Apple’s refreshed Mac Mini benefits from plenty of power and a redesign that makes it one of the easiest Macs to use as your everyday computer.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Apple’s most affordable Mac | M4 and M4 Pro performance likely to vary widely |
| Accessible USB ports, hallelujah! | Power button placement is… odd |
| Compact size makes it extra desk-friendly | Upgrades at the time of buying are EXPENSIVE |
Score: 4.5/5
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Buy The Apple Mac Mini M4! | Buy On Amazon |
In this review
Mac Mini M4 Specifications
Mac Mini M4 Design
Mac Mini M4 Performance
Mac Mini M4 Conclusion
Apple’s upgraded Mac Mini is smaller than ever before, but that doesn’t have to mean that it skimps on power.
While the differences between the regular M4 and M4 Pro models could have a profound impact on your working experience with Apple’s tiniest computer, either way you’re getting a powerhouse machine at a very appealing price point.
The Mac Mini M4 is Apple’s cheapest computer right now – and it’s also Apple’s best value machine without a shadow of a doubt.
Design
Banana for scale. Because I didn't have an older Mac Mini to compare it to.
Also, bananas are good for you.
The Mac Mini line has always been about that suffix, providing a small form factor desktop computer for those who didn’t want or need the portability of a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro but who also wanted to go their own way with peripherals, unlike the iMac lineup.
The most eye catching aspect of the new Mac Mini M4 lineup is undoubtedly just how small they’ve become.
No, they’re not the smallest computers you could buy – you could throw one of the very compact Raspberry Pi or similar boards into a much smaller casing than this if the mood caught you that way – but at 12.7x12.7x5cm this is an impressive bit of engineering on Apple’s part given what's packed inside.
The smallness of the Mac Mini doesn’t, I suspect, matter quite so much for anyone who already liked the existing, slightly larger Mac Mini size.
It’s not really as though you’re going to find it hard to locate space for it on your desk just because it’s now smaller; Mac Minis have been able to fit underneath most monitors quite easily since their inception. Smallness is cute, but it doesn’t affect the productivity of the machine.
It was already small. Now it's smaller.
I should make note, as so many others have done, about the power button on the Mac Mini M4. It’s on the underside of the computer, which is an unusual choice on Apple’s part.
Sure, you might not power down your Mac Mini all that often, so it’s not the worst design choice, but equally if it does lock up – and while Apple fans might not like to admit it, this can happen to Macs, let’s not fool ourselves – or you need to power it on and you’ve got lots of cables coming from the front and back, having to lift it and locate the power button isn’t as easy as it could be.
Placing in on the back of the Mac Mini would have been less aesthetically pleasing perhaps, but just a fraction easier to deal with.
The single best new design feature of the Mac Mini is Apple’s decision to throw a couple of USB-C ports at the front.
AT LAST, APPLE. AT LAST.
For years now I’ve been noting in reviews that it’s beyond stupid for Apple to keep throwing all the ports on their desktop computers around the back, and while it stuck to that principle for the M4 iMacs, that’s not the story for the Mac Mini M4.
You also get a standard 3.5mm headphone jack at the front, a nice inclusion given I’m pretty sure that Apple only sells Bluetooth headphones these days.
At the back of the Mac Mini you’ll find a trio of USB-C ports, but the precise nature of those ports will depend on exactly which processor you choose to have inside your new computer. Yes, that’s a weird sentence to write, but it’s true.
Ports that look identical on all Mac Mini models -- but they're not.
If you opt for the baseline M4 processor, you’ll get three USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, while if you spend the extra – quite a bit extra – for the M4 Pro variant, they’re Thunderbolt 5 ports.
For the pro audience, the additional throughput of those Thunderbolt 5 ports could make a lot of difference; for everyday users Thunderbolt 4 is likely to be more than fast enough. I simply appreciate having more than enough ports for peripherals and connectivity front and back.
Alongside USB-C in whatever flavour your Mac Mini sports, you also get a Gigabit Ethernet port (optionally configurable up to 10GBps Ethernet), an HDMI port and a standard figure 8 style power input socket.
Unlike an iPhone, you do get a power cable in the box, but being this standard shape, you could sub in just about any other power cable of that style. Technically it’s IEC-C7 if you like knowing your specifications precisely.
The Mac Mini does not by default ship with keyboard, mouse or monitor, unlike the MacBooks or iMac where they’re either incorporated or included in the box.
