expired
Costco Members: Apple Mac mini (Late 2020): M1 CPU w/ 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD
$600
$670
10% off
+ Free Shippingat Costco Wholesale
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+ Free Shippingat Costco WholesaleDeal Details
Costco Wholesale has for its Members: Apple Mac mini w/ Apple M1 Chip (MGNR3LL/A, Late 2020) on sale for $599.99. Shipping is free.
Thanks to community member kardiackidneykids for finding this deal.
Specs:
Thanks to community member kardiackidneykids for finding this deal.
Specs:
- Apple M1 Chip 8-core CPU (4 performance cores & 4 efficiency cores)
- 8GB Unified Memory
- 256GB Solid State Drive
- 8-core GPU
- 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 & Bluetooth 5.0
- macOS Big Sur
- Ports:
- 2x Thunderbolt / USB 4
- 2x USB A
- 1x HDMI 2
- 1x Gigabit Ethernet Port
- 1x 3.5 mm Headphone Jack
Editor's Notes
Written by qwikwit | Staff- About this deal:
- Price matches this Frontpage Deal from February that received +161 votes from the community.
- Ratings/Reviews:
- PC Mag gives the new Mac mini a 4.5/5 (excellent) rating
- "With a new lower starting price and Apple's straining-at-the-leash M1 CPU, the Mac mini is far and away the most polished, potent tiny desktop in its class."
- PC Mag gives the new Mac mini a 4.5/5 (excellent) rating
Community Notes
About the Poster
Deal Details
Community Notes
About the Poster
Costco Wholesale has for its Members: Apple Mac mini w/ Apple M1 Chip (MGNR3LL/A, Late 2020) on sale for $599.99. Shipping is free.
Thanks to community member kardiackidneykids for finding this deal.
Specs:
Thanks to community member kardiackidneykids for finding this deal.
Specs:
- Apple M1 Chip 8-core CPU (4 performance cores & 4 efficiency cores)
- 8GB Unified Memory
- 256GB Solid State Drive
- 8-core GPU
- 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 & Bluetooth 5.0
- macOS Big Sur
- Ports:
- 2x Thunderbolt / USB 4
- 2x USB A
- 1x HDMI 2
- 1x Gigabit Ethernet Port
- 1x 3.5 mm Headphone Jack
Editor's Notes
Written by qwikwit | Staff- About this deal:
- Price matches this Frontpage Deal from February that received +161 votes from the community.
- Ratings/Reviews:
- PC Mag gives the new Mac mini a 4.5/5 (excellent) rating
- "With a new lower starting price and Apple's straining-at-the-leash M1 CPU, the Mac mini is far and away the most polished, potent tiny desktop in its class."
- PC Mag gives the new Mac mini a 4.5/5 (excellent) rating
Community Voting
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How many browser tabs do you keep open?
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The ones who have never used it and are just guessing say it isn't enough.
Now, everything is soldered, so upgrades are impossible. To get 16 or 32 MB of RAM or a bigger SSD, you need to pay 3 times the price up front of what upgrades would cost for the same configuration, even if you don't realize the need now.
No thanks, Apple.
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451 Comments
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Im not hating, i want info for purchase
https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-ma...630-512gb#
And that unit's RAM CAN be user-upgraded, unlike with M1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYw85om
Note that if you do any graphics rendering, there is no separate graphics chip on the new units. Even with M1, that essentially doubles the time to do that compared to Intel-powered units equipped with one.
Those who say it's not enough without even explanation are just ignorant.
You can crash an 8GB m1 Mac just loading 40-ish high-res-image-heavy tabs in Safari, which I've done many times while shopping for furniture
Just because you personally don't exceed the ceiling of 8GB doesn't mean others do
That said this is still a great deal and MANY people can get by fine w/ 8GB
Not for nothing... Bit harsh, bud. Even graphic designers today need to reconsider their attitudes with the release of new gpus and processors. M1 can have a built in gpu "equivalent" to a 1650... But thats not even competition for even a plain jane 3060.
Im just looking for a replacement for a computer, not criticism from a guy in denial. I work hard for my money like everyone else, and want my $ to stretch so i dont have to save up again in 3 years
Judging by past ram arguments in iPhones and iPads that have failed to hold up, I'm a huge proponent of ram as it seems to be the most common limiting factor for longevity. Even a decade old Sandybridge system with upgradable ram slots and ssd will easily keep up performance for daily use today.
Of course I could be completely wrong, but im curious to see how these M1 systems hold up over time, or if they will become useless while the same people that upgrade every other year argue about not needing more ram in future systems again.
