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.
