Re: June 2026 LRC/PS updates ... faster Denoise measurements for Mac M with Neural Engine
Jack Flesher wrote: rscheffler wrote: Jack Flesher wrote:
To my thinking the mini’s are basically the MacBook in a different form. Personally I went with an M4 studio mainly for the added connectivity and configuration capabilitiy, plus a MacBook pro for the field — at the time I bought the Studio, the mini only had 2 TB ports and why I passed on it in favor of the Studio. That changed in the next product cycle and so I’d agree it’s a perfectly viable desktop editing machine. I seem to have a knack for entering any given market one iteration early 🤷🏼
It used to be that a tower was a more powerful computer than a laptop. At least now with Apple's current 'M' chips, it's basically the same chip in different 'clothes'. You buy the clothes that suit your needs. Where there's maybe a slight benefit to a Mini or a Studio over a MBP or MBA, is thermal management and throttling, though apparently throttling is less problematic with these chips.
I probably would have bought a Mini if it came with a Max chipset. But they don't. I didn't want another laptop, already had a monitor, keyboard, etc., so got the Studio instead. And I wanted the Max for the 2x more GPUs over Pro options.
As we're seeing from the chart the OP has compiled, the newer chip generations bring some speed gains, even in the base or Pro configurations, that rival older Max systems.
I am not disappointed I did the Studio, in fact I would do it again. It’s fast, silent and runs cool essentially all the time, and increased processor and GPU definitely show their worth when processing with the newer algorithms. My only point was I could easily live with a mini if I were on a budget. Actually, knowing what I now know if I were on a budget, I would buy a decked out MBP and a dock for my monitor and external drive array and be happy with that. In fact, that may be where I start at the next upgrade. I’m 71 and am not sure how much longer I’ll be needing to keep current. At my age especially, good enough is usually plenty fast
I could have afforded the Studio, but when I looked at the matter practically I realized that it didn’t provide any meaningful performance advantages. Again, I’m not exactly an entry level computer user… ;-)
Plus is is really great to have a computer that is so ridiculously tiny on my desktop. (I already had some experiences — both positive and negative — with earlier versions of the mini line that I had used as file servers.)
Jul 01, 2026 at 09:56 AM
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