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Apple Education Discount: Apple Mac Mini w/ M2 Chip Pre-Order: 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD

$499
$599.00
+ Free Shipping
+251 Deal Score
280,397 Views
Apple via Apple Education Store is offering eligible Students/Educators: Apple Mac Mini Pre-Order w/ M2 Chip for $499. Shipping is free.

Thanks to community member Undisclosed for sharing this deal.

Note, this item will be available starting 1/24/23. You must qualify for the education discount (more information) to get this price.

Specs
  • Apple M2 Octa-Core Processor (4x high-performance + 4x high-efficiency)
  • 10-Core Integrated GPU
  • 8GB Unified Memory
  • 256GB Integrated NVMe PCIe Solid State Drive
  • 802.11ax WiFi 6E / Bluetooth 5.3
  • Ports:
    • 2x USB Type-A
    • 2x Thunderbolt 4
    • 1x HDMI
    • 1x Headphone Jack
    • 1x Gigabit Ethernet

Editor's Notes & Price Research

Written by
  • About this deal:
    • This offer is $100 lower (16.69% savings) than the $599 list price.
    • See forum thread for additional discussion.
  • About this product:
    • Mac mini with M2 supports up to two displays.
  • About this store:
    • You have 14 calendar days to return an item from the date you received it. See the return policy details here.
Good Deal?

Original Post

Written by
Edited January 17, 2023 at 11:19 AM by
Apple just released the new M2 Mac Mini for $599, however Education Users can get it for $499 which is $100 off the Regular price.

https://www.apple.com/us-edu/shop...c/mac-mini
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Created 01-17-2023 at 08:29 AM by Undisclosed
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Deal
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Community Wiki

Last Edited by dclive February 20, 2023 at 03:08 PM
Anyone can purchase from the Apple Edu Store. One simply googles "Apple Edu Store", then purchases goods from the store and picks it up or has the goods shipped normally. There is no verification currently. Apple's stated qualifications are to be a teacher, a student in college, or a member of several other education-facing groups.

Apple's SSD "maximum" speeds on the new M2 Mini is as follows:

1500MB/s for 256GB mini; 3000MB/s for 512GB/1TB mini.
3000MB/s for 512GB mini Pro; 6000 MB/s for 1TB++ mini Pro.

And for the vast, vast majority, since random access speed is vastly more important than maximum transfer speeds, none of this matters at all; random access speeds are similar on all models, and are faster than the M1 models before these. If you have a day job where you copy data from the internal drive to an external Thunderbolt 4 high-speed SSD, and you do that 8x5 as part of a job, all day every day, look at the 1TB Pro models. Otherwise, ignore all of this; it simply doesn't matter.

Compared to the previous gen M1 mini, the M2 mini is perhaps 10-15% faster in single core operations and about the same in multicore operations. The graphics operations, for some things, can be up to 40% faster, a significant jump, which is useful in games and in some video and ML applications that use the GPU cores.

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Featured Comments

After reading all the discussions about ram amount, I'm just curious how many browser tabs people keep open at a time during a typical day.

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How many browser tabs do you keep open?

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I have a M1 Mac Mini with 16GB Ram, I'm a photographer and I've been running out of system Memory fairly often recently due to working between several applications. I'll have Adobe Bridge open with a session open, will open the a few raw files in Photoshop. I might be doing a head swap so there's 3 files open, in Photoshop, then I want to do a few face edits in Portrait Pro Studio Max, so I open that and I get an error that I've run out of application memory (RAM) oh and I have FIrefox open with 56 tabs open as well. So I usually either close Bridge until I'm done working in Portrait Pro, and then after I've saved the file I'll close Portrait Pro and re-open Bridge, and that works, but it's mostly just due to my messy multitasking workflow running multiple RAM intensive programs while shooting RAW files with a 50MP sensor.

So, as for me, I just ordered a Mac Mini M2 pro with the RAM upgraded to 32GB.

