If you are thinking of buying an older Mac mini and wonder how much of a difference there is between a Mac Mini i5 and i7 then we have run a test on the following machines used as a Pro Tools Computer.

• Apple Mac Mini i7 2.3GHz Late 2012

• Apple Mac Mini i5 2.5 GHz Late 2012

As you can see the Mac Mini i5 has a faster clock speed but still the Mac Mini i7 outperforms the Mac Mini i5 by some margin.

Apple Mac Mini i5 2.5 GHz Late 2012

• 64 Audio tracks reached without buffer errors

• A mono audio track would record without issue along with 64 audio tracks in playback

• Instrument tracks were then added

• 16 MIDI tracks with an instance of AIR Boom running with MIDI data

• The session would not play at H/W buffer sizes of under 1024, once settled it seemed to run at 1024 without any further issues. The session could be set to 2048 samples if this was required and at this setting the session ran without issue.

Apple Mac Mini i7 2.3GHz Late 2012

• 128 Audio tracks reached without buffer errors

• A mono audio track would record without issue along with 64 audio tracks in playback

• Instrument tracks were then added

• 30 MIDI tracks with an instance of AIR Boom running with MIDI data

• The session would not play at H/W buffer sizes of under 1024, once settled it seemed to run at 1024 without any further issues. The session could be set to 2048 samples if this was required and at this setting the session ran without issue.

You can read the Mac Mini i5 and the Mac Mini i7 tests in full.

As we've said on numerous occasions if you want a Mac Mini to use as your Pro Tools computer then you may be better off finding a used Mac Mini i7 as the performance is considerably better.

Mac Mini 2018

Since this article was written Apple have released the Mac Mini 2018 range of models. This makes a very cost effective Pro Tools computer. If you want to buy a Mac Mini 2018 then check out our articles below.