Apple Announces New Mac Mini With M6 and M5 Pro Chips and More

[MacRumors]

Apple today announced the next-generation Mac mini, which can be configured with an all-new M6 chip or the M5 Pro chip released earlier this year.

The M6 chip is equipped with a 12-core CPU and a 12-core GPU, up from a 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU in the M5 chip. In addition, the M6 chip features the first-ever dual Neural Engine with two 16-core engines, up from one in previous chips. The M6 chip has up to 170GB/s memory bandwidth, up from 153GB/s for the M5 chip.

Apple said the Mac mini with the M6 chip delivers up to 40% faster CPU performance, up to 4× faster performance for AI tasks in particular, up to 2× faster graphics performance, and up to 2× faster storage speeds compared to the previous-generation model with the 10-core M4 chip, 32GB of unified memory, and 2TB of storage.

There are two M5 Pro configurations available, including one with a 15-core CPU and a 16-core GPU, and another with an 18-core CPU and a 20-core GPU. Both of these models are equipped with a single 16-core Neural Engine for AI tasks.

For both the M6 and M5 Pro configurations, Apple said the Mac mini now includes Neural Accelerators in each GPU core for the first time.

Apple silicon continues to deliver industry-leading performance-per-watt, and Apple said the M6 chip has the world's fastest CPU core. Apple touted the Mac mini as the "leading" desktop for "always-on, deskside agentic computing."

Apple's press release provides many specific performance comparisons involving apps such as Affinity, Blender, LM Studio, and Photoshop.

Mac mini models with the M6 chip can be configured with up to a 2TB SSD and 32GB of RAM, while models with the M5 Pro go up to an 8TB SSD and 64GB of RAM.

All of the new Mac mini models support Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, up from Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 on the previous 2024 models. The new models have the same overall design as the previous models and continue to come in silver only.

All models still have two front USB-C ports, a front headphone jack, three rear Thunderbolt ports, a rear HDMI port, and a rear Ethernet port that is now a 2.5 Gigabit port by default, up from 1 Gigabit. A 10-Gigabit Ethernet upgrade option remains available. M6 models have Thunderbolt 4 ports and M5 Pro models have Thunderbolt 5 ports.

All models continue to natively support up to three external displays.

The new Mac mini is available to pre-order starting today, and it will begin arriving to customers and launch in stores on Tuesday, September 22. In the U.S., the M6 model starts at $899, while the M5 Pro model starts at $1,699.

In the U.S., the previous Mac mini initially started at $599 with 256GB of storage and 16GB of RAM, but that configuration eventually rose to $799 alongside price increases to all other Macs and iPads in June. The equivalent configuration with the M6 chip starts at $899, so the Mac mini is now even more expensive.

Article Link: Apple Announces New Mac Mini With M6 and M5 Pro Chips and More

 

[abatabia]

$899?? Hard pass. Geez.

 

[MacUserFella]

Watching the price go from $599 to $899 in about less than two years hurts 💔

 

[Blackstick]

A year ago you could get a 16/256 M4 Mac mini for $399 at Microcenter. We have lost so much. 256GB base storage? Wtf Apple.

They've completely lost the plot. And what's with the 512gb base storage on a $2500 Mac Studio?! I'm sorry but that should match the 1TB base in a MacBook Pro. Apple's onboard models are eating 60-80 gigabytes just to start.

 

[Russell Ocean]

300$ hikes omg!

 

[turbineseaplane]

Will sell like HOTCAKES

Great to see these finally released.

Price is what it is -- welcome to 2026.

 

[bunce66]

899 for a no-screen computer with 256GB storage is laughable.

 

[Oestreich Dieter]

Is the price hike purely from the memory shortage?

 

[businessnumbersmoneypeopl]

This used to be a cheap, nice no-nonsense option for many. I guess it's still nice for some.

 

[zilchfox]

Went from $599 to $899 with only a chip bump in less than a year... ouch. Both models had 16GB RAM and 256GB storage.

 

[Entilzha]

Damn, I’m glad I got my M4 Mini for a whopping $499.

 

[infiniteentropy]

Wait for the “demand based” price raise right before the holidays. That’ll be the the salt in the wound.

 

[I7guy]

I guess Apple announced the two chips today as well. @gurman?

 

[cdsapplefan]

Watching the price go from $599 to $899 in about less than two years hurts 💔

Say thank you to RAM and AI 🤖

 

[Unregistered 4U]

This is interesting as it’s the first new Apple Silicon chip generation to not ship first or with an Air or iPad.

 

[Agit21]

Is the price hike purely from the memory shortage?

Yes and I bet poor Apple loses money on these devices.
/s

 

[svish]

Nice to see the new mini and the new M6 chip. Steep increase in price and that too only 256GB as base storage. Long waiting time too if ordered today. Cannot believe that I got my M4 mini at $599. Excellent Mac. Not planning to upgrade.

 

[jouster]

I'd get about $350 trading my M2 Mini in for one of these. Net spend would be about $550. Tempting.

 

[cdsapplefan]

$899?? Hard pass. Geez.

If Steve Jobs was still here, he would’ve tried hard to make it more affordable for consumers.

 

[UltimaKilo]

This is crazy. It deserved its own event. Huge PR miss.

 

[Deej]

Wow. Very expensive in the UK when you start adding storage and RAM. Hard pass.

 

[Shaggymax]

The config that i would get Mac Studio M5 Ultra Chip 256gb Ram 4TB SSD = $12299 GULP !! On pause for now lol

 

[Unregistered 4U]

I guess Apple announced the two chips today as well. @gurman?

It was unclear as recently as yesterday. Good thing that Apple was able to come to their decision! 🙂

 

[inventor7777]

Looks like this one now comes standard with 2.5Gb Ethernet! That is a really nice upgrade if you use local network storage or servers.

Our M4 minis have Broadcom 1GbE.

Ethernet:

    Broadcom 57762-A0:
   
      Bus: PCI
      Vendor ID: 0x14e4
      Device ID: 0x1682
      Subsystem Vendor ID: 0x14e4
      Subsystem ID: 0x1682
      Revision ID: 0x0000
      PCIe Link Speed: 2.5 GT/s
      PCIe Link Width: x1
      Driver: com.apple.iokit.AppleBCM5701Ethernet
      BSD Device Name: en0
      MAC Address: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
      AVB Support: Yes
      Maximum Link Speed: 1 Gb/s

And my Mac Studio M4 Max has Aquantia 10GbE.

Ethernet:

    Apple AQC113:

      Bus: PCI
      Vendor ID: 0x1d6a
      Device ID: 0x04c0
      Subsystem Vendor ID: 0x106b
      Subsystem ID: 0x0223
      Revision ID: 0x0003
      PCIe Link Speed: 16.0 GT/s
      PCIe Link Width: x1
      Firmware Version: 1.4.32
      Driver: com.apple.driver.AppleEthernetAquantiaAqtion
      BSD Device Name: en0
      MAC Address: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
      AVB Support: Yes
      Maximum Link Speed: 10 Gb/s

 

[Lwii2boo]

It’s just too expansive. Not having at least 512Gb as base storage in 2026 is ridiculous especially at this price. It’s a desktop computer not a phone