Apple today announced fully redesigned Mac mini models featuring the M4 and M4 Pro chips, a considerably smaller casing, two front-facing USB-C ports, Thunderbolt 5 connectivity, and more.
The product refresh marks the first time the Mac mini has been redesigned in over a decade. The enclosure now measures just five by five inches and contains a new thermal architecture where air is guided up through the device's foot to different levels of the system.
The new Mac mini can be configured with either the M4 or M4 Pro chip, with the latter allowing for a 14-core CPU, a 20-core GPU, and up to 64GB of memory. The Mac mini with the M4 chip features a 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, and now starts with 16GB of unified memory as standard. The M4 Pro features 273GB/s of memory bandwidth.
Apple says that the M4 Mac mini is up to 1.8x faster in CPU performance and 2.2x faster in GPU performance than the M1 model from 2020. With up to 20 cores, the M4 Pro's GPU is said to be up to twice as powerful as the GPU in the standard M4. Both chips bring hardware-accelerated ray tracing to the Mac mini for the first time, alongside a considerably more powerful Neural Engine.
The M4 Pro model offers two USB-C ports on the front and three Thunderbolt 5 ports on the back. This is the first time a Mac has featured Thunderbolt 5 connectivity, which delivers up to 120 Gb/s data transfer speeds—more than doubling the throughput of Thunderbolt 4. The M4 model continues to have Thunderbolt 4 ports.
The new machine is also Apple's first carbon-neutral Mac. The M4 and M4 Pro Mac mini is available to pre-order today with a starting price of $599, with launch set to take place on November 8.
