Apple’s M6 Mac mini remains an exceptionally small and powerful desktop, but its higher starting price makes it far less appealing than earlier models. At $899, it no longer offers the unusually strong value that helped previous Mac minis become popular as servers, children’s computers and development machines, although it remains the reviewer’s top choice for a compact high-performance desktop.

The standard M6 has a 12-core CPU and GPU, supports up to 32GB of RAM and uses Thunderbolt 4, while the M5 Pro offers up to 18 CPU cores, 20 GPU cores, 64GB of RAM and faster Thunderbolt 5 connections. Apple claims substantial gains in local AI and productivity performance, including up to 13.5 times faster LLM prompt processing than the M1 and 2.3 times faster Excel performance; the unchanged five-inch-square, 1.5-pound design is praised, though the awkward underside power button and lack of an SD card slot remain drawbacks.