Apple Mac Mini (M6) Review: For the AI Curious

The M4 Mac mini was one of Apple's best values ever. This one, not so much. Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only Learn more Minimize to nav The new Mac mini is the kind of Mac upgrade Apple has done a million times.

It’s the same design as before but with new guts. These play-it-safe updates aren’t very exciting, but they’re also usually all upside—you get a year or two’s worth of technological improvements for the same price you would have paid for the older version yesterday. Unfortunately, 2026’s record-setting memory crunch has upended that standard operating procedure.

The new Mac mini starts at $899 for a version with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, a $300 increase for the same memory and storage specs you could get in the $599 M4 Mac mini in 2024. The M4 Mac mini was a great general-purpose desktop computer and one of the best values Apple had ever offered in a desktop Mac. The M6 Mac mini is only one of those things.

I’ll let you guess which. Note that this review is specifically for the M6 version of the Mac mini. We didn’t get an M5 Pro Mac mini to review, but we’ll talk more about how its pricing and performance fits in for our Mac Studio review.

Apple has refreshed the Mac Mini with a brand-new chip, the M6. And this time, it’s more focused on AI than ever.

$899 at Apple Save this story Save this story Rating: 9 /10 Open rating explainer WIRED record-setting power in a tiny box. Impressive gaming for what it is.

Big gains in some AI performance. Good port selection with support for dual 5K monitors.

TIRED More expensive starting point. 16 GB isn't enough for agentic AI.

The Mac Mini has gone through a Peter Parker-esque transformation this year. Just six months ago, it was a meek, unassuming little Mac starter kit, content to fulfill the role of being Apple's smallest and most affordable Mac.

It was so easy to overlook that Apple even skipped its M5 refresh last year. But at the beginning of 2026, the world was flooded with agentic AI frameworks like Claude Cowork, OpenClaw, and Perplexity Computer.

Suddenly, the Mac Mini became a hot commodity for running AI models. Before long, it was completely sold out and hard to find for most of the year.

Even Apple was caught off guard. Powered by the M6 chip and a newfound sense of importance, the Mac Mini is owning its heroic identity—and crushing the competition.

An Old Friend The M6 Mac Mini isn't designed to be flashy. It's meant to blend into your desk's workspace, maybe even hidden behind your monitor or in a closet.

That's not necessarily because it's ugly or poorly made, though. The chassis was redesigned for the 2024 M4 release, adopting a boxier look and overall smaller form factor.

It fits in your hand, with a footprint of just 5 x 5 inches. It's tiny and well crafted.

Everything is inside, including the power supply—no huge power brick to have to find a spot for. Photograph: Luke Larsen Ports remain the same.

Two forward-facing USB-C 3 ports (up to 10 gigabytes per second), as well as a headphone jack and a power indicator light. On the back, there are three Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI 2.1, an Ethernet jack, and the power adapter port.

Using the available USB-C ports and HDMI on the back, you can connect up to two 5K 120-Hz external displays (such as the Studio Display XDR or BenQ 5K MA270S) or three 4K displays. One controversial design is that the power button is still hidden underneath the back left corner of the computer.