The Mac Mini Is Back With Powerful Next-Gen Performance (And A Price Hike To Match)

The Mac mini was briefly lost to the memory crisis. After being touted as the perfect AI server device with the M4 option and selling non-stop, this machine started to face several weeks and then months of delays due to the ongoing RAM shortage, which eventually led Apple to discontinue some options and raise the prices of the current generation. Now, ahead of rumors of the announcement of the iPhone 18 Pro event, Apple unveiled the all-new Mac mini with M6 and M5 Pro chips.

Besides the introduction of an all-new M-series family, the company also surprised users with another price increase: the once affordable Mac mini now starts at $899, up from $599 when the M4 version was unveiled in late 2024. Still, even at this higher price point, the Mac mini continues to be one of the most interesting desktops for customers. According to Apple, the base model can deliver up to 4 times faster AI performance, twice as fast storage and graphics, and 40% faster CPU performance when compared to the previous generation.

It also received other upgrades, including Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and 2.5Gb Ethernet, with a 10Gb option available to customers. To ensure people can actually get this Mac, Apple announced that pre-order availability starts today, but it won't be available in stores until September 22, giving the company almost a month to get this device ready — kind of indicating that by that time, macOS 27 Golden Gate will already be available.

Apple's M6 chip is the first processor it has built using a 2nm manufacturing process, with the previous being 3nm. Apple is making the chip smaller yet even more powerful. With a 12-core CPU, adding two more than the previous generation, a 12-core GPU, adding Neural Accelerators for each of them, and an all-new dual 16-core Neural Engine, this computer should be perfect for anything AI. It comes with 16GB of unified RAM, but it can be configured up to 32GB.

The downside is that the base model comes with only 256GB of storage, which is pretty lackluster in 2026. Apple touts that LLM prompt processing in LM Studio can be 13.5 times faster than the M1 version, and when gaming with "Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition," the performance will be two times faster compared to the Mac mini with M4.

For those who don't want the all-new chip because it requires more power, Apple now offers the M5 Pro with an 18-core CPU, up to a 20-core GPU with Neural Accelerators, a 16-core Neural Engine, 24GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage, starting at $1,699. For this price, Apple promises more advanced AI workflows, the ability for users to run larger models locally, and even work with complex 3D scenes, demanding video editing, or large custom datasets for research.

Even though the Mac mini looks exactly like its predecessor, Apple says that it had to redesign its cooling system so it can achieve and sustain its peak power. Interestingly enough, this probably marks Tim Cook's last product announcement ahead of John Ternus becoming the new CEO on the first of September.

Looking at this unveiling, Apple is increasing the price of both Mac Mini base models by $300 ($899 and $1,699 versus $599 and $1,399 from the previous iterations), and it requires a little more time to deliver them to the hands of its customers. Rumors suggest that Apple was originally going to announce this device during the WWDC keynote, but the company had to reorganize its Mac releases, shifting its launch to be one of the first products of the fall. This could show that Bloomberg was correct and Apple will most likely update the base model MacBook Pro with the M6 chip as well, and it will reveal the MacBook with an OLED display with the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips.

While reusing processors would be a first in a higher-end new MacBook lineup, this also shows that the company is struggling to keep prices reasonable, which could lead to Apple not releasing any other M6 processors besides the base model, skipping everything to the M7 family around the same period next year.