GoKawiilAfter 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. Apple's Magic keyboards, and most other Mac keyboards, have power buttons in the top row of keys.
As for ports, the Mac mini has two USB-C USB 3.0 ports up front, along with an HDMI connection, 2.5 Gbps Ethernet jack, power port and three USB-C Thunderbolt ports on the rear. The M6 Mac mini features Thunderbolt 4, with up to 40 Gb/s connections, while the M6 Pro system has Thunderbolt 5, supporting up to 120 Gb/s. The latter would be better for fast connections to storage and other accessories. It would be nice to see an SD card slot somewhere on the Mac mini, at least on the M5 Pro model, but for now you'll have to step up to a Mac Studio if you want one.