Mac mini (Late 2009)

Performance increases

The Mac mini line has always been about size and value, rather than performance. The early-2009 models were prime examples: while they were the first minis that were truly capable of handling the iLife suite and playing processor- and graphics-intensive games such as Call of Duty 4, they performed more like MacBooks than MacPros--or even than iMacs. So even though the late-2009 minis are all about increasing performance, you shouldn't expect to be wowed by the newest models' power.

To test these improvements, we ran our latest suite of benchmarks on both new models, as well as on the new $599 model upgraded to 4GB of RAM; the $799 early-2009 model; and the most-recent pre-2009 Mac mini, the 1.83GHz 2007 model, upgraded to 2GB of RAM (our benchmarks require 2GB). We didn't test the $599 early-2009 mini this time around, as once you upgrade it to 2GB of RAM, the only difference between it and the $799 model is the hard drive. (Note that these new tests aren't directly comparable to the ones we ran back in March, and we're still ironing out the details of our Speedmark suite, so we'll have more benchmarks going forward.)

The new Mac mini models, in their stock configurations, offer decent performance increases over the early-2009 models. While the margin of improvement varied depending on the test, comparing the overall time it took to complete the 17 time-based tests in our battery, the new $599 (2.26GHz) model took about 7 percent less time than the older $799 (2.0GHz) model, and the new $799 (2.53GHz) mini took 16 percent less time than its predecessor. Upping the new $599 to the same 4GB of RAM as the $799 model closed the gap a bit: that build-to-order configuration, which costs $699, took about 10 percent less time to complete the tasks than the previous $799 mini.

Where didn't the new Mac minis improve significantly on their immediate predecessors The early-2009 Mac mini we tested actually bested the new 2.26GHz model--and tied the new 2.53GHz mini--in our Finder Duplicate test, which involves duplicating a 1GB folder of files. The older model also slightly outperformed the new 2.26GHz mini in our Movie Import, Finder Unzip Archive, and iPhoto Import tests. These results are likely explained by a slightly faster hard drive in the older $799 model, as these particular tests are largely dependent on hard-drive speed. The new models also showed no improvement, compared to the early-2009 model with 2GB of RAM, in our graphics-card-dependent Call of Duty test.