I’ve been keeping an eye on Marketplace for a Mac Studio over the past week or two, but then I came across this deal, it’s about the same price as what people are asking for their used ones. So I had to jump on it.
Please explain how I’ve made a terrible buying decision
I was considering this BUT the T&Cs for price beat seem to exclude "clearance" items and I wanted to buy quick before EOFY.
Just went and got one from office works! They were happy to price beat. Not sure if they missed the “clearance” label. Also, it’s clearance at officeworks so that may be why they were happy.
It is not commonly in stock I was told. Normally an order item at my local store.
Give it a go!
M4Pro Mac Mini in AOC (with regular discounted Gift cards) is more value for your money https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m4-pro-12-cores-…
This M2 Max has almost double the gpu performance according to your link. For video editing especially with the dual encoders and higher memory bandwidth this is a no brainer. For cpu bound tasks, Photoshop, Lightroom, others etc, M4 Pro is more suited.
If you are referring to:
‘More powerful Apple M2 Max GPU (38-core) integrated graphics: 13.6 vs 7.4 TFLOPS’
TFLOPS is a very bad measurement of performance.
What is AOC as in "M4Pro Mac Mini in AOC?
Apple on Campus, accessed via institution specific link: store dot apple dot com slash au_edu_XXXXXX.
But only 24GB RAM
I need the GPU for video work but the form factor on the mini is insane.
Depends on what you want to do.
The Studios have two on chip encoders which will make video encoding up to twice as fast as the Mac mini. For most other things the mini should be faster.
It’s better in a different way. When doing GPU intense tasks previous gen Max models are better off.
My work is heavy web browser based, which one should i pick?
Both.
Sorry the community is missing their sense of humour today judging by your negs ;)
Yup. Some days I think I'm on whirlpool :(
@tessel: what happens on whirlpool 😆
sometimes rarely i end up reading a whirlpool thread usually something to do with ISPs.
Chromebook.
M4 chip is faster in single core usage.
You'll need 64GB of ram if you are running Chrome
I have completely ditched Chrome for exactly this reason. I get 1/3 of the RAM usage in Edge and Firefox compared to Chrome for same webpages. Google has made it absolutely unusable.
This so much. Edge ftw
This soo much. Firefox ftw!
Why not just download more RAM?
m4 mini base model will be fine
This or Mac Mini M4 512/32 for $1,651 via AOC
I bought this as an upgrade from a base M4 Mini, I'm already noticing the difference. (I'm doing video work so YMMV)
Good deal.
Sounds great thinking of switching from PC however I do worry about the 512 GB storage. Is it easy to expand?
Kind of?
It’s obviously not as easy or cheap to expand as a standard M.2 SSD, but there are third-party replacement NAND modules that you can use to replace/upgrade the internal storage, and if you need more storage anyway, you can also use a Thunderbolt 4 NVMe enclosure with your choice of SSD anyway.
I just have a 2TB USB-C SSD plugged in and it works great.
Ok good to know, no issues with transfer speed?
Nope, I'm just rocking a Samsung T7 and it's great. I find the 512GB internal storage big enough for all my apps and then everything else just goes on the T7.
@dinglejerry: Even cheaper, get yourself a thunderbolt 4 cable (or whatever the Mac uses) along with a cheap nvme enclosure (make sure its nvme and not sata (my orico brand one works fine)), and whatever nvme drive you like.
Easy to swap out the drive and don't have to pay the external drive premium (can find 4tb nvme ssds for cheap)
@Some Random Guy: Ok good to know, there should be heaps on Amazon.
Only thing I'm tossing up is I've been a Windows man for a long time… just worried about switching all my software over etc and how difficult the transition will be.
beast of a machine
Using it right now for video editing and the difference between a Base M4 Mini and this is night and day!
Dayumm, I did not expect the machine every tech YouTuber uses to become this affordable. They were ditching their Mac Pro towers when the Mac Studio first came out.
