Apple Mac mini review: The new M6 impresses, but the price hike is rough

The M4 Mac mini was one of Apple's best values ever. This one, not so much. The M4 Mac mini was one of Apple’s best values ever. This one, not so much. The new Mac mini is the kind of Mac upgrade Apple has done a million times. It’s the same design as before but with new guts. These play-it-safe updates aren’t very exciting, but they’re also usually all upside—you get a year or two’s worth of technological improvements for the same price you would have paid for the older version yesterday.

Unfortunately, 2026’s unprecedented memory crunch has upended that standard operating procedure. The new Mac mini starts at $899 for a version with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, a $300 increase for the same memory and storage specs you could get in the $599 M4 Mac mini in 2024. The M4 Mac mini