[sethd]

For sure and the Mac Mini M4 Pro with 64GB of RAM feels like the sweet spot right now.

That said, the base storage option is only 512GB, and if this machine is also a daily driver, you’re going to want to bump that up a bit. Still, it’s an amazing machine for under $3K.

[wolfhumble]

It would be better/cheaper to buy an external Thunderbolt 5 enclosure for the NVME drive you need.

[sethd]

I looked into this a couple months ago and external TB5 was still more expensive at 1-2 TB not sure about above, though.

[wolfhumble]

Going from 500GB to 2TB built-in is €600 in the US at the moment.

Samsung 990PRO 2TB is $170 and Acasis T5 80Gbps is €300. So it makes sense to buy external for ≥ 2TB, more flexible as well :-)

For 1TB it makes more sense to buy built-in as you note above.

[sethd]

It also depends on the quality of that enclosure and whether or not it adds heat or fan noise.