Excellent hardware badly hampered by too-small SSD

The M6 Mac mini has a faster chip and is solid hardware, but that $899 hurts and there is just not enough storage at that entry price for Apple Intelligence and all of your apps.

I have loved the Mac mini since day one, more than 20 years ago. There has been one in my house consistently since the first G4 model, generally attached to a television, or used as a server, and so forth.

Oddly, the 2026 M6 Mac mini is not the cheapest Mac overall. The MacBook Neo has something to say about that, but that’s just not as convenient for my own workflows.

This time around, for the second time, the Apple Silicon Mac mini skipped a generation, and in 2026, the Mac mini is the first to use the new M6 chip. This is good and bad, but more on that in a bit.

Our review covers the base M6 model. It is the version most buyers will choose, and there’s a lot to say about that, what you really must add, and what Apple seems to have in mind for the model when $1000 or more of upgrades are added.

M6 Mac mini review: Design

The M6 Mac mini keeps the compact shape from the M4. It’s a spec-bump update through and through.

That means you get the usual current-gen design, which means that smaller square with rounded corners. It’s two inches tall, including the circular foot that also provides ventilation to the unit. The Wi-Fi antenna remains on the base of the unit, for better and worse.

The outside still looks the same as the previous one, including the black Apple logo on the top, as well as the pair of USB-C ports, the headphone jack, and the power indicator at the front.

M6 Mac mini review: A very familiar base

Around the back is an unchanged mix of ports, again without the immediately visible power button. Once again, it’s under the back corner of the casing, which caused a stir last time for being a little harder to reach than in previous Mac minis. It was a mistake then, and it’s still a mistake now.

That said, if you’re the kind of person who puts the Mac to sleep at the end of the working day and doesn’t really shut down the Mac mini itself, you may only need to care about the button on a rare occasion.

Really, the only pain point here is that power button. And even then, for most users, it will only be an issue when they actually need to press it.

M6 Mac mini review: The M6 chip and the call of AI

The headline change, and the only real change of note here, is the M6 chip. It is Apple’s first 2-nanometer processor in a desktop Mac.

The CPU has 12 cores in three types. This consists of two super, four performance, and six efficiency cores.

According to Apple, the M6 has a 40% faster CPU than the M4. A lot of this is due to the super cores, which adds two cores to the count versus the M4 version.

The GPU is also more core-heavy than before, with 12 instead of ten cores. The core improvements as well as the quantity stand to give the M6 a big leap in terms of graphical performance.

M6 Mac mini review: A more unusual placement of the compact computer.

That said, the bigger draw here will be in artificial intelligence processing, as the M6 has been practically made for those tasks.

For a start, there’s the Neural Engine, which is now a dual 16-core version. That means there are 32 cores instead of 16 cores in previous editions.

Furthermore, each of those 12 GPU cores have Neural Accelerators, which again help with AI-related task processing. It will help your Photos work from a practical standpoint, or any other “neural” tasking.

Apple says that it has four-times faster AI compute capability than the M4. In LM Studio, it can even hit 4.8 times speeds, Apple adds. We never saw that for the base model, but it is faster.

This is all fine and good, but in practice, how much it actually varies depends on your workloads. It is faster than M4 and M5 Pro Mac minis in some workloads, but in other AI workloads, the M5 Pro core count comes ahead.

It isn’t quite the AI monster that the Mac Studio has become, it’s still a device that’s more than capable of chewing away at queries. Still, though. The Mac mini is better used as an inexpensive workstation with Cloud AI compute instead of on-device, especially with the reviewed $899 model.

The base model as reviewed here has 16GB of unified memory. There are options for upgrades to 24GB and 32GB, if you can afford the upgrade costs.

Memory bandwidth is also a real gain this year. The base 16GB runs at 153GB/s, which is up from the 120GB/s of the M4.

The 24GB and 32GB tiers reach 170GB/s.

M6 Mac mini review: Single-core results

In terms of computing grunt, the M6 Mac mini can push out 4,034 on the single-core test of Geekbench 7. It’s an improvement of about 23% on the 3,277 of the M4 Mac mini, thanks to the use of a super core.

Likewise, turning to multi-core, the per-core improvement is mixed with the extra cores to give the M6 a score of 22,594. Against the M4 Mac mini’s score of 15,337, that’s a 47% improvement.

M6 Mac mini review: Multi-core results

Shifting to graphics, and the Metal test is similarly a big generational gain for the M6 over the M4. At 91,087, the M6 is scoring 68% higher than its predecessor.

M6 Mac mini review: Metal results

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There’s certainly a performance improvement here. It’s even to make even M4 Mac mini owners consider a move up.

M6 Mac mini review: Connectivity and Displays

Connectivity mostly carries over from the M4. The port layout is unchanged front and back, and that’s perfectly fine.

There is HDMI and three Thunderbolt 4 ports, which can run at up to 40Gb/s. They’re not the Thunderbolt 5 you’d get from the M5 Pro, but it’s only a problem if you need that much bandwidth.

They accompany the two USB-C ports at the front, which run at 10Gb/s. Likewise, they could’ve been Thunderbolt 5, like the M5 Pro, but there has to be some advantage to upgrading.

The Ethernet connection is a quiet improvement here. The gigabit connection has been switched for 2.5Gb Ethernet, which builds in a little network infrastructure future-proofing.

M6 Mac mini review: Rear ports

You can always pay the $100 to get the 10Gb upgrade, but there’s less of a need to do that for right now. And, that creeps you even closer to the M5 Pro Mini, or the Mac Studio.