I’m all in favour of this, because while I do like Apple’s computer hardware, I’ve long thought that its keyboard and mouse/trackpad peripherals, while pretty, left a lot to be desired in the functionality and durability stakes.
Apple’s own in-house displays are another story again, but either the Studio Display or Pro Display XDR will cost you more than the Mac Mini again. Being able to pick and choose between peripherals to suit your style is freedom to me, and I’m all in favour of that.
Performance
The Apple Mac Mini M4 sells in a few configuration variants, starting from the baseline $999 Mac Mini M4 (10 Core CPU, 10-Core GPU, 16GB RAM, 256GB Storage) all the way up to the fully kitted out $7,149 Mac Mini M4 Pro (14-Core CPU, 64GB RAM, 8TB Storage).
That’s quite the price range to deal with, and naturally enough that does bring with it questions around value and performance. Apple loaned me a $2,199 Mac Mini M4 Pro (12-Core CPU, 16-Core GPU, 24GB RAM, 512GB Storage), which is essentially the “entry level” M4 Pro variant.
The key detail to remember here is that like any other Apple Silicon Mac, everything is built on a single effective silicon blob, which means that you can’t pull out the RAM or hard drive to upgrade it later on, and you can’t really add or modify the GPU either. As such, it’s important to identify your precise needs when buying a Mac Mini, because they’re sealed units.
Bananas aren't always cheap, but Apple upgrades are ALWAYS pricey.
That’s especially important given the rather high prices Apple puts on upgrades. Bumping up to 64GB of RAM (if you needed it) costs an additional $900… or in other words, nearly the full cost of a baseline Mac Mini M4 all over again just to bump the RAM from 24GB to 64GB.
Choosing carefully then becomes a question of performance, and here I’d love to be able to say that I’ve been able to test both the Mac Mini M4 and Mac Mini M4 Pro, but that’s just not been the case.
What I can do, however, is compare the performance of the Mac Mini M4 Pro against other Apple Silicon machines at a CPU and GPU level, including the M4 MacBook Pro. Not quite a like-for-like comparison, of course, but it’s a start, and also hopefully useful to you if you’re pondering a shift from a laptop MacBook to a desktop solution.
Here’s how the Mac Mini M4 Pro compares against a range of other Apple Silicon Macs using Geekbench 6’s CPU test:
That M4 Pro score is pretty nice given what you’d pay for an M3 Max MacBook Pro even now, and also a good jump up from the older M2 Pro Mac Mini if you’re on a straight upgrade path.
That shouldn’t leave the regular M4 model out in the cold, though; you could expect to see broadly similar performance to what was seen from the M4 MacBook Pro.
Putting a more real world usage scenario to the test, here’s how the Mac Mini M4 Pro compared using Cinebench’s slightly older Cinebench R23 benchmark:
Having used the Mac Mini M4 for video rendering using Apple’s own Final Cut Pro X, I can attest to the fact that this is a nicely beefy graphics pushing machine for sure.
That’s also borne out in its performance with the newer Cinebench 2024 benchmark, though here I have fewer comparative scores to work with:
On the software side, MacOS Sequoia is pre-installed, and that does mean that you get the whole raft of “Apple Intelligence” features built into MacOS to play with if that’s your style.
Apple never really comments on just how long they’ll provide software upgrades for a given Mac, and that hasn’t changed here, though working off Apple’s rough scheduling around “obsolete” Mac suggests that you would probably be good for between 5-7 years of upgrades at the very least.
Apple Mac Mini M4: Alex’s Verdict
Googly eyes are an optional extra to add to the Mac Mini M4.
With all that in mind, if you’re keen on the Mac Mini, which one should you buy?
For most everyday users, it’s going to be that entry level Mac Mini M4.
If you just want an everyday Mac for web-based work, rest or play, it’s almost overpowered for your needs, and at a price point that’s way lower than any other current new Mac you could buy.
Yes, you do have to factor in the price of a keyboard, mouse and screen, but it wouldn’t take too much work to get a basic Mac Mini M4 fully set up for under $1,100, and obviously quite a bit less if you’ve already got some of those peripherals ready to rock.
That does leave the Mac Mini M4 Pro for the pro crowd, but here again I think the value is pretty clear. You’re not getting the full portability of a MacBook Pro, but you’re not paying MacBook Pro prices for the same or a greater level of processing power – and who doesn’t like saving money?
Apple Mac Mini M4: Pricing and availability
The Apple Mac Mini M4 retails in Australia with pricing starting at $999. The model loaned to me for review costs $2,199.
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