Return of the Mac (mini) – Apple hopes to take back the mini PC crown with the new M6 chip and more

Apple Mac mini on a blue background — (Image credit: Apple)

Quick Summary

Apple has announced its M6 chip is powering the new Mac mini. Although, while there are performance boosts offered, there's also a big price bump compared to the previous model.

Alongside the M6 variant, Apple has released a more powerful M5 Pro option too. Both are available to pre-order now, with deliveries from 22 September.

Apple has announced the launch of updated Mac mini models, with one introducing the new M6 chip. It has also expanded the options with an M5 Pro variant. The new models replace the Mac mini M4 and M4 Pro launched in 2024.

The dinky Mac mini has seen high demand lately, as people have set it to task running AI models and that's one of the things that's highlighted by Apple: the new M6 model is said to have four times the AI performance than the M4 version, to speed up those AI workflows.

The cheaper of the two models is the M6, coming in at £899 / $899, a price that might make some wince – the previous model started at £599. While the new M6 chip has as 12-core CPU and 12-core GPU – boosting the performance compared to the M4 – the 16GB RAM and 256GB storage remain the same as before.

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The price bump is also felt for the M5 Pro model, while starts at £1,699 / $1,699, compared to £1,399 for the M4 Pro. That, it seems, is the price that we're all paying for the demands that AI has put on the industry.

We previously reported that there is a wave of new Macs coming, introducing the M6 here in the Mac mini, with an M6-powered iMac expected to follow. The move to a touchscreen OLED display for the MacBook Pro is also expected as Apple shifts up a gear for its Mac models.

These new models are all about performance, with Apple underlining that the Mac mini M6 will run LLM prompts 4.8x faster than the M4 version, crunch through Excel spreadsheet calculations 1.5x faster than the M4 and deliver a better gaming experience too, with better ray tracing, for example.

Elsewhere, the new models support Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 for faster and more reliable wireless connectivity, with two USB 3 ports on the front and four Thunderbolt 4 ports on the back of the M6 model, upgraded to three Thunderbolt 5 ports on the M5 Pro model.

There are options to configure the models up to 32GB RAM for the M6 or 64GB on the M5 Pro, while storage options run up to 2TB and 8TB respectively. Storage and RAM are expensive, however, seeing the top price of the Mac mini M5 Pro topping out at £6,799.

Running macOS 27 and offering Apple Intelligence and Siri AI, pre-orders are open now, but deliveries aren't expected until 22 September.

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Chris has been writing about consumer tech for over 15 years. Formerly the Editor-in-Chief of Pocket-lint, he's covered just about every product launched, witnessed the birth of Android, the evolution of 5G, and the drive towards electric cars. You name it and Chris has written about it, driven it or reviewed it. Now working as a freelance technology expert, Chris' experience sees him covering all aspects of smartphones, smart homes and anything else connected. Chris has been published in titles as diverse as Computer Active and Autocar, and regularly appears on BBC News, BBC Radio, Sky, Monocle and Times Radio. He was once even on The Apprentice... but we don't talk about that.