Apple on Monday launched a new Mac mini powered by its M6 and M5 Pro chips, raising the starting price to $899 while delivering substantially more performance, memory, and connectivity than the M4 models it replaces.
The M6 is Apple’s first chip built on a 2-nanometer process, which accounts for some unusually large performance jumps.
Apple claims the M6 Mac mini delivers up to 4x faster AI performance, 2x faster storage and graphics, and 40 percent faster CPU performance compared to the M4.
The chip moves from a 10-core CPU and GPU to 12 cores each, with two of those CPU cores being high-performance “super cores.”
The M6 also carries a dual 16-core Neural Engine, doubling what M4 had, and adds GPU Neural Accelerators that first appeared in M5 but never made it into the previous Mac mini.
The M5 Pro configuration sees similar gains. Its CPU count increases from 12 to 15 cores, with configurations up to 18 cores available.
Apple says the M5 Pro Mac mini processes large language model prompts in LM Studio up to 4x faster than the M4 Pro, renders ray tracing in Blender up to 1.4x faster, and handles image processing in Affinity up to 1.5x faster.
Both configurations also expand memory ceilings. The M6 model now supports up to 32GB of RAM, up from 24GB in M4, with memory bandwidth climbing from 120GB/s to 170GB/s.
The M5 Pro version tops out at 64GB, up from 48GB, with bandwidth increasing from 273GB/s to 307GB/s.
Apple added its N1 wireless chip, which debuted in the iPhone 17, bringing Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 to Mac mini for the first time.
On the wired side, 2.5Gb Ethernet is now the standard port rather than basic Gigabit, with a 10Gb upgrade still available.
The new machines also support Genlock over USB-C, enabling precise synchronization between a connected display and a camera, including the iPhone 17 Pro.
The M6 Mac mini starts at $899, which is $100 more than the M4 model’s most recent price and $300 more than the $599 price at which the M4 launched in 2024.
The M5 Pro model starts at $1,699, up from $1,599. Pre-orders are now open, with units shipping on September 22.
