What are the pros and cons of using a Mini with a TV as monitor?

Pro - You don’t need a separate monitor

Con - It is a TV

It depends upon the size and resolution of the TV. The larger the TV the farther apart are the pixels and quality looks poor, especially with text since the TV is for moving images.

A small, like 24 inch 1080p TV is fine. Less than 1080p, especially with larger screen it poor

I recently purchased a Mac Mini and am using it with my TV. Here's what I found:

Using the HDMI connection on the Mac Mini, the image on the TV is very harsh. It's very bright, high contrast and garish colors. I did a lot of testing and am convinced this is due to the HDMI Display Profile in OS X Yosemite. I could not find any way to change the display profile in the Mac Mini as long as HDMI was the connection.

Using the miniDisplayport/Thunderbolt connection on the Mac Mini, with the Apple miniDisplayPort-DVI adapter and a DVI-HDMI cable the picture is perfect. (Note, however, that this connection only carries video; if you want audio you will have to use a separate cable to connect the Mac Mini audio line out port to your TV's audio line in port.)

That said, the larger the TV the less quality you will have displaying text. I suggest using a 21" or smaller TV as a monitor if you will be doing text work.

My setup is with a 40" Sony Bravia 1080p HDTV and the primary use is for video (concerts, movies, Skype, etc), not office apps. As I said earlier, the picture is perfect - brightness, contrast, colors, resolution are as nice as I could ask for.

I have found that 'real' TVs when used as a monitor even if the same resolution i.e. 1920x1080 and the same connection i.e. HDMI as a computer monitor deliver inferior text quality. It is my belief that this is due to the TV being designed to 'improve' video i.e. moving images rather than static computer images e.g. text.

If your using your computer as a media centre or for video editing then this will be fine, if your going to be doing word-processing, spreadsheets, etc. all day long it might prove to be too much of an annoyance. MartinR is for example using it for video and as this is what the TV is tuned for it is fine for him.