Boiled down to its base silicon, the new M6 Mac mini is essentially flawless. We also said the same thing about the previous M4 Mac mini from 2024, except that one launched for $300 less than the new version with its bevy of minor upgrades. So what do we get now, in this year of price hikes, shrinkflation, and layoffs? It’s the best tiny desktop I’ve personally used, and I’m not sure any competing company even has a chance of hitting the same mark.
Apple imagines you’ll care that the new Mac mini is more of an AI box than the one from two years ago. In reality, it’s a spectacular desktop in its own right that somehow beats most of the competition. You’d have to spend much more money to achieve the same as what you get with the new M6 chip. Even multiple higher-end mobile chips from Intel and AMD are still lagging behind this base M6’s 12-core CPU and GPU performance.
M6 Mac mini
The latest pint-sized desktop from Apple didn't need to improve much, but the CPU and GPU performance uplift from the M4 makes it one of the best computers available.
Pros
Cons
A Mac mini doesn’t have to be complicated. All it needs is the right performance and the right ports. Still, as a computer that takes up as little room on my desk as a game controller, it’s incredibly light and compact. It’s silent as the grave even when you’re pushing the more powerful GPU as hard as it will go in rendering, gaming, or—sigh—AI. The only quibble I have left is the sequestered power button positioned on the underside of the device. It’s such a small complaint, especially considering how most users put their Mac to sleep rather than shut it down completely.
The bigger question each buyer has to ask is what they’re willing to spend. A base M6 Mac mini starts at $900 with 16GB of unified memory and 256GB of storage. It can now support up to 32GB of RAM, whereas the M4 version could only do 24GB. Considering that, any step up in memory costs way more. Want 512GB of SSD storage? That will be an extra $200. A full 1TB demands you spend an extra $500, or $1,400 total. For instance, my review unit, with 24GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, would cost at least $1,300. And that’s just Mac minis with the M6 chip. The higher-end Mac mini with M5 Pro chip starts at $1,700, but you do get a 15-core CPU, 16-core GPU, 24GB of unified memory, and 512GB of SSD; there are no lower configurations than that.
Sure, Apple’s penchant for nickel and diming is alive and well, but memory prices have skewed everything. Now more than ever, you have to buy your personal computer with your actual use case in mind. Just know there is no other fist-sized PC in this price point that can match what the M6 Mac mini is capable of today.
After the revised Mac mini arrived in 2024, I was forced to eat my own words. Smaller is better. The M6 version is exactly the same size and shape as the one from two years ago, which means it clocks in at just 1.5 pounds (1.6 pounds if you buy the M5 Pro version). It’s a 5 x 5-inch box that stands just two inches off the desk. Being the same design, that means it includes the M4 Mac mini’s underside power button placed just out of easy reach.
Along with the new chips, Apple also upgraded the Mac mini with its N1 wireless chip and made it compatible with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. And if you also care about faster internet speeds, it supports 2.5Gb Ethernet speeds, though you have to pay $100 extra for 10Gb connectivity bandwidth.
The M6 Mac mini also has just enough ports so long as you don’t need USB-A. On the front, two USB-C ports alongside the always-welcome 3.5mm headphone jack. The rear has three Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, HDMI, and the Ethernet port. If you want the vastly improved Thunderbolt 5 speeds, you need to buy the M5 Pro version.
Moving up from the M4 to the M6 chip means you’ll be seeing some impressive uplift in performance. In Geekbench 6 tests, which model the CPU’s overall capabilities, the M6 chip performed 32% better in multi-core settings. Simply put, the M6 is capable of handling more intensive tasks. For instance, in our Blender tests, where we time how long it takes the CPU to render a scene of a BMW, the M6 chip completed the task 40 seconds faster, coming in at just over two minutes.
What’s more surprising is just how easily Apple’s M6 chip beats the competition from both AMD and Intel. In an “Apple’s” to apples test, the M6 performed 18% better in Cinebench 2026 benchmarks than the AMD Ryzen AI 470 HX chip inside the Geekom A9 Max. The Geekom’s AMD processor did happen to beat the M6 with a speedier Blender benchmark by around 15 seconds, so it’s not like synthetic tests always tell the whole story. On the whole, though, the Mac mini proved superior.
If you want to know how well the M6 chip compares to Intel’s latest laptop chips, the 12-core M6 still managed to overcome a 16-core Intel Core Ultra 9 386H inside a Lenovo Pro 9i G11 Aura Edition in Geekbench 7 benchmarks by just over 20%. The only time the M6 starts to lose steam is when it has to match up with 18-core processors, like Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme on an Asus Zenbook A16. Even then, it only lost by 13% in Cinebench 2026 tests.
As for the GPU, the M6 Mac mini was a surprise powerhouse. It easily overcame the M4 Mac mini, taking just 11 seconds to complete our Blender test compared to the 2024 version’s 36 seconds. What’s more, it managed to hold its own against the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H chip inside lightweight machines like the HP Omnibook Ultra 14. In 3DMark real-time rendering benchmarks, Apple’s new GPU was practically neck and neck in tests like “Steel Nomad.” However, because of updates to the M-series hardware-accelerated ray tracing capabilities, the M6 actually scored around 12% better in 3DMark “Solar Bay” ray tracing tests.
No Apple product will be a gaming powerhouse, but if there are titles available on the Mac you’ve been looking to try, like Cyberpunk 2077, the M6 is surprisingly good enough. I could max out the Resident Evil 4 remake with the help of MetalFx upscaling running on “Performance” settings. I was even able to run the game at 5K resolution on an Apple Studio Display XDR without much fuss. You’ll find that, with the right settings, the M6 Mac mini is a great machine for gaming at 1080p, so long as Apple or third parties manage to make gaming better on Macs.
