If you own Mac Mini and want to expand your selection of ports and/or storage, there is no shortage of Mac Mini docks and adapters available to you. I’ve reviewed a couple of them on this channel and use one on a daily basis in my own Mac Mini setup.
One model that stood out to me last year was this one from Minisopuru and based on the comments, It proved a popular choice for lots of other people too.
Minisopuru have recently update that model and they’ve made quite a few positive changes.
Inside the Minisopuru dock’s box you’ll find:
- A small tool kit
- The dock itself
- A tiny instruction manual
Mac Mini Dock Design
Along the front of the dock you’ll find a Micro SD card slot, regular SD card slot, A USB C port and a USB A port. The SD card slots are an incredibly useful addition here and support speeds up to 150mb per second. Like most Mac mini docks, Both the USB C and USB A ports only officially support data transfer, with speeds up to 10gbps.
Charging things or powering gear like an audio interface is NOT officially supported, though both ports were able to run an interface just fine for me. Obviously your mileage may vary and Minisopuru have gone out of there way to specifically say these ports aren’t rated for that sort of thing.
The Mac Mini slots into the top of the dock and it fits quite snugly. There are rubber pads on all these inside edges, so there’s no chance of your machine getting scuffed up while putting it in or out. The finish of the dock matches the silver of the Mac mini almost exactly which is nice.
Expand your Mac Mini Storage
On the bottom of the dock is a compartment where you can install a SSD drive. This dock supports both M.2 NVMe and SATA SSDs and is a fantastic way to expand the storage of the Mac Mini.
The ability to install an NVMe SSD is especially welcome, as these drives often come close to being as fast as Apple’s own built in storage. Your Mac will see this drive as long as you have the hub attached and it’s a much more wallet friendly way of increasing your storage.
Something like this which not only adds additional connection options but also drastically shrinks the footprint of what is an already quite small machine is ideal for me and anyone really where space is a premium.
It’s the ability to install a NVMe SSD that really makes the Minisopuru USB C dock shine for me.
As i’m sure you know, buying extra storage from Apple when you first configure the Mac you want to buy on the Apple store is really expensive.
If you wanted to upgrade the base model Mac Mini’s paltry 256GB storage to 1TB for example, it would cost you a whopping £400. You could go out and grab this dock and a 1TB NVMe drive for under half that.
It’s a no brainer really.
