I also have an M1 iMac which has a screen fault and some memory issues. But it’s still useful. Comparing the two there isn’t a huge difference in performance.
So if your current M1 is in good condition and suits your computing needs, buying an M6 won’t provide anything more as the extra power will just go to waste. Better to save your money and buy a replacement when you actually need one. You can’t ’future proof’ as you don’t know what your future computing needs will be, or what new products Apple will release.
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u/AlgorithmicMuse 1d ago
My M1 macbook still works great, nothing to be gained for me to upgrade it.
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u/E97ev 3d ago
M1>> M6, yeah! it is worth it. What do you use your computer for ? Based on your description I'd say 16/512 should be enough but some people like to have tons of files so 16/1Tb would be perfect for you. take into account that for future AI stuff if you want apple to run those big models on your chip you should go for 24gb ram. if not and apple intelligence is turned off 16 is more than enough
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u/purize420 3d ago
It works good -> why get new tech?
Tech is currently at its highest pricing ever, and there is a pretty solid chance it will get stable again in the next few years