M4 Pro Mac mini review: Remarkably small and incredibly powerful

Best Prices Today: Apple Mac mini (M4 Pro)

Apple told us the new Mac mini was smaller. It shows us photos and videos. And still, when I took it out of the box, I was somewhat unprepared for just how small it actually is.

In this mighty little microcomputer is Apple’s new M4 processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. The performance and value in this base configuration, for just $599, are quite good. This is a desktop computer that will serve the average user well for years at a very affordable price.

But then you start to look at what it takes to do just a little more, and the value vanishes. Apple hasn’t changed its memory or storage pricing structure in years and it stands out even more now with a better base model. Higher RAM configurations are shockingly expensive. Additional storage costs a small fortune. You can very quickly price yourself into a system that isn’t a good deal at all.

We reviewed the version of the Mac mini that comes with the M4 Pro processor, a souped-up version with more CPU cores, double the GPU power, more than twice the memory bandwidth, and more. It, too, is a decent value at its starting price but quickly escalates thanks to Apple’s terrible upgrade pricing.

If you want a great Mac desktop, the new M4 Mac mini should be high on your list, but only in certain configurations.

M4 Mac mini: Processor and upgrades

The base model Mac mini includes an M4 (with 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU), 16 GB of RAM, and 256 GB SSD, for $599. You’ll need to add a monitor, keyboard, and mouse/trackpad, but it’s a system that will serve someone well for general everyday tasks for years.

At $1,399 you can step up to an M4 Pro, albeit a cut-back version of the chip with 12 CPU cores (rather than 14) and 16 GPU cores (rather than 20). It has 24GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.

Both of those entry-level configurations are a respectable value. Thanks to Apple’s recent switch to include more RAM in its base configurations, you could even call them a “good deal,” as Apple products go. But as with all modern Apple products, you cannot add RAM or storage after purchase, so you need to pay Apple’s upgrade prices when you buy it. And those prices are, frankly, highway robbery.

Want to jump from the cut-back M4 Pro to the full version with 14 CPU cores and 20 GPU cores? That’ll be an extra $200.

Jump from 16GB of RAM in the base model to 24GB? $200. Want 32 GB instead? That’s $400. Jumping from a 256GB SSD to 512GB is $200. To hop up to 1TB, it’s $400. Apple’s prices for RAM and flash storage are obscene, many times higher than the cost of the parts or equivalent retail products. Here’s a 2TB SSD that, at the time of this writing, sells for $150 and delivers performance comparable to Apple’s internal storage, as one example.

Get this: The entry-level M4 Mac mini, with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, is $599. Boosting that to 32GB RAM and 512GB SSD is an additional $600. Apple’s upgrade pricing is so crazy that for the price of an additional 16GB of RAM and 256GB SSD, you can buy a whole second Mac mini with the same amount of RAM and storage, plus the processor, ethernet, case, and the entire rest of the computer!

Our review unit is a nearly top-of-the-line model. It’s a full 14/20 core M4 Pro (+$200) with 48GB of RAM (+$400) a 1TB SSD (+$200) and 10 Gigabit Ethernet (+$100). The grand total is $2,299, about $300 more than the entry-level Mac Studio that still has an M2 Max.

M4 Mac mini: Small but mighty

The new Mac mini is only 5 inches square and 2 inches tall. That’s less than a quarter the volume of the Mac Studio, which is not exactly a large computer. It shares more in common with the Apple TV 4K (3.66 inches squared and 1.2 inches tall).

Up front, you’ll find a headphone jack and two USB-C ports. Around the back is Ethernet, HDMI 2.1, and three more Thunderbolt/USB-C ports (Thunderbolt 4 is supported on M4 Thunderbolt 5 on M4 Pro). There are no USB-A ports and no SD card reader.

Despite the tiny size, the power supply is integrated, so you don’t have to plug a big adapter into your wall or take up several plugs’ worth of space on a power strip.

It’s a good selection of ports for such a small computer, though the total exclusion of USB-A is more than a little annoying. Many modern devices, from wireless dongles for mice and controllers to audio interfaces and microphones, still use USB-A. And if you’re ever handed some data on a USB thumb drive, there’s a good chance it’s USB-A. You’ll want to augment your Mac mini with an affordable USB-C hub.

