Apple Mac Mini M6 Arrives Fast and Finds a Discount Almost Immediately

Apple put a new Mac Mini M6 on the market in late September, and by the first week of October the base model was already cheaper. Amazon has the entry version at $779.99, down from the $899 list price, as part of the October Prime Day run. That is the first cut on a machine that only just reached stores, and it lands on the configuration most people will actually see: 16GB of memory, 256GB of storage, and the standard M6 chip.

Months of memory shortages have pushed the starting price beyond that of the 2024 M4 model. Apple did not update the aluminum case design that shrunk the mini two years ago. It’s still 5 inches across and 2 inches tall, weighing 1.5 pounds in total, and if you’re short on work space, it can fit behind your monitor. The case is still made of recycled aluminum, and a small light on the front remains. The power button is still at the bottom, next to the exhaust, so you’ll need to pick it up to switch it on.

Underneath that casing, the M6 is Apple’s first Mac processor produced in a 2-nanometer process. It features 12 CPU cores, divided into two huge cores, four for heavy lifting, and six efficiency cores to keep things quiet, as well as a 12-core graphics processor capable of ray tracing with the hardware provided. Apple also gave it a dual Neural Engine with 16 cores to manage the tasks that macOS Golden Gate performs on the device. Memory bandwidth increases to 170GB per second for the 24GB and 32GB versions, up from 153GB per second for the 16GB version.


Reviewers discovered that the M6 chip is significantly faster than the previous one, the M4: on a single core, it’s around a fifth or a quarter faster, and on multicore and graphics, it’s about half as fast, depending on what they were testing. One set of Geekbench 7 results showed the M6 at 4,074 in single-core and 22,632 in multi-core. In normal use, programs open swiftly, allowing you to get your work done faster, and the fan is usually silent, making a racket only when you push the laptop to its limits. Gaming on the mini has also improved; one reviewer achieved 53 frames per second on Cyberpunk 2077, which is even better with light upscaling.


It’s also simple to connect all of your stuff, as the front has two USB-C ports and a headphone jack, and the back has three Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI 2.1, and 2.5-gigabit Ethernet, with 10-gigabit Ethernet available as a premium option. They also have good wifi options, including Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread. You can also power up to three monitors with this gadget. Unfortunately, if you still have older equipment that requires a USB-A connection or an SD card, you’ll need a hub or a dongle to get it working. Built-in speakers are adequate for a chime, but you’ll need something extra for music.