2020 Apple Mac Mini with Apple M1 Chip (8GB RAM, 256GB SSD Storage) - Silver (Renewed)

The Mac Mini came almost brand new. No issues. I love it! It is extremely fast and powerful for its price.

This 2020 Apple Mac Mini with the M1 chip is a powerful and compact desktop computer that delivers impressive performance for its size. The M1 chip’s speed and efficiency make it great for multitasking, handling everything from daily tasks to intensive workloads like video editing. It’s quiet, energy-efficient, and offers fast performance with excellent graphics for creative work. The compact design fits easily into any workspace, though it has limited upgradability and fewer ports compared to other Mac models. Overall, it’s an affordable and highly capable choice for anyone needing a powerful Mac in a small form factor.

So far so good! It's in like-new condition, it's fast, and so far it's reliable. Thus far, I'm very happy. I wasn’t real happy with the packaging. It was sliding around in the box during shipping, with no padding at all, which made me angry. I've bought three “renewed” machines from Amazon over the years, and so far I've been lucky with all three of them.I'm a PC guy. Always have been! I've been computing on Windows since Windows 2.0. But, I teach computer science and cybersecurity in college at the undergrad level, and I always have several students who have Macs and struggle to install software or use software like I'm demonstrating on a PC In class. As sad as it sounds, I'm not experienced enough with Mac OS to help them in certain circumstances. I have to get help from a colleague, which is fine, but if I'm going to stand in front of a classroom and talk about something, I should know what the heck I'm talking about. On top of that, my wife is a Mac girl, and she has been hounding me for a long time to give it a shot. So I finally took the plunge.When I set the machine up it, it worked, and immediately updated to Mac OS Sequoia 15.4 and has been running very well since. Again, I'm a computer geek, I have it running on a dock with my ThinkPad E16. Again, so far so good. It's actually the ThinkPad that gets an attitude sometimes when I boot it while it's connected to the dock.The ThinkPad gives me three extended displays and the laptop display as well for a total of four. To get two extended displays on the Mac I do have to move one of the HDMI cables from the dock to the back of the Mac Mini, or I'll end up with mirrored displays. I purchased an active HDMI adapter that will be delivered today, which should resolve that problem.I have to admit, it took several days of setting up to get things the way I wanted but I'm very, happy with this machine and the OS.

I bought this for a pretty isolated use-case - just to use for GarageBand as a musical hobbyist. Straight up, I don’t think the Mac OS gui makes any sense, and I don’t seem to be alone in that. Windows, while not by any means a perfect OS, simply is better thought out as a gui. But this little computer is very snappy, and it works great for my limited use case. I know Apple was the first to implement a GUI, and the first computers I used for personal computing were Apples, but I get the sense in designing the Mac OS GUI, they aren’t thinking first and foremost about what’s intuitive and easy for the users, but rather are thinking first and foremost about how to be different from Windows and lock people into the Mac ecosystem. I think they could learn a lot from the best Linux GUI’s, frankly. But this still makes a nice dedicated DAWS computer for a hobbyist like me.

The 2020 Apple Mac Mini with the M1 chip is a solid choice for anyone looking for a powerful and compact computer. The M1 chip offers excellent performance for a variety of tasks, from basic productivity to creative workflows.The 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD storage are sufficient for most users, although you may want to consider upgrading the storage if you plan to store large files. The design is sleek and modern, fitting well into any workspace.While I've been satisfied with the performance of this Mac Mini, it's worth noting that it's a refurbished unit. This means that it may have minor cosmetic blemishes or signs of previous use. However, the overall performance and functionality are excellent.If you're looking for a reliable and capable computer at a reasonable price, the 2020 Apple Mac Mini is a good option to consider.

I did a loooooong research (I'm the kind of person that does long researches before buying a device, believe me... long) to get a cheap MAC the would do the job for a day to day normal user, web browsing, writing, docs, emails, all the basic stuff that a normal person would do, not needing a powerhouse device. So I came across the mac mini M1, refurbished. GREAT price and the new M1 chip were very attractive.So after buying the computer and trying to connect the bluetooth mouse and keyboard I noticed that there was THE LAG!!! (which I read so much about but read other people reporting that they were not having those issues). The lag was BAD!!!! So I researched and tried everything.... and I DID try everything, to the point of having to buy a corded mouse and after plugging it, there was some improvement but nothing compared to how a normal computer with a normal cursor would move. And I even tried the mouse (a cheap one from macally created for MACs) and it worked perfectly without any flaws. But in this one it keeps having some lag still. So if you're thinking either to buy this, the iMac 24 inch with M1 chip or waiting for a bigger iMac M1 chip and possible 27 inch, I suggest to go for any of the 2 latter but DONT BUY THE M1 MAC MINI. There are reports everywhere of the lag happening, improving to some extent for some people but not completely going away. And let me tell you, IT IS GOING TO DRIVE YOU CRAZY. So don't do the same mistake.UPDATE:Turns out that afte changing the monitor to a 1440p, 140 hz, 27 inch monitor (I got ViewSonic) the lag disappeared completely. So it has to do with the monitor moreso that the corded mouse. But it's a good idea to get the mouse corded also.