So if you run programs like I do, and you have Illustrator, InDesign, and Premiere or Final Cut Pro all running simultaneously with chrome or firefox and perhaps a music streaming service open too, then you might want to go for the 32GB option. If however, you work in a only 2 or maybe 3 programs simultaneously you should be fine, the most bang for your buck is gonna be the M2 with the 16GB RAM option, and just close the extra programs you're not working if you should ever run out of RAM. The Video programs can be kind of RAM heavy so if you or your church has the budget I'd go with the M2 pro with the 32GB of RAM, but you could probably do what you want to with the M2 with 16GB so long as you only work in Premiere and and After Effects and don't have Photoshop and InDesign also running, because I think each of those programs requires about 4GB of RAM when you have a project open in them.

Okay so I just checked my activity monitory and with Photoshop minimized and running in the background with no open projects it's using 1.35GB of RAM. I opened one 13MB (yes megabyte) JPEG file and the RAM use for Photoshop jumped to 4.24GB. I've closed that 13MB file and Photoshop is still using 4.14GB of RAM. I also have a session open in Bridge, and just looking through the photos in the session it's using up 3.45GB of RAM. Now I like to open a Raw image in Camera Raw before opening it in Photoshop. So if I open up one of my RAW files in Camera RAW (which is still a subprogram of Bridge) Bridge's RAM jumps to 6GB, if I pull a few sliders and do a single subject selection Adobe Bridge then takes up 8.94GB of RAM So you see where I can quickly run out of RAM.

My guess is you'll want the 32GB option, but you could make do with 16GB if you have to.

I hope this long winded comment can help you (and other creatives) in your decision making process. 😊
FYI..Base model M2 still supports only 2 monitors , which still should be good enough for most users .Also HDMI 2.1 not supported on base M2.

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rocketman80
01-17-2023 at 08:46 AM.
01-17-2023 at 08:46 AM.
This seems like an amazing deal
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spec2
01-17-2023 at 08:50 AM.
01-17-2023 at 08:50 AM.
The new M2 mini is quite impressive. Price cut and better features than the M1 model.
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Joined Sep 2012
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mars_88888
01-17-2023 at 08:52 AM.

Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank mars_88888

01-17-2023 at 08:52 AM.
I wonder if this has the same problem as MacBook Air 256gb with 8gb.
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santy83
01-17-2023 at 09:00 AM.
01-17-2023 at 09:00 AM.
Apple waited until well after the holidays to clear out inventory before releasing this.

Incredible value for what you get.
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rocketman80
01-17-2023 at 09:19 AM.
01-17-2023 at 09:19 AM.
Quote from spec2 :
The new M2 mini is quite impressive. Price cut and better features than the M1 model.
Yea thats what I'm also comparing it to.
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Joined Sep 2014
price glitch or no deal
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AquafinaNuggets
01-17-2023 at 09:38 AM.

Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank AquafinaNuggets

01-17-2023 at 09:38 AM.
Add in an extra 8gbs of Ram and you got a beast of a little machine that'll easily last you 5+ years for $680.

Genuinely shocked by this to be honest, I thought after the whole M2 Air situation that they're gonna go back to being stingy but nah this is an amazing deal and it's going to be a huge seller for Apple.
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phatparents
01-17-2023 at 09:39 AM.
01-17-2023 at 09:39 AM.
Thanks for posting. Been waiting for this. And for those who are shopping around …. Costco still only offers the M1 Mac mini (Hopefully they will offer the M2 later in the month when it starts shipping)
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phatparents
01-17-2023 at 09:42 AM.
01-17-2023 at 09:42 AM.
Trying to figure out a "cashback" deal…. Discover and Chase credit cards both offer 5% back at grocery stores right now… Could you buy an Apple gift card at the grocery store, get 5% back, and use it to buy the Mac mini? Not sure if gift cards get the 5% back…
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tgenius
01-17-2023 at 09:49 AM.
01-17-2023 at 09:49 AM.
I think Costco is going to be tough to beat this price. You can imagine Costco will probably list it at $550 or $570, but if you are able to get the $499 pricing from apple education will be tough to beat.

I checked for humors sake and trade in on a Mac Mini is only recycle if its older than the 2018 model hahaha
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slicktomorrow
01-17-2023 at 09:51 AM.
01-17-2023 at 09:51 AM.
Quote from mars_88888 :
I wonder if this has the same problem as MacBook Air 256gb with 8gb.
Can you elaborate on what problem?
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