Mac Mini RAM issue

Hi all,
I've recently replaced my MBP with a late 2012 Mac Mini (2.5GHz i5). I migrated a Time Machine backup of the MBP straight on to the Mac Mini after unboxing and this worked a treat.
The Mac Mini has 4GB of RAM but seems to use half of it just sitting idle with no apps running. Is this normal? I had 4GB in the MBP but never experienced this kind of issue. For instance, I'm typing this into Firefox whilst listening to a podcast in iTunes and there's only 1.3GB of RAM free.
Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Thanks lllaass.
That makes sense but it's obvious to me that 4GB isn't going to be enough for anything more than light use, particularly if I open the likes of Photoshop. I've been using Memory Clean in an attempt to free up RAM when required but it never really makes available more than 2GB of the 4GB total.
I'm going to upgrade the Mac Mini gradually, starting with a RAM increase to 8GB (and possibly 16GB) and then an SSD replacement.

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