The M6 Mac mini has arrived, with Apple refreshing its most compact desktop in an unusually timed update. Rather than appearing during the company’s traditional autumn Mac window, the new model was announced just ahead of the main iPhone event, replacing the M4 generation that had powered the machine for nearly two years.
Notably, the update skips the M5 entirely, moving straight to the M6 chip. As is typical for a Mac mini refresh, the significant changes are internal rather than external, with Apple retaining the compact design and existing mass. The starting price rises to around £710, up from roughly £470 for the outgoing M4 model.
Design, Weight and Size
The Mac mini received a substantial redesign with the M4 generation, shrinking to a much smaller footprint. Apple has left that design untouched for the M6 version. The new model keeps the same 5-inch by 5-inch square footprint and stands 2 inches tall, while weight remains unchanged at 1.5 pounds.
The front-facing ports carry over from the M4 redesign, which means two USB-C ports rated at 10 gigabits per second and a headphone jack sit on the front, avoiding the need to reach around the back for everyday connections. The power button remains in a corner beneath the unit, a quirk introduced with the smaller enclosure.
For most buyers, the two generations are visually indistinguishable, with the differences residing inside the aluminium shell rather than outside it. The port selection is otherwise identical across both models, comprising HDMI, three Thunderbolt 4 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and the front-mounted USB-C and 3.5mm connections.
Performance and Connectivity Gains
The M4 chip in the previous Mac mini featured a 10-core CPU, with four performance and six efficiency cores, alongside a 10-core GPU and a 16-core Neural Engine. The M6 Mac mini moves to the 2-nanometer M6 chip, marking the first model to ship under the new chip generation.
This time, Apple has fitted a 12-core CPU, consisting of two super cores, four performance cores, and six efficiency cores. Graphics move up to a 12-core GPU, while AI processing is handled by a dual 16-core Neural Engine with GPU Neural Accelerators, compared with the single 16-core Neural Engine on the M4.
Memory bandwidth also sees a meaningful increase, rising to 170GB/s from the 120GB/s of the M4 model. RAM options remain consistent across both generations at 16GB, 24GB and 32GB, and storage configurations continue to span 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB.
Connectivity has been upgraded as well. The M6 Mac mini adds Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and 2.5Gb Ethernet, with a 10Gb Ethernet upgrade available, replacing the Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 and Gigabit Ethernet of the M4 configuration. Both models retain the same compact aluminium enclosure and identical physical dimensions.</p
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Image: appleinsider.com
