Apple Mac mini (M6) review: The best compact desktop is no longer a great deal

At $899, the new Mac mini loses the fun factor of the previous models.

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget Add Engadget on Google: Preferred Source Google Discover RATING : 8.7 / 10 When we last reviewed the Mac mini in 2024 , Apple was sitting pretty with a compact redesign and a surprisingly affordable $599 starting price. And then, the AI frenzy begat the RAMaggedon. Mac minis flew off the shelves (we never got an M5 version), while storage and memory prices exploded. Now we have the M6 Mac mini , which still has a wonderfully small case, but starts at $899. That's not so adorable, is it?

The M6 Mac mini remains a very powerful and compact desktop, but it's no longer the shockingly great deal that it used to be. It wasn't unusual to see earlier models go on sale for $499 or less, making them perfect servers, sturdy computers for kids or AI dev boxes. Now the Mac mini just seems a lot less fun. But if you absolutely need a powerful little system, it's still the best mini desktop you can buy today.

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget After skipping the base M5 chip last year, the new Mac mini lineup is a bit confusing. You can choose from either the new M6 chip, a 12-core CPU/12-core GPU system on a chip, or the more powerful M5 Pro, sporting up to 18 CPU cores and 20 GPU cores. They both offer vastly different RAM capabilities: The M6 supports up to 32GB of RAM with 170 GB/s of bandwidth, while the M5 Pro goes all the way up to 64GB with 307 GB/s of bandwidth.

Despite the numbering confusion, Apple is sticking with its classic split for the Mac mini. Most people would be fine with the $899 M6 model — but if you're actually doing serious work that requires massive files and rendering, the M5 Pro model would be far more capable. And if you need more power, you can jump all the way up to the $2,499 Mac Studio, which now has replaced the older Mac Pro desktops.

The biggest upgrade with the new hardware, according to Apple, comes down to local AI processing. Apple claims the M6 model is 13.5x faster than the M1 when it comes to LLM prompt processing in LM Studio, while the M5 Pro system is 22.3x faster. There are notable gains in typical performance too. The company says the M6 is 2.3x faster at Excel spreadsheet work than the M1 Mac mini, and the M5 Pro is 4.6x quicker. Those are worthwhile improvements to see after six years of steady Apple Silicon improvements, but they're not double-digit figures like the AI processing.

The new Mac mini has the same adorable five-inch by five-inch case as the previous model, and it's still shockingly small in person. At just 1.5 pounds, it looks and feels more like an over-sized Apple TV than a genuine computer. Given just how much of an achievement that this design was a few years ago, I don't blame Apple for not changing a thing.

The only unfortunate aspect of this design is that the power button still sits at the bottom of the Mac mini, right beside its rear ports. That makes it tough to hard reset the system if it's living in a far corner of your desk. For general usage, though, it's not a huge deal.