Satechi say that the three USB A 3.0 ports on the front are data only, but I had no issues attaching audio interfaces, external hard drives or USB keyboards (sometimes all three simultaneously) and having them all operate as they should. As someone who has used a couple of different mirrorless cameras while creating content for this website over the years, the need to constantly break out a dongle in order to get footage from SD cards onto my Mac has been really quite annoying. The inclusion of SD card slots here is brilliant. There are a couple of big advantages to this setup for me. That is a huge increase in available port options. Yes, you are losing the use of one of the thunderbolt ports on the back, but what you gain from that is definitely worth it I think.Īlong the front of the Satechi hub are: SD and Micro SD card slots, a 3.5 mm headphone jack, three USB A 3.0 data ports and one USBC data port. The hub connects to the Mac mini via USB C.

The top of the hub has a shaped recess so that the Mac Mini fits snugly on top and once it’s on there it doesn’t move around. The Satechi Type C hub is designed to sit beneath the M1 Mac Mini. “I genuinely love this thing and would highly recommend it to any Mac Mini user who like me, is looking for more ports and more storage.” Clever Design So how does the Satechi Type C hub fix those problems? I really wish i’d payed a bit more for extra storage as, you cannot change the SSD drives in Macs once you’ve purchased them. 512gb of storage was fine to begin with, but filled up quickly. I specced out my model with 16GB of Ram and 512GB of storage. Having to perform a reach around on my Mac every time I want to connect or disconnect something is incredibly frustrating.Īnd when it comes to storage, I just din’t get enough when I bought the Mac Mini. As I use external cameras to create video content for this website, the lack of an SD card slot means I need to use a dongle to get footage onto the Mac itself.Īlso – and I realise that this is very much a ME problem and won’t necessarily be an issue for everyone – the fact that all ports are on the back of the Mac Mini is a pain. The problems here for me is that there just aren’t enough of them. You’ve got an ethernet port, two Thunderbolt/USB C ports, a HDMI port, two USB A ports and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. The M1 Mac Mini does offer a fairly decent selection I/O options out of the box. “I’ve managed to vastly expand my port selection and triple my existing storage capacity for under £200 all in!” Why Buy A Mac Mini Hub?

Mac mini thunderbolt hub