M6 Mac Mini First Look: Larger Energy Packed within the Identical Small Bundle

The M6 replace for the Mac Mini arrived not a second too quickly. Not solely has it been almost two years for the reason that final Mac Mini was launched, but it surely’s additionally turn into more and more tough to seek out an older M4 Mini for buy in latest months. In the 12 months of the AI agent, Apple’s Mac Mini has loved a surge in reputation to the purpose of dwindling provides and lengthy wait instances.

The compact, quiet and reasonably priced Mini with its energy-efficient but highly effective Apple silicon and unified reminiscence has turn into a preferred decide for individuals trying to run OpenClaw and different native AI brokers across the clock. Even at its barely elevated beginning worth of $899, the M6 Mini is certain to stay en vogue as a tiny, always-on AI server. The core depend ticks up for the CPU, GPU and NPU in going from the M4 to the M6, skipping over the M5 within the course of.

If you wish to pack extra energy into the Mac Mini for operating demanding inventive workloads or bigger LLMs, Apple gives two M5 Professional processor upgrades and the flexibility to stuff the Mini with as much as 64GB of RAM. Apple despatched me a pair of Mac Minis to check, an M6 mannequin with bumps to the reminiscence and storage and a loaded M5 Professional unit whose worth locations it in Mac Studio territory. 

Apple Mac Mini specs (as examined)

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Even earlier than the newest worth hike with the M6 mannequin, the Mac Mini misplaced its standing earlier this 12 months as Apple’s most reasonably priced Mac laptop. It debuted twenty years in the past at $499 and might be had for $599 for many of its tenure earlier than leaping to $799 earlier this 12 months.

Launched this spring, the MacBook Neo turned the most affordable Mac at simply $699, but it surely’s based mostly on an A18 Professional processor borrowed from the iPhone. So, the Mac Mini nonetheless stays probably the most reasonably priced Mac laptop with a correct M-series processor. At $899, it’s nonetheless $400 lower than the most affordable MacBook Air. And it beat each MacBook within the race to be the primary Mac to get Apple’s new M6 processor.

Meet the M6

The M6 processor is the primary of Apple’s M collection processors to be fabricated with a 2nm course of, which permits for denser circuitry in the identical measurement die. The smaller course of often ends in better effectivity and allows you to improve the core depend and clock speeds with out growing the scale of the chip. 

And certain sufficient, the M6 is richer in cores than the earlier M4 half. The M6 has 12 CPU cores and 12 GPU cores — up from 10 cores of every sort within the M4 chipset. In the meantime, the core depend of the neural processing unit that’s designed to deal with the integer math required for AI duties, together with Apple Intelligence, has doubled.

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The M6 has a twin 16-core neural engine; its mixed 32 cores are double the 16-core NPU of the M4 and M5 Professional. The M6 and M5 Professional additionally function the identical neural accelerators on the GPU that Apple launched with the M5 to assist increase AI and ray-tracing efficiency.

For $899, the M6 Mac Mini has 16GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and a 2.5Gb Ethernet adapter. Providing 256GB of storage on a desktop laptop, regardless of how small that laptop could also be, is borderline offensive. You’ll be able to’t even purchase a MacBook Air with a 256GB SSD after Apple jettisoned that undersized choice earlier this 12 months. Sadly, the fee to double the storage to 512GB is steep at $200, which shortly pushes the worth of the Mac Mini over $1,000. Wish to double it once more to 1TB? That’s one other $300. Be ready to half with one other $500 if you wish to double it but once more to 2TB.

Reminiscence prices are equally steep. Every 8GB improve provides $200 to the invoice, going from 16GB to 24GB and 24GB to 32GB. Select one of many M5 Professional upgrades, and you’ll take the reminiscence to 48GB or 64GB and storage as much as a whopping 8TB. (I’ll allow you to uncover these improve costs by yourself; simply ensure you’re sitting down while you have a look.)

Pricing for the Mac Mini with an M5 Professional begins at $1,699. For that worth, you get an M5 Professional with a 15-core CPU and 16-core GPU, together with 24GB of reminiscence and a 512GB SSD. (Sure, together with you, I used to be relieved to see the 256GB SSD choice disappear with the M5 Professional improve.)

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Apple despatched me the upper of the 2 M5 Professional choices. It has an 18-core CPU and a 20-core GPU. Apple additionally upped the reminiscence to 48GB and the storage to 1TB whereas additionally upgrading the Ethernet adapter to 10Gbps. The price of this check system is $2,899. That’s $400 greater than the entry-level Mac Studio.

