Last month we tracked an all-time low price on Apple's M1 Mac mini, and that deal has now returned on Amazon. You can get the 256GB M1 Mac mini for $569.99, down from $699.00. You won't see this deal price until you add the Mac mini to your cart and an automatic coupon worth $99.01 is applied to the order.
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This deal remains the best price we've ever tracked for the M1 Mac mini. The Mac mini is shipped and sold directly by Amazon, with delivery as soon as June 10 - 13 for most places in the United States.
The M1 Mac mini was introduced in November 2020, and is the first Mac mini to include Apple's M1 chip. The M1 in the Mac mini has an 8-core CPU with four high-efficiency cores and four high-performance cores along with an integrated GPU that has 8 cores.
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Top Rated Comments
With that said after using the 8 GB MBA for a year I can honestly say the ram was rarely ever an issue. Many reviewers will say the same thing. The M1 can do a lot with 8 GB of ram and the super fast storage makes the swap file act like a secondary source of ram without much noticeable slow down.
If one is a content creator on a daily basis 16 GB might be nice to have but I wouldn't really call it a must. Casual YouTube video editing is perfectly fine on the MBA or Mac mini. The M1 is really a stunning chip. More than enough for 95% of users out there. 8GB is also more than enough for most users out there.
I still have a MBA with 16 GB my work provides and honestly it doesn't feel all that much different than my 8GB model. I develop cross platform mobile apps for work and having a ton of development tools and applications open does eat into the ram pretty quickly. I did the same type of work on my 8 GB MBA as well without any issues at all. So really I have mixed feelings on the subject of 16 GB. I'm not entirely sure its really needed.
One last thing. After a year of heavy swap file usage on my MBA 8GB the usage cycles for the life of the drive was between 1% and 2%. There is zero concern about wearing out the flash storage with heavy swap file usage. Many reviewers are finding the same thing and recommend lower ram amounts to save money or use towards storage instead. The larger the storage the faster it will be making the swap file even faster.
For those on a budget I highly recommend the base Mac mini. This sale price makes the point of entry very affordable for what you get. A desktop PC for $570 would likely be a turd compared to this.
BTW, I'm still rocking a mac mini from 2011 that is dire need of being replaced. It did a good job of serving me for over a decade.