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If you're coming from a life of Windows you may find certain things about OS X super new and fresh like the near flawless HiDPI rendering if you have a compatible monitor, the ability to smart zoom while web browsing, and a handful of other treats, but overall you can do the same things on both w/ some limitations ( there are a handful of things like medium to high end gaming and many professional applications that OS X simply can't do, also using more than 1-2 external monitors on M1 systems ), but for the most part you can do anything most people want to do on a computer on either OS.
The m1 chip benchmarks really really well with very low power usage so that's very exciting for laptops, the m1 laptop battery life is INCREDIBLE and the major benefit of the m1 chip in my opinion ( as it's too limited for many professional use cases, heck you can't even use 2 external monitors at the same time with any of the m1 laptops )
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The truth is, though, that 8GB is easy to break ( I've done it on multiple M1 systems just by browsing w/ Safari, the Mini I bought on release day and my mother's m1 Air ), Apple knows it, and they are masterful w/ their engineered obsolescence, figuring out as many ways as they can to slow down older devices ( my 12 Pro Max already feels markedly slower than when I first bought it ) without being sued ( though to be clear they have been sued for this and were able to claim they were dramatically slowing down old iPhones in the name of battery health lololol ).
Sooner than later, OS X will magically start needing more RAM than 8GB and all of these systems will "magically" degrade in performance. I saw this so often in college w/ people trying to get by w/ MacBooks that were a few years older, they would spend their entire lives waiting.
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At that point you may ask yourself why spending $600 on a PC, when you can achieve the same usage results with a FireStick 4k for $40. Or, if you are so inclined into Apple ecosystem - with a $200 latest generation AppleTV. Which by the way has exactly the same internals as this macMini, but costs $200 or less.
At this point, from a functionality perspective, I would either consider the very base MBAir for $800 or less (through corporate or student discount), or AppleTV. There is really no sense to spend my money on any other Apple PC. I am OK if my employer buys me fully loaded MBookPro for $3,000 - I happily claim that is a great machine, but I wouldn't spend my own money.
Thankfully, I had an old backup. And a Windows machine. I had to use that, along with MacDrive, to rescue my recent data and restore it to Mojave. That's just wrong. It is impossible to restore an entire image with Big Sur or specific files, unlike being a breeze with OS X.
"Mac Vista" is NOT ready for prime time. Not even close. It's like a Tesla with Ford Pinto idiot lights. Replete with a figurative exploding gas tank. When it goes bad, it's a disaster.
You can crash an 8GB m1 Mac just loading 40-ish high-res-image-heavy tabs in Safari, which I've done many times while shopping for furniture
Just because you personally don't exceed the ceiling of 8GB doesn't mean others do
That said this is still a great deal and MANY people can get by fine w/ 8GB
I also don't know what kind of high res photos you are viewing but that seems like a very specific use case. Especially to view 40+ tabs at a time. That just sounds plain inefficient.
You even said yourself it's plenty for most people. I only stated it was more than adequate for me and I wouldn't expect it to be a problem for most home users
So, if you can buy a reasonable Intel machine say an i5 with upgradable/replacable storage and memory, you can get the same experience. I tried it side by side with a clone configuration on an Intel Hackintosh. Even with a slower SSD, once the apps get into the SSD cache, the difference disappears.
The M1 is a better chip, no doubt but its capability is not expressed in anything you would do with just 8 GB of memory.
In fact, the M1 was significantly slower doing video transcoding with Handbrake because the SSD on the M1 mini doesn't do well with sustained reads and writes in parallel. And this was in a 16GB Mini. So, the M1 power wasn't utilized fully.
So, it is not a given that M1 will be faster for your applications. And the current downsides for buying an M1 far outweigh the benefits unless bragging rights are all you are looking for. This is why I returned it.
People who say it's enough probably run only 1 main app at a time and just a few browser tab in the background and they probably have good user habit of closing down stuffs. But if you do not run any heavy app but open a couple dozens of browser tabs, especially if those tabs include demanding sites with a lot of tracking going on, you may experience the occasional stutter while a window machine with slower cpu but 16gb won't have this problem.
I have friend who is still using a window machine with 4gb ram and still be productive. They are just used to the speed. But if I have to use that machine it will be torture for me.
If you look at the price of pre-built windows pc currently thou, $600 for this one is still a good deal if you don't ever need discrete GPU. It's just not upgradable. Good for a secondary or guest pc. Costco also add 1 additional year warranty for you. If you use Costco Citi card, you may get another 2 year.
So this is the only M1 machine i would buy because the risk is low with this price. If I need a stronger Apple machine, I will wait for the next gen.
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Now, everything is soldered, so upgrades are impossible. To get 16 or 32 MB of RAM or a bigger SSD, you need to pay 3 times the price up front of what upgrades would cost for the same configuration, even if you don't realize the need now.
No thanks, Apple.
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