Apple’s latest Mac mini brings real speed and power for far more than everyday tasks in a practically pocketable form you can fit almost anywhere. The impressive new desktop machine is the first to receive an update to Apple’s latest M6 chip while remaining smaller than a headphones box. It is the cheapest computer Apple sells with an M-series chip, but like every other memory-containing piece of electronics, it has been hit by RAMageddon, driving up the starting price to £899 (€1,049/$899/A$1,449) from the £599 or equivalent of its M4 predecessor.
Apple introduced the Mac mini’s dainty form with 2024’s M4 model, which remains the same for the new M6 version. A lot has changed since the M2 Mac mini, which was pretty compact. The current mini measures just 12.7cm square and 5cm thick, with rounded corners and a solid aluminium body.
It’s happy to sit on a desk, but is small and light enough to mount behind a monitor to turn any screen into a DIY iMac. The machine is fairly minimalist. A small LED on the front shows you when it’s on.
The back has three Thunderbolt 4 (USB4) ports, a 2.5Gb ethernet socket, an HDMI 2.1 port, and a figure-eight power cable. It lacks any USB-A ports, but adapters are readily available for legacy devices not yet converted to USB-C, such as flash drives or printers. It has basic speakers built in, which are good enough for macOS’s notification sounds.
The mini runs the latest macOS 27 Golden Gate, which brings welcome refinements to Apple’s Liquid Glass design that was introduced last year. But the big update is a relaunch of Apple’s Siri assistant and AI tools. Siri AI, as it is now known, is vastly superior at understanding and performing tasks, such as finding information on your Mac or the web, and has a dedicated app to see previous interactions.
It can read what’s on your screen, so you can ask it to track parcels from just a code in your email or find an object from an image with the CMD+Shift+Space keyboard shortcut. Siri is integrated into Spotlight search, which is handy but sometimes results in it trying to search the web instead of launching an app or a file on your Mac if you mistype, which can be frustrating. Apple Intelligence is smarter too.
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