With the rise of remote jobs and classes, desktop computers are regaining some popularity with people creating more permanent workspaces in their home. And if you’ve got limited space for your home office, you may want to grab a more compact desktop — like the Mac Mini.
While Apple took the wraps off a new M2-powered Mac Mini just this week, you might want to consider picking up a 2018 Mac Mini for just $500 at Woot while it’s on sale that low today. Not only does the deal save you $500 compared to its original retail price, but the model on sale has some desirable specs that might cost you more if you were to go for the new 2022 model.
Despite being a few years old, this Mac Mini comes packed full of powerful hardware, including an impressive 32GB of DDR4 memory for fast performance when working with massive files or demanding applications. The new M2 model, by comparison, comes with 8GB of memory as standard and you’d need to pay an upgrade fee of $400 to boost that up to 24GB or punt for a $1,700 M2 Pro configuration to max it out at 32GB.
Rather than an in-house Apple processor, this model on sale at Woot has an eighth-gen six-core Intel i7 processor coupled with Apple’s T2 security chip. There’s also a 128GB PCIe SSD that boasts sequential read speeds of up to 3.4 GB per second. And while the Mac Mini is pretty compact at just 7.7 inches wide, it’s still versatile, with tons of ports including an HDMI port, multiple USB-C and USB-A ports, a headphone jack, and an ethernet port. Plus, it’s powered by the same smooth and user-friendly MacOS found on other Apple computers and devices.