Youtubers would get the ultra which is a lot more $
Got this price beat at Officeworks a few days ago, together with 15x Flybuys points makes it a steal, too bad they cannot be upgraded to 64GB RAM
Can U tell me the store's location? My local store did not price beat ;-(
i must have got lucky, it is order in item and yes potentially clearance item they would not price match. This was sydney city store.
Good on you! Stores always playing games! The price beat is the only factor that make me decide on this over the Mini M4 pro
Lucky you. I tried and didn't succeed. The 15x Flybuys points was compelling. Alas, no stock, and they wouldn't let me order in store to get the points.
this is really good to test out ai, i used it to summarise emails, texts, etc
Do you mean you have downloaded and set up a local AI and this system can handle it?
yeah can handle ollama mistral at least
Cool thanks
I ended up using one of the old education links on ozb a week ago and got around a 10% discount on the M4 Max 36GB/1TB model, then combined it with discounted Apple gift cards to save even more. Glad to not have the hassle of replacing the storage module with something third party, so I made lemonade out of the lemons of missing out on the Officeworks flybuys deal.
Currently running a mini with 32gb but it's about 10 years old.
I do audio work…..is it time?
Is it though?
Thinking of how much else it will cost me to upgrade all the software.
Maybe it is NOT time. What is time?
Hammer time?
Can't touch this
Dan dan-nun-nun… 🎵
I've been eyeing off that base model 256gb M4 mac mini - and upgrading it to 32gb - which comes out to $1361 (or $1491 if you want to go the 10GB/ethernet option)
https://www.apple.com/au_edu_5000447/shop/buy-mac/mac-mini/a…
I'm nervous about using the flybuys gift card option - https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/912377 - but basically that is effectively a 10% discount again on top
Looks like you can use up to 8 Apple Gift Cards online to purchase.
https://www.coles.com.au/catalogues/view#view=catalogue2&sal…
can use an unlimited number of gift cards by adding them to your apple account balance before purchase
If you're nervous about the gift card tampering, I'm on the same boat as well !
redeem on your apple account and you can pay with the balance
redeeming is the first hurdle with all the stories I hear on Ozbargain about Apple gift card tampering
@TestIgnoreMe: yeh, I saw some before, especially when these are on discount. I think if they take it home for tempering, it's really hard to find out.
I just completed this M4 mini purchase this evening using the coles apple gift card route.
I used four of the variable amount $20-500 Apple gift cards in the new packaging (blue/purplish apple), and did everything in-store.
Prior to purchase, I purchased an ordinary $10 apple gift card online using the apple store and sent this card to a separate email address.
I then downloaded the "Apple Store" app to my phone (not to be confused with the App Store) - and logged in.
Having loaded the app and received the gift card via mail, I went to Account > Apple Account Balance > Redeem a gift card and applied the 16 character code to the account to add the $10.
I then went to the AOC AU Australian Education Union Store Home and began the check out process for the M4 mini, logged in to account as part of checkout, and confirmed it gave me the option to apply the "Apple account balance" of $10 to the transaction - which it did!
I then headed off to Coles, located four of the 20-500 cards in the display and took them to self checkout machine. I started with the first card, ripped down the anti-tamper strip, scanned the card and added $20. I also scanned my flybuys card (very important!). I then began the checkout process, which dings the alarm to call the assistant over. They quickly log in, tap some details about expiry, and then let you complete the purchase process.
Immediate having purchased the first $20 (test) card, I ripped open the packaging to reveal the card, carefully scratched off the material to reveal another 16 character code. I crossed my fingers, opened up the "Apple Store" app and repeated process above (manually entering the 16 char code) to add a gift card balance - and success $20 added.
Comfortable now the process would succeed, I proceeded to purchase the big $ card values - one at a time - ensuring I scanned my flybuys with each purchase. Everything worked as expected.
I raced home, reloaded the apple page and began the checkout process once more - and it gave me the option to use the full 1491 balance to complete the purchase.
Purchase went through! Hopefully the flybuys points come through - it may take upwards of a month supposedly.
Good luck to everyone else!