On the anecdotal side of things, batch exporting dozens of photos from Adobe Lightroom finished in the blink of an eye. Everything else I tried, from rendering to merely browsing, felt extremely snappy. I can barely imagine a smoother desktop experience.
See Mac mini M6 at Amazon
See Mac mini M6 at Apple.com
An M6 Mac mini doesn’t match up to the performance of the base 15-core M5 Pro or anything close to the M5 Max chip inside a MacBook Pro. So, yes, you’re getting a performance boost if you spend nearly twice as much on the M5 Pro Mac mini. You can even get the higher-end chip with a 20-core GPU, rather than the stock standard of 16 cores. That means you’ll end up spending at least $1,900. However, there are other reasons you need to consider the price.
For one, if you want a higher memory bandwidth of 170GB/s versus the standard 153GB/s, you need to spend at least $1,300. The higher memory bandwidth determines how well your Mac can handle those very high-end workloads, and that includes AI processing.
And then it gets even more complicated. The M5 Pro Mac mini comes with three Thunderbolt 5 USB-C ports in the back, rather than three Thunderbolt 4. That offers double the bandwidth for data as well as support for up to three 4K monitors at 144Hz. What’s more, you can’t tether multiple M6 Mac minis together to create a superpowered AI workstation. That feature is locked to the M5 Pro version.
The M6 Mac mini can run up to three displays at once through the two Thunderbolt 4 and one through HDMI. The M5 Pro version with Thunderbolt 5 can use any combination of rear HDMI and Thunderbolt ports, and it can even handle a screen up to 8K and 60Hz.
These are the kinds of restrictions that should push the base model to the traditional user who just needs a standalone desktop for all their daily tasks. The M4 Mac mini was already well designed for those use cases, even if the M6 version is technically faster. Not to mention, any variety of M3 Mac or newer can all run the new Siri AI to its full capabilities (with a modifiable voice for the chatbot). And if you’re getting a new Mac, I suggest you switch to macOS 27 Golden Gate because, even if you’re not big on AI, you’ll find there are a lot of things to love compared to Tahoe.
I’ve had a fair few months to come to grips with macOS Golden Gate, and my opinion has not changed from when I first used the beta back in July. There are several welcome features, like a slider to set the opacity on the controversial Liquid Glass translucent UI elements. But the one big headlining capability is all tied around Siri AI, and its features are occasionally useful if—like me—you found that Google search has become absolutely worthless in the last few months.
Every Mac now has access to a new dedicated Siri app as well as quick access to the chatbot assistant through the age-old Spotlight command. Siri is not a talker. The chatbot is to the point and is constantly reminding you it could very well be wrong. It lines up its sources underneath the text, and it’s often worth it to click on those links if you want to get the full context of whatever Siri is telling you.
Siri also has the ability to work across all first-party Apple apps to complete tasks on your behalf. Depending on how detailed you want to be, this can be hit and miss. For instance, I asked Siri to look through my texts and find the conversation I had with my brother about ordering a couple of foam swords, and it just could not get it. However, when I had it look for a nice ice cream spot near Prospect Park, then add that as an event to my calendar, it performed the action without a hitch.
Siri runs partially on the device, but the most complex agentic activities are handled in the cloud, particularly through Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers. Running a true agent on-device is not all that possible with the base-level M6 chip, even less so if you decide to buy this Mac with less RAM. And here’s the rub: Apple has mentioned it may eventually have to decide what features you can have for free and which must be rate limited. I can imagine a future where some features are tied to a paid iCloud account.
I ran the Gemma 4 26B and the latest Bonsai 2 27B through Ollama, and the model can indeed run on-device. It’s a model that could also be hosted on the M4 version, though it will do so at a slower speed. I asked the models to create an app that would strip metadata from a batch of photos and re-encode them as JPGs. The M6 Mac mini took 1 minute and 30 seconds to complete a simple Python script using the Gemma 4 26B open-source model. The M4 Mac mini took 16 minutes and 30 seconds. However, I need to note that our original review unit of the M4 Mac mini only had 16GB of RAM, versus 24GB on the M6 version. That can make a significant difference in the speed of how these models interact, even a relatively small AI model.
I’m not even saying which version did a better job with the app output. I just wanted to measure speed. When I switched to using the just-released Bonsai 2 27B—a much larger AI model—the M6 struggled and buckled under its own weight. And this is the problem with trying to benchmark AI. There is very little consistency when running these models, and they’re always improving.
The M6 Mac mini is capable of low-level AI work. It’s obviously better than the M4 version. There is evidently a customer base who cares about that, considering it was homegrown AI tinkerers who helped the original mini sell out in the first place. It’s still hard to get me excited for this all-about-AI future, especially when it’s making prices untenable for the kinds of people who should want it.
Let’s consider the price and performance of what else is out there for pint-sized computing. Multiple companies have shoved out new midrange mini PCs, and all of them are being reamed by the ongoing RAMpocalypse. We recently reviewed a $2,300 Geekom A9 Max, a mini PC with a solid amount of ports but performance that lags far behind Apple. Asus just released its Ascent QN10, a box that starts at $1,350 with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. It seems like it could come closest to matching the Mac mini—at least in CPU performance—but it is still $350 more than Apple’s box with similar memory specs.
That’s right, we’ve entered the opposite dimension, where Apple is somehow the “cheap” option. The fact disturbs far more than it delights. If you can ignore the spiking costs across the board, the M6 Mac mini is still a great desktop in its own right; even as prices rise, it becomes harder and harder to justify buying any sort of computer in 2026.
See Mac mini M6 at Amazon
See Mac mini M6 at Apple.com
Source: Gizmodo