The New M6 & M5 Pro Mac mini Is INSANE… But There’s a Catch

0:00 Well, everyone, it looks like Tim Cook is giving us one last hurrah before handing over the CEO keys to John Turnus. Apple, out of nowhere, dropped a brand new M-series chip, brand new Mac Studios, and a revitalized Mac Mini. So, in this video, I want to break down everything we know about the brand new M6 and the M5 Pro Mac Mini, who this is for, what those improvements are, why there's an M6 and an M5 Pro version in the same product category, and ultimately, what the price looks like moving forward because Ram again is here. Let's break everything down. Okay, so like I mentioned, there's going to be two different versions of this Mac Mini.

0:35 There's going to be the M6 Mac Mini, which is going to be the first product to have the M6 chip, and then of course, the M5 Pro Mac Mini. Now, let's start off with the M6 because this is going to be the big story coming with Apple and their new M-series lineup. This is going to be Apple's first 2-nanometer process chip. Now, it's been rumored that the new A20 Pro chip in the iPhone 18 is going to get the 2-nanometer process as well, but the M6 is now the first one to do that, giving you a 12-core CPU up from 10 cores that the M4 and the M5 had, and Apple's claiming it's the world's fastest single-thread performance chip out on the market right now. And now the way that the M6 chip is accomplishing this new single-thread score or this single-thread power is that they're doing something for the first time. There's three different kind of CPU cores in this M6 chip. We have the six efficiency cores for background task and workloads, which you've had in the past. We have the four performance cores, which is for more heavy multi-threaded workloads. But like I mentioned, there's 12 total cores in the new M6 chip because there's two super cores in here, which are absolute maximum single-threaded performance kind of use cases and workloads. Again, we're going to get this in the studio, test this out, and see exactly what this means in terms of actual power and use cases compared to the M4, but something that's called super cores sounds like like something that's going to be beneficial long-term. Now, before we do our own testing, Apple is claiming that it's up to 40% faster in multi-threaded performance versus the 2-year-old M4 Mac Mini and that is a substantial generational gap. Normally, we get 15 to 20% improvement going year-over-year or at least from product category to product category. We're getting a 40% jump this time around. But again, it's up to. And again, a lot of this is going to be about AI talk. Now again, if you guys do remember Mac Minis have been sold out on Apple Store, the M4 version for a while now because of AI and all the local LLMs and wanting to run everything on device and locally and M4 Mac Minis were just the best kind of little situation that was a perfect combination of efficiency, power, and cost. So again, Apple's going to kind of go full tilt into this kind of use case and workload. Compared to the M4, Apple is claiming 2x faster graphics, 4x faster AI performance, and 2x faster neural engine performance, which again, year-over-year or product to product is going to be a great performance bump.

2:44 And then the key thing here is that memory is also getting much faster, especially compared to the M4 Mac Mini that we had in years past. So it does start with 16 gigs of unified memory and it's configurable up to 32 gigs. Again, we'll talk about the price points in a second. And then from a bandwidth perspective, comparatively, the M4 Mac Mini had 120 gigabits per second and now the M6 is up to 170 gigabits per second.

3:05 So it's again, it's another significant jump in performance. But now my biggest personal issue with this new M6 Mac Mini is going to be the price and the base storage. So the base config right now at the normal retail pricing is $899. You get 16 gigs of RAM and still 256 gigs of onboard storage. I mean, I remember when the M4 Mac Mini came out and it was $599 and you got 16 gigs of RAM and still the 256 gigs of storage.

