From CNET: The M6 update for the Mac Mini arrived not a moment too soon. Not only has it been nearly two years since the last Mac Mini was released, but it’s also become increasingly difficult to find an older M4 Mini for purchase in recent months. In the year of the AI agent, Apple’s Mac Mini has enjoyed a surge in popularity to the point of dwindling supplies and long wait times.
The compact, quiet and affordable Mini with its energy-efficient yet powerful Apple silicon and unified memory has become a popular pick for people looking to run OpenClaw and other local AI agents around the clock. Even at its slightly elevated starting price of $899, the M6 Mini is sure to remain en vogue as a tiny, always-on AI server. The core count ticks up for the CPU, GPU and NPU in going from the M4 to the M6, skipping over the M5 in the process.
If you want to pack more power into the Mac Mini for running demanding creative workloads or larger LLMs, Apple offers two M5 Pro processor upgrades and the ability to stuff the Mini with up to 64GB of RAM. Apple sent me a pair of Mac Minis to test, an M6 model with bumps to the memory and storage and a loaded M5 Pro unit whose price places it in Mac Studio territory.
For $899, the M6 Mac Mini has 16GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and a 2.5Gb Ethernet adapter. Offering 256GB of storage on a desktop computer, no matter how small that computer may be, is borderline offensive. You can’t even buy a MacBook Air with a 256GB SSD after Apple jettisoned that undersized option earlier this year. Unfortunately, the cost to double the storage to 512GB is steep at $200, which quickly pushes the price of the Mac Mini over $1,000. Want to double it again to 1TB? That’s another $300. Be prepared to part with another $500 if you want to double it yet again to 2TB.
Memory costs are similarly steep. Each 8GB upgrade adds $200 to the bill, going from 16GB to 24GB and 24GB to 32GB. Choose one of the M5 Pro upgrades, and you can take the memory to 48GB or 64GB and storage up to a whopping 8TB. (I’ll let you discover those upgrade prices on your own; just be sure you’re sitting down when you take a look.)
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