Notably, the M5 Professional chips have the identical 16-core neural engine as the usual M5 chip and never the M6’s twin 16-core neural engine. Irrespective of the CPU you select, the Mac Mini comes with Apple’s N1 chip that delivers Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 networking.

The excellent news and unhealthy information with Apple’s unified reminiscence

Let’s get the unhealthy information (and a few acronyms) out of the best way first. Apple’s M-series processors have a system-on-a-chip (or SoC) design with a unified reminiscence structure. The draw back of this association is that the RAM can’t be upgraded after buy. You’re locked into no matter quantity you purchase. Frequent on at present’s laptops, it’s extra of a drag on a desktop laptop, even one as compact because the Mac Mini, the place house for upgrades is restricted.

Now, the excellent news. The SoC design combines the CPU, GPU and neural engine to take away bottlenecks and pace up each efficiency and effectivity. And with Apple’s UMA, the system’s reminiscence is shared among the many CPU, GPU and neural engine as an alternative of splitting it into separate blocks the place many of the RAM is accessed by the CPU and solely a smaller quantity of video RAM is allotted to the GPU. Working an area LLM is extraordinarily memory-intensive, which is why the reasonably priced Mac Mini, with its unified reminiscence, has turn into the transfer for many individuals trying to run native AI brokers.

Josh Goldman/CNET

Reminiscence bandwidth has improved with the brand new Mini fashions. The M6 Mac Mini’s reminiscence has a bandwidth of as much as 153 GB/s with 16GB of RAM and as much as 170 GB/s with 24GB or extra, which is a rise from the 120 GB/s of the M4 Mini. The M5 Professional jumps you as much as a reminiscence bandwidth of 307 GB/s. 

Design stays the identical

Apple refreshed the internals however saved the design the identical from the M4 mannequin, which launched a a lot smaller footprint than the earlier M2 mannequin. The M6 Mini has the identical 5-by-5-inch field that stands 2 inches tall, with the facility button nonetheless in the identical considerably unusual location. It’s on the underside panel, which suggests you’ll want to select up the Mini to energy it on.

The identical design means the brand new Mini has the identical port choice, which was robust with the M4 Mini, so it wasn’t begging for a change — except you have been searching for the adapter-free comfort of getting a USB-A port. With all the USB ports of the Sort-C selection, you’ll want an adapter for older USB-A peripherals or a wired mouse. Just like the M4 mannequin, the M6 Mini helps as much as three exterior shows.

Josh Goldman/CNET

M6 and M5 Professional Mac Mini efficiency thus far

Primarily based on my preliminary testing, the M6 Mac Mini is wanting prefer it’s going to be an much more in style decide than the M5 Professional Mini or earlier M4 Mini for agentic AI workloads. The twin 16-core neural engine, mixed with the neural accelerator on every GPU core, helped the M6 rocket forward of the M4 Mini on our Geekbench AI check, which measures the on-device AI efficiency of a laptop computer’s NPU. The M6 additionally topped the M5 Professional Mini and each M5-based MacBook we’ve examined on this check. The M5 has the GPU neural accelerators of the M6 however not its twin 16-core neural engine.

Nonetheless, the Asus Ascent QN10 mini PC based mostly on a Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite CPU carried out higher on this check than the M6 Mini, due to its NPU, which is able to 80 trillion operations per second.

On our utility benchmarks, the M6 Mini turned in excellent single-core efficiency on the Geekbench 6 and Cinebench 2024 exams, the place it once more outpaced the M5 Professional and the crop of M5 MacBooks and Home windows opponents. The M5 Professional Mini put its additional CPU cores to good use and beat the M6 Mini on the Geekbench 6 multicore check, however surprisingly, it fell wanting the M6 Mini on the multicore CPU check of Cinebench 2024.

The place the M5 Professional Mini had its largest benefit over the M6 Mini in graphics efficiency. It simply outpaced the M6 Mini on our 3DMark Metal Nomad check.

I’ve extra exams to run on these two machines to additional examine their AI and graphics efficiency. Try the preliminary benchmark outcomes beneath for the M6 and M5 Professional Mini, and examine again quickly for my full overview of Apple’s newest Minis.

System configurations

Matt Elliott

Senior Editor

Matt Elliott is a senior editor at CNET with a give attention to laptops and streaming providers. Matt has greater than 20 years of expertise testing and reviewing laptops. He has labored for CNET in New York and San Francisco and now lives in New Hampshire. When he isn’t writing about laptops, Matt likes to play and watch sports activities. He likes to play tennis and hates the variety of streaming providers he has to subscribe to as a way to watch the varied sports activities he desires to look at.

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