Mac Mini 2026

The Mac mini's 2026 update is all on the inside. The case is exactly the same 5 inch square, 2 inch tall aluminium block introduced in 2024, still sold only in silver. What changed is the chip, and it is a significant one. The base model moved to Apple's new M6, the first Apple chip built on a 2 nanometre process, meaning its transistors are smaller and more efficient than anything the company has shipped before. A step up to the M5 Pro is offered for people doing heavier work.

The M6 is unusual in how it is put together. It uses three different kinds of processor core at once, two "super" cores for the hardest single tasks, four performance cores and six efficiency cores for everything else, which is a first for Apple. That comes to 12 cores in total, two more than the M4 it replaces, and Apple claims the fastest single-task performance of any chip on the market. The Mac mini also gained Neural Accelerators built into its graphics cores for the first time, which speeds up AI work done on the machine itself rather than in the cloud.

Elsewhere the changes are practical rather than headline-grabbing. Apple's own N1 wireless chip brought Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, faster Ethernet became standard, and Thunderbolt 5 ports allow quicker connections to external drives and displays. 

Prices started at $899 for the M6 with 16GB of memory and 256GB of storage, or $1,699 for the M5 Pro, having been announced on 25 August 2026 and gone on sale on 22 September 2026.