Can a Mac mini replace my MacBook Pro effectively?

FWIW, I have a 512GB internal drive and keep all my data on external drives and only put applications on my internal.

Locating things like Music, Photos, Movies libraries on external drives is very easy and can reduce internal storage drastically.

For example, in my case, I have 105 apps installed (not including Apple utilities), and I do a lot of photography work. I keep all data, photos, and Apple app libraries on external drives and I use only 250GB of a 512 GB drive. I have a single high speed SSD for work in progress projects and the rest of the data is on slower storage.

Also, for things like movie streaming and music and basic archiving, you don't even need SSDs as 7200 RPM, 3.5" hard drives deliver more than fast enough speeds for these and in a lot of cases 5400RPM drives will suffice. You can get ton's more storage for much lower cost than SSD for these uses. Considering even quality 4K video streams at 30-40 Mbits/sec, a hard disk drive is more than easy enough. I mean BluRay drives deliver very high quality video and they are much slower than any hard disk drive.

I will say 512GB is about as low as you may want to go unless you want to closely manage a 256GB drive and all the app caches, libraries, etc.

On the flip side, I will say spend your money instead on as much RAM as you can afford. Apps and operating systems will only get more and more RAM hungry as time goes on.

In my experience & opinion, yes at least 1TB. I have always outfitted my Macs with 1TB drives (at least ever since 1TB's were available) and have never regretted it. On my desktop iMacs, for example, I have at times come close to 750-800GB usage and I'm glad to have the extra 'headroom.'

And if you poke around the communities for awhile you fill find quite a few users who bought Macs with 256GB or 512GB drives and found out the hard way it wasn't enough capacity.

In your case, knowing that you have experience at 750GB+ and want to use the mini as a Plex server, I'd go with a 1TB internal SSD plus add an external SSD for extra capacity and another for backup.

You should always purchase the most expensive and fully equipped computer you can afford even if it means mortgaging your house and selling your family into slavery. I do it all the time.

By all means buy an M4 with a 1TB drive if you enjoy being ripped off!

That increase of 750GB will cost you £400 thereby nearly doubling the cost of the mini.

A plugin 1TB NVMe (SSD) from a top manufacturer will cost you well under £100 . . . I even got a 2TB one for around £100 a few months ago . . . Sandisk 2TB NVMe £86 plus Beikell USB-C enclosure £15.

+3, yes a 1tb MM would be fine. Consider 24 gb of RAM too.

EDIT: Sorry Servant of Cats, this was intended for the OP.

The whole idea of a 256GB SSD is that you don't store anything on it.

All your photos, videos and other large files go on your external drive(s).

If you purchase the base model you are getting a bargain but once you add anything to it (at a minimum of £200) you are just getting another expensive Mac.

Additionally, what performance improvements does anyone expect from upping the 16GB RAM to 24GB RAM at a cost of £200 . . . it's debatable whether doubling it to 32GB RAM would make any difference.

I have never had more than 8GB RAM until I got the M4 and have never encountered any problems even under the most intensive usage.

Just seen your question about the 256GB SSD.

Pretty well everyone else will tell you it's not enough and also that you need more RAM.

Unless you are a busy professional using your computer all day long and multi-tasking, you do not need anything more than the basic £599 model.

Admittedly a larger internal SSD would be nice if it cost no more but by using external drives its size is immaterial assuming you aren't one of these people who have apps taking up hundreds of gigabytes.

I have gone a step further and don't use the internal SSD at all.

For the last 2 years I have had the macOS and all the apps of my M2 and M4 running off an external NVMe.

The NVMe is the boot drive. It is extremely easy to setup, there is no performance hit and the only "disadvantages" are that you can't run Apple Intelligence or ApplePay, neither of which I use. If I did I would simply boot into the mini's internal drive when required.

I would forget about fingerprint identification . . . it's just a gimmick!

I agree whole heartedly with MartinR on the 1 TB internal SSD. You can add external drives or SSDs for storage, Photoshop cache files and large projects like Photos or Music libraries. I use the following for budgetary reasons with my 10 core, 15 GB RAM and 1 TB storage Mac Mini M4:

OWC (MacSales.com) is considered the premier 3rd party hardware provider for Macs.

Just checked on Amazon and both Crucial and Kingston have 2TB NVMes going for under £95. You will also need a USB-C enclosure for around £15.

Admittedly they aren't the fastest, highest specced drives on the planet but you will never notice the difference.

FWIW I have only owned computers for the last 24 years . . . 6 Macs and one Toshiba laptop.

During that time I have purchased 22 various HDDs, SSDs and NVMes, all of which I still have.

In that time only one drive has failed and that was in an eMac (2004) a couple of months after purchase.

I am not saying that going from my experience Mac drives are the least reliable . . . that would be foolish but I am saying that it's safest (and cheapest!) to keep the bulk of your files on external drives that can still be used on another machine in the event of the computer malfunctioning.

My original LaCie FW HDDs are gigantic monstrosities weighing a ton but modern NVMes are featherweight and no bigger than a deck of cards.

The basic M4 with a 256GB SSD is only £599 but can be bought elsewhere for £530.

The 512GB one you have looked at is £200 more (for those extra 256GB). So a 1TB Apple drive will cost £400 more than the base model . . . I have the base model M2 and M4 which are used for video editing (1080p and 4K) with FCP and Resolve and more than adequate for the task.

You can purchase perfectly good wired or wireless keyboards and mice for under £20 the pair.

A 4K 27" monitor from a good brand (eg. Philips) will cost around £180 and an excellent webcam in the form of the Logitech 270 can be had for under £20.

If you buy Apple you are literally paying a premium of up to 10 times more.

Anyway, it's a free country and your cash is to do with as you please.

Incidentally, I have always bought iMacs (largest available and most of which I still have) until I saw the light and moved onto minis.

Camping Doc wrote:

I am still a bit nervous about 256 Meg.

I think you mean GB. The cheapest M4 Mini has a 256 GB (not MB) SSD.

I would suggest getting at least 512 GB of internal storage. I'm using a Mac with that amount, and the internal SSD is already half full. This is with the Music and TV libraries on an external drive. The system Photos library takes up ~43 GB, and it's still on the internal drive, but if I had a 256 GB SSD and it was already at the 210 GB mark (or so), that wouldn't leave much room for storing anything else.

Entering your requirements at Mac - Which Mac is best for me? - Apple might help.

Just to add a bit of info about performance, from 2017 my main computer was a 27" iMac used for everything including video editing.

In 2023 I bought the base model M2 mini just for a laugh.

It was at least twice as fast as my iMac, rendering and exporting videos in half the time. I'm rather pedantic and did side by side tests!

All this was achieved whilst booting the mini from a cheap SATA SSD connected by USB 3.0 with a really slow speed of 360MB/s.

Earlier this year for another laugh I bought the basic M4 and confirmed that was 50% faster than the M2 and therefore 3 times faster than the iMac.

So you can reasonably expect the base 256GB mini to be 2 - 3 times faster than your old MBP.

The third laugh I had was when my iMac became a doorstop after the power unit suddenly failed. Luckily I had the 2 minis (amongst other Macs) as I had no intention of throwing good money at old tech, so my iMac is now a beautiful piece of aluminium and glass sculpture sitting there to remind me never to purchase an all-in-one machine again.

Don't forget to budget an appropriate external display for the M4 Mac mini and an external Time Machine drive for scheduled backups. My M4 Mac Mini Pro has a 1TB internal drive, 64 GB RAM, and has an LG 32-inch 4K HDMI display. I use a Crucial X9 SSD for my Time Machine backups.