Apple M6 Mac mini review: a solid upgrade spoiled by a $300 price hike

Apple's new Mac mini keeps the chassis of the 2024 model and swaps in fresh silicon. This time the usual rule did not hold: instead of more performance for the same money, the entry-level desktop costs $300 more.

The M6 Mac mini starts at $899 for 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage; the M4 Mac mini with the same memory and storage cost $599 in 2024. Ars Technica's review calls it a good upgrade whose appeal is undermined by the memory crisis that has reshaped pricing across the industry.

Familiar design, Thunderbolt 4 ports

The chassis is unchanged from the M4 generation, which gave the mini its first full redesign in nearly 15 years. It stands 2 inches tall, up from 1.4 inches on Intel and M1/M2-era machines, with a smaller 5x5-inch footprint. Active cooling lets the chip hold high clock speeds.

Every model has two 10 Gbps USB-C ports and a headphone jack up front, plus 2.5 Gbps Ethernet, HDMI and three Thunderbolt ports in back; there is no USB-A. The M6 uses Thunderbolt 4 (40 Gbps), the M5 Pro gets Thunderbolt 5 (120 Gbps), and only the latter can join several Macs into a compute cluster.

A new chip with three kinds of cores

The M6 is Apple's biggest upgrade to its entry-level silicon since the M4 generation, and the Mac mini is the first product to use it. Its 12-core CPU pairs two "Super" cores with four P-cores and six E-cores, where the M4 and M5 had ten cores; the GPU rises from 10 to 12 cores, the first increase since the M2, and the Neural Engine doubles from 16 to 32 cores.

Memory bandwidth depends on capacity: the 16GB model keeps the M5's 153 GB/s, while 24GB and 32GB versions reach 170 GB/s, an 11 percent gain. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports Apple may skip a full M6 generation and move straight to M7 branding for its Pro, Max and Ultra chips.

Performance and price

Benchmarks put single-core CPU performance 8 to 10 percent ahead of the M5 family, graphics about 10 percent faster and multi-core roughly 20 percent faster. Against the M4 mini the jump is far larger: single-core up 20 to 30 percent, graphics and multi-core up 50 to 80 percent. The M6 nearly matches the M4 Pro in Blender, though the M5 Max stays 60 to 70 percent faster in heavy work.

The sticking point is the price. The $599 M4 mini was one of the best values Apple had ever offered; $899 for the same memory and storage returns the line to its 2020 level, when a base M1 mini cost $699 and 16GB of RAM added $200. Ars Technica still calls the M6 mini Apple's most affordable computer, but says the increase is hard to accept.