I Bought A Mac Mini M4!

Due to the recent Claude fervor, I'd been having a difficult time finding a Mac Mini to replace my base M1 Mini.

Maybe a week ago, I found one that was a 16GB memory 512GB diskspace M4, for $900, before tax.  I canceled the order because I wanted to use the money for something else.  I was disappointed because I was waiting a LONG time for that unit - someone has been buying up ALL the refurbs on the Apple Refurbished store.  Everytime they'd restock, the items would be out of stock within the hour.

Today, someone posted on the r/macmini subreddit that there was a bunch of machines at the refurb store.  What's nice is they pasted each unit's specs in their post, along with the links to each.  Instead of having to search on the website, I chose which I wanted, from the reddit post and immediately commenced to buy it.

I bought a 16 GB / 1 TB Mini M4, for $908!  This will be the latest M version in my inventory.  My MBP is an M3 (bought new, April 2025).  Between the two, I'm not sure which is the strongest.  The MBP is a Pro model.  This new Mini is not.  It matters not which is stronger, though, because both will be far more capable than my base M1 systems.

The trend for Minis is to buy a bigger SSD, but with giant surge of SSD and RAM prices, it'll be a LONG time before those prices will lower to pre-surge levels.  Plus, I hate hacking things...I'd rather keep this system OEM.

Some folks were holding out for an M5.  F that...why wait?  I'm not trying to chase the latest M model.  I'm going from M1 to M4, so I'm happy enough...the topper is that I got into a 1 TB while staying under $1K.  Most folks would focus on additional RAM, but for my use cases, 16 GB of RAM is adequate...I also wasn't trying to bust the bank with this.

I'll soon be packing up the M1 Mini and either gifting it to someone or selling it (it won't draw a lot of money).  

I also have a base M1 MBA - I'd been thinking of selling it but found that it carries extremely well when traveling, so I'll keep it for travel duty.

The new Mini will arrive Thursday. 

UPDATE (4/8/2026):  The Mini M1 has been replaced!  I'll speak more of the replacement effort soon.

Which Mac Will Be My Next System?

I've always been curious about the Mac Studio and I'd initially had that on my list of must-have systems until the new Mac Mini M4s came out.

I now have tentative plans to buy the Mac Mini M4.  I want to use that system to heavy-lift creation of my videos, as well as to maybe utilize it for housing of my Docker containers.

I love my current M1 Mini but it is a base model and I'm somewhat limited in the above-mentioned use cases.  While I can crunch video footage, I usually have to kill all other resource-intensive running processes when doing that.  I've not even tried to use Docker containers on that system, since running multiple containers usually requires a somewhat robust system (plus there's some system overhead since Docker can't natively run on Mac systems).

The real difference between the Studio and Mini would be ports and connectivity to peripherals, which would be extremely beneficial.  

As well, you can better spec out a Studio, as the platform is designed to be more open-ended as it relates to performance.  UPDATE:  Nope!!  I was wrong - I can spec out more RAM and undercut the price (drastically) of a somewhat similarly spec'd Studio.

So, my dilemma is, which one would be better for me, a high spec (lots of memory) Mini or a decently spec'd Studio?