Base M5 Mac Mini storage bump to 512GB?

[theluggage]

What DOES matter is RAM. 24GB of RAM in base M5 machines would be very cool.

Both RAM and SSD matter - yes, you can supplement the storage with external drives but the Mini isn’t supposed to be “bring your own drive” and there advantages to having at least the OS, applications and temporary files on the internal drive (and making sure it never gets close to full).

All that effort to make the Mini so small - then ensuring that many users immediately have to hang an external box off it to get adequate storage at an affordable price.

For starters, the M5 is going to use PCIe 5 for the internal SSD and Thunderbolt 5 is only PCIe 4 speed. With OS, apps and temp on the super-fast internal, many people will find that much cheaper USB 3.2 external or even a NAS is more than adequate for bulk storage. However, 256 GB is very tight if you install a couple of “pro” apps or games.

If you do want a TB5 drive with performance comparable to the internal one, that may be cheaper than Apple but it’s still eye-wateringly expensive.

Still, the 16/256GB Mini is probably OK for many. What would be cool is if getting 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD - a fairly pedestrian spec for a computer in 2025 - didn’t double the price of the Mini.

 

[bombardier10]

Yes, the future Mac mini M5 should have more memory, but I don't know if that changes anything...

 

[farmerabc]

Thanks everybody for your replies. Having read them all, I'm now convinced that Apple won't be bumping the base storage to 512GB.

I'll wait for Black Friday to see if I can get a deal on the M4 Mini.

 

[aakshey]

It is quite likely that both MacBook Air and Mac Mini will be upgraded to 512 gb base in the same year. Perhaps accompanied with a similar upgrade for iPad Pro and iPhone Pro Max around the same time too.

The only issue is I don't see this happening at least for the next 2-3 years or so.

 

[Fishrrman]

M6 Minis will probably get 512gb, but I don't see it happening before then.

 

[rb2112]

It's up to YOU to buy with more storage.
These days, I'd consider 24gb of RAM to be "the minimum", and 32gb "the new baseline".

External storage has gotten extremely affordable. Well, these year, prices on external M2 NMVE have gone up about 20% it seems. Still, under $100 for 1TB is way more than the 256GB to 512GB that is being discussed.