Portable Mac mini with external battery
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I found a battery pack with an AC outlet, attached it to a Mac mini, and turned it into a monitor-less portable computer for the Apple Vision Pro. Here's how.
There was never any doubt that the new Mac mini could be turned into a tiny battery-powered Mac, but there were a lot of questions about how to make such a project work. Not all AC outlets are created equal, so I went looking for the cheapest, smallest battery that could still provide enough power to power the Mac mini.
I found a no-name Amazon product sold by Paopaoyu, one of those weird brands that doesn’t seem to have a real website or presence outside of Amazon. Its SEO-optimized listing calls it “100W Portable Laptop Power Bank AC Outlet 72Wh/20000mAh with 65W PD USB C Portable Charger Notebook External Battery Pack for MacBook, Laptops, Notebooks.”
Yeah, that’s a mouthful. But it only cost $60 and offered a 100W AC outlet and 20k mAh capacity. Good enough.
Portable Mac mini
Apple's website states that the M4 Mac mini, my model, has a maximum power draw of 65 watts, which is well below the 100 watt limit of the battery's AC outlet. If you're going to repeat this experiment and have a Mac mini with an M4 Pro, you'll need something that delivers more than 140 watts.
A compact battery with an AC outlet can keep installation minimal.
That said, general operations like browsing and listening to music won’t draw more than 12 to 20 watts from the Mac. I never saw consumption above 25 watts, even when messing around with Whiskey to run Steam, so those peaks are likely rare events caused by gaming or rendering.
The battery was the perfect size to act as a small platform for the Mac mini, which was one of my unnecessary but aesthetically pleasing goals. However, the low price became more understandable once I plugged it in.
In particular, this battery has an incredibly loud cooling fan and an electrically noisy inverter. No, I’m not worried about it catching on fire, but if you’re sensitive to that kind of loud humming noise, you might want to look for a better battery.
Still, everything worked fine. At 20,000 mAh, the battery did a great job of powering the Mac mini while also powering the Apple Vision Pro. The battery drained after about 2 hours, with the Mac mini showing a power draw of about 12-15 watts the entire time.
Connect to Mac mini for Apple Vision Pro Virtual Display Mode
I wanted to test with the Apple Vision Pro connected first to see how long it would last powering both devices, as the Apple Vision Pro would drain after about 2 hours of use. Without powering the Apple Vision Pro, the battery lasts for several hours, which is more than I would have used without access to an AC outlet.
The M4 Mac mini doesn’t require any hardware workarounds to get Apple Vision Pro Virtual Display Mode working, although it is tricky. Once you turn on your Mac mini, you need to sign in to make it available as a virtual display, so connect a Bluetooth or wired keyboard and enter your password without looking.
In a moment, the Mac mini should appear as a target in the Apple Vision Pro, even without a Wi-Fi network. If it doesn’t, there’s a chance you entered the password incorrectly, so just re-enter it and press Enter.
You can turn off the password prompt when logging in, but that’s a big security risk, especially for a portable Mac that will be going out and about. The only alternative is to use a portable display, which defeats the purpose.
No, using SideCar to turn your iPad into a temporary monitor isn’t an option here, because SideCar requires your Mac to be connected to an external display before it will work. Although you can use an HDMI adapter to trick your Mac if that’s your route.
There is a way to remotely access your Mac via Shortcuts on your iPad and turn on SideCar, but that’s a tutorial for another time.
Seeking the Perfect Mac Mini Battery
This isn’t a review, and I’m not going to bash a $60 portable battery too much, but it did help me figure out exactly what I want out of a product like this. Whoever made this clearly didn’t expect it to double as a battery for a tiny Mac.
Someone should make a custom battery/UPS for the Mac mini
First, this battery doesn’t have pass-through power, which means you can’t charge the battery and power the Mac mini at the same time. If you plug power into the USB-C port, the AC inverter shuts off.
Second, I’d like to see a UPS mode for the battery. My dream is to plug the Mac mini into the battery, plug the battery into AC power, and have it automatically switch to battery power when the power goes out.
This would serve two purposes. There's obviously a compelling reason to keep your Mac mini powered on even during a power outage, but a secondary use case is to unplug the charging cable and carry your Mac mini around.
If the UPS can switch quickly enough, the Mac mini won't shut down. Currently, I have to start up the Mac mini from scratch every time I charge the battery.
As a bonus, I'd like to see the company make a battery specifically for the Mac mini. That is, one with a matching aluminum external case, similar to the upcoming Satechi dock.
Portable Mac mini vs. MacBook
If you've read this far, you're probably wondering why anyone wouldn't just buy a MacBook anyway. Simply put, a large part of the Macbook's price is the display, and as an Apple Vision Pro user, I'm not going to be using it very often.
Portable Mac mini and Apple Vision Pro are a good combination
I had a 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro and used it heavily for about a year. The reintroduction of the iPad into my workflow thanks to Stage Manager and other improvements literally put the MacBook Pro to rest.
When Apple’s Vision Pro came out, I was back using a Mac, but through Virtual Display Mode. It seemed like a waste to have such a stunning display and not be able to use it, so I opted for the Mac mini with the M4 when it was announced.
I now have a Mac mini without a display that I can use for podcasting and other productivity tasks in a tiny package. However, the lack of an internal battery changed the way I had to think about using a Mac in my day-to-day life.
By pairing the Mac mini with a portable battery, I was able to re-establish my old workflows without much fuss. I now have a Mac mini that I can pack in my backpack with the Apple Vision Pro for use wherever I want. Plus, the backpack I use only has one laptop compartment, and I'd rather travel with the iPad Pro as my laptop.
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A Decent Proof of Concept
For $60 (not including the $800 Mac mini and $4,000 Apple Vision Pro), you can create a great little portable Mac mini setup with the Apple Vision Pro acting as a virtual display. I highly recommend finding a better battery, not necessarily one with more capacity, just one with a quieter if not silent inverter.
I'll be reaching out to different battery makers and testing other options, and will report back once I find the perfect Mac mini battery. For now, this proof of concept is enough to get by.
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