Thanks for the write up!
fly-buys have come through - ~$150
Good computer
But can it run Crysis?
Mac Studios totally rock!
I have the M1 Studio - blisteringly fast and no signs of getting old. Still leaves our M4 mini (24Gb 10 core CPU, 10 core GPU, 16 core NE) for dead.
Total bargain at $1895
Yes, I have the M1 Mac Studio Ultra and it is superb! Bloody love it.
Did any of you transition from Windows? I've been using Windows my whole adult life, so keen to know how difficult the transition is, and how much of an exercise it is with software compatibility etc.
Nowadays, there is some kinds of customization in Mac. For example you can map Control key (default command key) as windows Control key, so that you can use Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V. This was my biggest gripe a few years ago.
Otherwise, very similar experience to windows.
By the way some say screen scale (like 1440p display) may not very good in Mac. but if you have 4k screen should be no problem.
It doesn't take long to transition. The hardest part maybe the loss of certain windows only tools that you are used to leveraging - and also some Windows explorer functionality.
For me, the big one was to continue to use a Windows keyboard, and also to remap certain shortcut key combos so that they achieved similar functionality on the Mac. For example - Win+E - would open finder, Win+D - would show desktop.
I also found early on the window manager on Mac to be painful with multiscreen compared to the simple Alt-tab way of doing things on Windows.
Thanks good to know.
Thanks for this. I’ve been using my M2 MacBook Pro 14” as desktop for a couple of years now been great but been wanting more ports and native 10Gbe connection. Great price, can’t justify extra cost for the Mac Studio Max M4 for my use case.
Grabbed one and setting up now.
FYI… the M1/2/3 are ARM-V8 instruction set but the M4 onwards is the newer V9 (think Intel Core 32bit v's the Core2 DUO which was 64bit) so going forward I'm sure the M4 would be a better longer term buy if OS support is important to you as while the V9 is backward compatible with the V8, the same cant be said the other way around.
But if you use the dickens out of it for 3 years tha'ts 1 base model mac mini a years worth and its got lots more ram and gpu if you need that sort of thing… The M2 was a great upgrade over the M1, the M2 to M3 is a nice to have but the jump to M4 was something huge in complexity as the jump to M5 will be tweaks to the complexity but more importantly will be the next TSMC die shrink!
I have sold my 14" M2 MBP and now i have the 13" MBA and I love the thing to death and then some! I want the M4 MBA but its nothing id notice as I have the M4 Mini to play with too on the desktop but its the lowly M2 MBA thats always on my lap for convivence
Yes I end up with a mac mini m4 pro for $1799 instead.
Where did you get a mac mini m4 pro for $1799? even on the education store they are $2,049
$1966 here - https://www.apple.com/au_edu_5000447/shop/buy-mac/mac-mini/a…
10% fly-buys rewards would have dropped it by $196 - so effectively $1770
Talked me into it!
Finally have a replacement for my several-times-upgraded 2012 Mac Mini i7.
Finally pulled the trigger 😊
Pulled the trigger and bought one. Figured even an exact apple refurbished product is over $800 more than this price.
Will be good to just use it for the GPU and everyday simple tasks. Takes the load away from my main computer. This will be a good backup computer for the next 10years (hope so).
Mac Studio Warranty Shorter Than Expected — Anyone Else Seen This?
Hi again,
I just picked up the Mac Studio (M2 Max, 32GB RAM, 512GB SSD) from JB Hi-Fi — box was factory sealed and I opened it myself.
However, I noticed something odd:
• Apple’s system shows the warranty ending in November 2025, even though I purchased it in July 2025.
• I also can’t add AppleCare+ — it says the option isn’t available.
As far as I know, Apple includes 1 year of warranty from the date of purchase, so this seems off.
Has anyone else run into this with JB Hi-Fi purchases? Any tips on how to get the warranty date corrected?
Maybe that device was sold, registered with Apple, then returned unopened to JB?
If anyone missed out, or can't get stock, just message me. I have 1 available in Sydney region.
Price beat at OW