First Mac Mini M2 Geekbench Scores Show Promising Performance Gains

Apple surprised everyone this week after it refreshed its top-end MacBook Pro and Mac Mini lineup. This was Apple's first product announcement for 2023. While the Macs did not differ vastly from their predecessors in terms of design, it's the changes to their innards that everyone had their eyes on. Apple also announced the newest entries in the Apple Silicon line — the brand-new Apple M2 Pro and M2 Max chips. These processors are the second and third members of Apple's M2 family, which the company announced in June 2022 at WWDC.

While the freshly-launched MacBook Pro models came with M2 Pro and M2 Max processor options, Apple had other plans for the Mac Mini lineup. This update for the Mac Mini was long due, given that it's been nearly two years since the company launched the first generation of Mac Mini with Apple Silicon. Additionally, with the Mac Mini targeting an entirely different price segment, Apple chose to use the slightly older M2 chip on the entry-level variants of the 2023 Mac Mini. Unlike the MacBook Pro models that also get an M2 Max chipset option, the top-of-the-line Mac Mini costs $1299 and only uses the M2 Pro chip.

While shipments for both devices are yet to commence, Geekbench scores for the new Mac Mini have appeared online. This has made it easier for us to compare how much of a performance increase one could expect by upgrading to one of the newer Mac Mini.

The 2023 entry-level Mac Mini uses the older M2 chips and scored 1951 points in the single-core benchmark and 9003 points in the multi-core test, MacRumors reports. This is quite a bit more than what the first-gen Apple M1-powered Mac Mini managed two years ago, which scored 1651 single-core points and 5181 multi-core points. In percentage terms, the 2023 entry-level Mac Mini is 18% faster in single-core and up to 73% faster in multi-core applications.

The M2 Pro-powered Mac Mini offers nearly the same performance as the M2-powered machine in single-core tests, with 1952 points. However, it leaps past the M1 and M2 chips in the multi-core tests, scoring 15013 points, which is nearly 66% faster than the entry-level 2023 Mac Mini and 189% faster than the M1-based Mac Mini from 2020. Those wondering how these numbers compare to the M1 Pro chips from the previous generation MacBook Pro, those scored 1734 single-core points and 10076 multi-core points. In fact, the M2 Pro even beats the performance of the M1 Max chip, which scores 1727 single-core points and 12643 multi-core points, according to 9to5Mac.

These benchmarks for the M2 Pro chip are the first ever for the newly launched chip. In the coming weeks, we should see an increasing number of people benchmarking the M2 Pro and M2 Max MacBook Pro models. We do not expect significant changes to the M2 Pro scores when these benchmarks do appear online