It costs $400 just to get 32GB RAM on the M4 mini. Retail 32GB DDR5 kits are about $100, 64GB kits about $200. Yes, yes, technically it's LPDDR5 and whatever.
Realistically the BOMs are nowhere near the retail prices in either case. It's likely that if upgrades were sold at their BOM difference the lower end machines would be more expensive.
In other words the low end machines are subsidized by the upgrades.
As this makes them more accessible I think this is ok, but only if the base model has serviceable specs. I'm glad they finally do.
Or the 32GiBx256GB ones are overpriced.
It costs $400 just to get 32GB RAM on the M4 mini. Retail 32GB DDR5 kits are about $100, 64GB kits about $200. Yes, yes, technically it's LPDDR5 and whatever.
I paid 380€ for 96G DDR5 6400. Decent RAM was around 120€ per 32GB a year ago.
Realistically the BOMs are nowhere near the retail prices in either case. It's likely that if upgrades were sold at their BOM difference the lower end machines would be more expensive.
In other words the low end machines are subsidized by the upgrades.
As this makes them more accessible I think this is ok, but only if the base model has serviceable specs. I'm glad they finally do.
I think the base configuration recently jumped from 8GB to 16GB while keeping the same price.
Wow, Apple finally entered 2015.
basic answer is yes; essentially you are getting more memory bandwidth compensated by people buying higher RAM.