Product Review

The Apple Mac mini "Core i5" 2.6 (Late 2014/Aluminum Unibody) features a 22 nm "Haswell" 2.6 GHz Intel "Core i5" (4278U) processor with two independent processor "cores" on a single chip, a 3 MB shared level 3 cache, 8 GB of onboard 1600 MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM, various hard drive options, and an "integrated" Intel Iris 5100 graphics processor that shares system memory. Connectivity includes two Thunderbolt 2 ports, four USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n compatible), and Bluetooth 4.0 as well as an SDXC card slot. Compared to its predecessor, this model looks identical, but it has a more advanced architecture and graphics, Thunderbolt 2 capability, and faster Wi-Fi. On the other hand, it has a processor with half the number of cores, no longer supports Firewire, has RAM that can no longer be upgraded, and no longer supports two 2.5" drives.