Hey all, I’m looking to step up my Zwift visual experience, Looking at the new M4 Mac mini as a step up from the ATV I’m currently using with my Samsung 55’’ 4k TV.
Has anyone done this upgrade yet?
I’m looking to get into the Ultra profile and 4K resolution.
Thanks in advanced…
Right now the only systems that get the ultra profile are machines with a dedicated GPU that’s on a list built into the game, and that list doesn’t include any macs that you can buy new. The M1-M3 Macs get the High profile, which is quite good in my opinion - much better than Apple TV by a long way but a little below Ultra. Someone recently reported that they have an M4 and it got the Medium profile. This is likely temporary since it’s new. I expect that in a future game release it will be moved from Medium to High, though it’s possible that it may end up at Ultra if they decide it works well at that profile. I would not buy it with the assumption that it will ever get the Ultra profile.
Thank you @Paul_Southworth this answers my question. I do have an M1 Mac Air that I will try out this evening via HDMI.
Is there a published list of what devices (CPU & GPU combos) are assigned the Ultra profile?
No they don’t publish a matrix of GPUs and their profiles. I think at some point in the past someone extracted it from the game but I’m not sure where that post is and it would be out of date now. Maybe @oldnapalm knows how to do that?
For example you can easily build a PC from used parts for around US$200 that will get the Ultra profile and acceptable performance at 1440p. It won’t be the form factor of a mac mini though.
Thanks for that confirmation too @Paul_Southworth .
I’ve started venturing down this custom built rabbit hole now…
Happy to see that will get away from the BT device limit on the ATV too.
I changed my Apple TV to a Mac mini M1.
Advantages:
1 higher resolution
2 much smoother image
3 slightly more detailed bicycle shadow
4 no BT restrictions are a big advantage
5 keyboard control - drone view
Disadvantages:
1 no remote like in Apple TV, but nice to have it at hand
2 I don’t see such a big jump in graphics despite the resolution
Some other advantages include access to log files for troubleshooting and upload to zwiftalizer.com, support for ANT+ dongles, support for Sauce 4 Zwift, ability to create custom workouts, and earlier access to game releases since there’s no app store review required. Macs with M series CPUs all get support for video screenshots, which is available on Apple TV 2nd and 3rd gen 4K models but not the older ones.
Here’s a list of GPUs that get assigned Ultra profile (CPU is irrelevant since no CPU with onboard graphics gets the Ultra profile). It’s not definitive. I compiled it a year ago from hundreds of thousands of log files uploaded to zwiftalizer.
Ultra - Dropbox
and here’s High and Medium
High - Dropbox
Medium - Dropbox
Thank you kindly for sharing this information, makes life a load easier to navigate the GPU portion of the process.
Love the work you doing on the analyser!
I’ll get the m4 base version shortly and will report how it performs.
Sometimes, we don’t realize what we’re missing until we experience it—this is especially true when switching from Apple TV to a dedicated PC for Zwift.
I now run Zwift on PC equipped with a mid-tier GeForce RTX 3060, paired with a 55" 4K display at 120Hz. This setup allows me to run the game at 4K UHD (2160p) resolution. However, the incremental visual difference when moving from ‘High’ (1080p) to ‘Ultra’ (1440p) or even 4K UHD (2160p) is surprisingly modest. It looks great -don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the jaw-dropping improvement I’ve seen in games (and I’m not even a gamer). Most probably my eyes are a bit spoiled, but when I moved from High to 4k UHD, I was expecting a mind-blowing experience.
Nevertheless, when I am out of town and using Zwift on Apple TV, iPhones, tablets, and similar devices, it can be somewhat painful. 
I just picked up an M4. No Ultra of course but damn good performance nevertheless. Picked this up as a dedicated Zwift box, rather than an Apple TV, as I wanted ANT+ and WiFi direct connect, as well as potential future better performance should Zwift enable it.
I’m interested to see what the newer Mac Mini M4 Pro might be capable of.
I’m running a fairly old (but still good) Mac Pro 2010 using a 6 core Xeon and RX6600XT GPU which gets me Ultra graphics setting.
I wouldn’t be pleased if a much newer machine (which should be faster) got me worse graphics, especially since I use a 4K 55" TV screen. That’s why I don’t use Apple TV, it looks dreadful on screen, really low resolution and bad.
But I know the old machine is getting near the end of MacOS support.
Without the external GPU you will probably be disappointed.
How quick are you zwifting with a Mac mini, compared to an Apple TV?
The only thing holding me back for a dedicated Zwift pc is the long start up time of windows
Ps. YouTube video
I used to say that Apple TV only took maybe 5 seconds to start up, and even that would get a furious argument from the one who isn’t here any more, his computers were always even faster than that. 
I agree with you, I have a very fast machine here that runs Windows 11 Pro for Workstations and even it takes a while to start up. It’s not terrible slow, but slower than Apple TV.
It has Samsung 980 Pro storage that W11 is running on.
The flip side is Zwift looks way better on it so it’s worth the slightly longer wait.