3:32 So again, to each their own in terms of this, but we are seeing a huge kind of price jump from $699. Now of course, the Mac Mini as it was as of yesterday was $799, so maybe the cost discrepancy doesn't look as big, but again, I remember when it was $599 and now it's $300 more expensive. So again, if you kind of start to think about it that way, and it that way, it's kind of a hard pill to swallow. And now we got to talk about the M5 Pro Mac Mini cuz this is the weird one. Because technically, if you want more power, you got to go with a lesser generation of M series chip. And let me know if you guys want a video kind of talking about the M series chip in totality, talking about the M1 all the way to where we are now at the M6 with the different variations of Pro, Max, and Ultra because it can get a little confusing in terms of which one you need and which one's newer and which one's better and which one's more powerful because just because you have the M6 doesn't mean it's going to be as maybe an M3 Ultra. But let's get back to that M5 Pro Mac Mini because you are getting up to an 18-core CPU, a 20-core GPU, and neural accelerators in every GPU core, third-generation ray tracing, and a hand shader cores, 64 gigs of unified memory, and 307 gigabits per second memory bandwidth, which again is going to be extremely fast and powerful in a machine of that size. Now this one's going to be for developers, for 3D renderers, heavier video workflows, larger local AI models, people needing more than just 32 gigs of memory, and somebody who's using a multi-display professional setup. For most regular Mac Mini buyers, the M6 Mac Mini is going to be more than powerful enough. And if you can find an M4 used one or refurbished one, those are going to be even better for you, honestly. So now some other differentiation between the M6 and the M5 Pro, the M6 has three Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI port, and an Ethernet port on the rear. And on the front, it still has the two USB-C ports with the USB 3, so up to 10 Gbps, and the headphone jack. Well, the M5 Pro Mac Mini does have the same exact layout, but instead of Thunderbolt 4, they are Thunderbolt 5 ports, which is extremely beneficial if you are in those heavier workflow and workloads. And then both of these machines are getting Apple's new M1 chip, meaning we get Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, and the Ethernet is even faster, going from 1 GB to 2.5 GB as a standard. There is one new feature that's very niche. I'm going to briefly mention it because I barely even know what it is. It's something called Genlock, and it's Genlock over USB-C, which allows precise synchronization between Mac display and output and professional camera capture. Again, very niche situation, but that is something that is available as a feature on the Mac mini now. So again, the biggest elephant in the room here is going to be price. The M6 Mac mini starts at $899 versus before it was $799 and even before then it was $599 and at the education discount the M4 Mac mini was $499 at one point. Absolutely mind-blowing. And then the M5 Pro is actually starting at $1699 right now. So again, those prices are getting higher and higher and again the education discount is $100 off. So $799 for the M6 Mac mini and then $1599 for the M5 Pro Mac mini. So gone are the days unfortunately where the Mac mini was like so unbelievably inexpensive because now for $899 you still have to buy yourself a keyboard, a mouse, a display.

6:25 So if you're starting from scratch and you're getting a brand new Mac mini, you're spending 12, 13, $1400 depending on what display and what type of peripherals that you're getting. So in terms of who each of these is for, the M6 Mac mini is for anybody that's just looking for a powerful desktop and kind of do-it-all universal computer, right? It's the general productivity, web work, some coding, photo editing, most Final Cut workflows, even some pretty intense ones will work on the M6 Mac mini. If you need a secondary Mac in your home as well, that's what the maybe these use cases are for. But then if you need more, even a lot more, the M5 Pro will be the way to go giving you Thunderbolt 5, more memory, more bandwidth on that memory especially, heavier 3D workloads, more GPU cores especially, professional video, and then of course those local AI workloads, which is what Apple's really pushing towards. And now if you have an M4 Mac mini, unless you're really kind of pushing it already to the very end of what it's possible to do on your M4 Mac mini, there really isn't a reason to upgrade to the M6 unless you really need some of those AI workloads and those GPU cores, maybe the faster memory because you do feel like it's slowing down, but for the most part the M4 Mac mini is still good to go for the next two, three, four, five years. If you have an M1 or an M2 Mac mini, the one with the old design, then maybe you want to upgrade to the M6, but you know exactly who you are if you do need to upgrade.

7:36 And then the final thing here to say is that the design is identical to what it was with the M4 Mac mini. So any cool accessories that you had that maybe laid on top of the Mac mini, or any of those cases that fit around your Mac mini that makes it look like a Mac mini Mac Studio, they're all going to still fit and they're all going to still work, which at least is good news. So, that's everything new with the M6 and the M5 Pro Mac mini. Like I said, Apple also released a Mac Studio, so stay tuned for that video coming up soon. But, if you did make it to the end, leave a little dolphin comment down below if you are picking one of these up, if that's something that you are getting yourself into. And if not, why aren't you? And what do you guys think about the price point especially? And is this going to be the last thing that we see Tim Cook announce? Always curious to know your thoughts, but if you guys do want to watch more videos like this, check out one of these videos right here. Until next time, I'm Fernando.

8:20 Peace.