On the wireless side, the N1 chip brings Wi-Fi 7 to the party, as well as Bluetooth 6 and Thread. For most, this is still future-proofing. Wi-Fi 7 networks have not yet proliferated, as they can still be very expensive.

The M6 Mac mini can drive up to three external displays, using a combination of Thunderbolt connections and HDMI. It can now support two external displays over a single Thunderbolt port, too.

Support includes variable refresh rates, HDR, and multi-channel audio. Those Thunderbolt 4 connections can support native DisplayPort 1.4 speeds.

The triple screen layout can consist of a pair of 6K 60Hz screens or two 4K 165Hz screens, as well as either a 5K 60Hz monitor over Thunderbolt or 4K 60Hz over HDMI.

If you go for two screens, the maximum limits include one 8K 60Hz screen or 5K 120Hz, or 4K 240Hz, as well as a second 5K or 4K HDMI display.

M6 Mac mini review: Pricing

RAM and SSD industry pricing has hit the Mac mini hard. The base M6 starts at $899.

This is $300 above the M4 model’s launch price, and $500 more than what you could buy the older model through MicroCenter for, at this time in 2025. Though, to be fair, we are currently existing in a memory crisis, and so everything electronic is now very expensive.

The memory itself starts at 16GB. An upgrade to 24GB costs another $200. Going to 32GB is a $400 premium over the base model.

Storage starts at that meager and already discussed 256GB, with upgrades ranging from $200 for 512GB to $500 more for 1TB. If you want 2TB, that’s $1000 more than the base unit.

This pricing ladder isn’t great. The 256GB capacity reviewed here is hampered a bit by slower drive transfer speeds too, with it hitting about 3150 megabytes per second read and write.

The 512GB model, adding that $200, boosts this to about 6300 megabytes per second read and write speeds. This 512GB is really what we consider the bare minimum for the 2026 Mac mini, since Apple Intelligence is no longer optional, and the 20GB or so models will install regardless of your setting.

And, it’s not slotted storage, like the M4 Mac mini was, eliminating that option. For budgetary reasons, we do recommend external SSD or hard drive storage

All said, Apple’s pricing could’ve been a lot worse. It’s painful for those on tight budgets, but upgrades have always done that, even without memory market shenanigans.

The M6 Mac mini is not as good a processing bargain as the Mac Studio is, but it’s also about half the price with some well-selected upgrades at purchase.

As always, consider your workflows. The M6 edges out the M5 family in single-core use. It’s hard to recommend the $899 Mac mini M6 configuration with the storage the way it is.

M6 Mac mini review: A pint-sized powerhouse, at a price

The M6 Mac mini is a familiar box with a faster heart. It’s the continuing pattern for Mac upgrades, where Apple makes the engine faster, while keeping everything else almost exactly the same.

It remains an impressive piece of engineering, with a lot of power, in a small space, sipping power the whole while. Price increases aside, that’s still very much the case here.

The gains are all inside, and they are real. The CPU, GPU, and AI performance are all welcome jumps, especially for those with Mac Studio dreams but a Mac mini budget.

The video support and faster 2.5Gb Ethernet too good to have.

M6 Mac mini review: Continuing to take up a small amount of desk space.

The catch is that SSD at entry-level and that higher price. At $899, the base model costs $300 more than before, and that’s hard to escape.

For first-time buyers, the M6 Mac mini remains an easy recommendation, assuming more SSD space is bought at purchase, if they want something beefy and don’t want a MacBook Neo. Upgraders from the M4 should weigh the AI gains against how much is in their wallets.

M6 Mac mini Pros

• Large CPU, GPU, and AI performance gains
• Dual Neural Engine suits local AI work
• Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and 2.5Gb Ethernet

M6 Mac mini Cons

• Costs $300 more than the M4’s launch price
• No Thunderbolt 5, unlike the Pro model
• Profoundly tight 256GB base storage, which is the biggest problem

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

With Apple Intelligence, 256GB for a Mac mini is just too small. And, on top of that, that configuration is half the speed of the 512GB version.

I do think that the $1099 model with more storage is the better option. That version is a 4 out of 5.

The RAM and Flash commodity pricing is a real problem for the Mac mini. That price increase cannot be ignored. The math on this is enormously different if the 512GB version was $899.

But it isn’t. As such, the entry-level M6 Mac mini will be fine for a first desktop, or an adjunct to an iPhone-primary device, because that 256GB storage just cannot be ignored. Most of this target market has mostly single-core loads, and will be perfectly fine with a MacBook Neo, upgraded, for less money.

While it’s not my main computer, I’m keeping my M4 Mac mini for what it’s being used for. There’s just too much of a price premium not to.

As far as my main computer goes. after I sold my M1 Ultra Mac Studio, after much hemming and hawing, I picked the M5 Max Mac Studio instead of a M6 Mac mini with about $1200 in upgrades to get it where I wanted. It was just too close in pricing, with the M5 Max winning the day.

We’ll see what happens with Mac mini after the rumored quick jump to M7 in about a year.

Where to buy the M6 Mac mini

Apple’s M6 Mac mini has a starting retail price of $899, but Amazon is already offering a discount on the standard configuration at the time of this review. The $20 markdown brings the price of the M6/16GB/256GB spec down to $879.99.

You can compare prices across every configuration in our Mac mini Price Guide, with deals available on numerous models, including storage upgraded ones that we recommend.