The power button is on the underside of the back-left corner, raised off your desk by the fan riser. The gap isn’t big enough for most fingers, so you’ll need to lift your Mac mini just a little to press the power button. It’s not ideal, but also not a dealbreaker; we think most users allow their desktop Macs to go to sleep rather than power them down completely, so it’s not as though you’ll have to do this often.

The small size doesn’t leave much room for active cooling, but Apple’s unique airflow solution works well. Air is pulled in via a vent around the raised bottom of the Mac, circulated, and then exhausted out that same little riser. During day-to-day tasks, the Mac mini is virtually silent.

In long video encoding jobs or when playing high-end 3D games, the fan spins up and becomes quite audible. It’s not a jet engine, and I’ve certainly heard louder cooling systems, but it’s there. I should note that I ran all tests with the Mac in High Power mode (only available on the M4 Pro Mac mini) for maximum performance. This allows the fan to spin up higher, keeping the system cooler during long periods of intense work at the cost of some noise.

M4 Pro Mac mini: Performance and efficiency

I’ve been impressed with the performance of the M4 Pro chip. For such a tiny and power-efficient processor, the benchmark numbers are quite good. The base M4 performs extremely well for a sub-$1000 computer, and the M4 Pro holds its own against computers in the $1,500 range. The storage performance is great, too.

We’ll compare against the base M4 (in an iMac though the Mac mini should perform about the same), the most recent high-end Mac mini (with an M2 Pro), and the Mac Studio with an M2 Max in the configuration with 38 GPU cores and 32GB of RAM. That’s the other Mac desktop computer priced about the same as our test system ($2,399 with 1TB SSD).

Geekbench 6

Beginning with the popular standby Geekbench 6. It’s clear Apple’s CPU cores have come a long way, quickly. These are some of the best Geekbench performance scores you can find. That single-core score tops any Intel or AMD CPU on the market by a good margin. And with only 14 cores, it still delivers a multi-core score of over 22,000. That’s in the same ballpark as the M2 Ultra (24 cores) or the latest Intel Core i9 (with 24 cores).

The Geekbench 6 compute benchmark uses the GPU to perform computational tasks not related to 3D graphics rendering, like background blur, face detection, and particle physics simulation. The 20-core GPU in the M4 Pro shows a good improvement over the M2 Pro, but it can’t keep up with the 38-core GPU in the M2 Max. It’s roughly on par with an older, mid-range discrete laptop GPU like a Radeon 6600M or a GeForce RTX 2060.

Cinebench 2024

Cinebench performs high-end rendering of the kind used in TV or film and can be run entirely on the CPU or use the GPU. We see that new M4 CPU core flexing its power again here, with a single-core score way above the best Intel and AMD chips and a multi-core score that matches Intel and AMD chips that have 16 or more cores. All of which consume a lot more power.

The GPU score of over 9,000 beats the M2 Max even with fewer GPU cores—you can thank new features like mesh shaders and ray tracing acceleration for that. It’s around the same performance as a GeForce RTX 3060 Ti or Radeon RX 6800.

Handbrake 1.8.2

The Handbrake video encoder is a great way to test CPU performance for media creation apps. We encode the Tears of Steel 4K video down to 1080p H.265, using both a CPU-based x265 encoder and the “videotoolbox” encoder that leverages Apple’s dedicated video encoding hardware.

In both cases, we see a nice big leap over both the base M4 and Apple’s earlier desktop Macs. It’s almost twice as fast as the last Mac mini with M2 Pro, and even flies past the M2 Max in the Mac Studio.

iMovie export

We also run a quick export test with Apple’s own consumer video editing software, iMovie, which tends to be well-optimized for new Macs. We export a 4K home movie project using both ProRes and High export settings. The M2 Max manages to pull ahead when making the H.264 file with High settings, perhaps thanks to having two video encode engines. Despite having only one video encode engine, the M4 Pro manages to edge out the M2 Max when exporting to ProRes.

Game benchmarks

There are numerous reasons why a Mac shouldn’t be someone’s first choice for gaming, but they are capable (if pricey) game machines. The improved CPU and memory bandwidth make a big difference in Civilization VI. Rise of the Tomb Raider still runs better on the M2 Max thanks to its bigger GPU, but the newer and more efficient GPU of the M4 Pro isn’t all that far behind. This level of performance is a little lower than what you can expect from a $1,000 gaming PC.

Blackmagic Disk Speed

Finally, a quick check of SSD performance with the Blackmagic Disk Speed test. We can see that the base model M4 iMac is half as fast as the Mac mini, which keeps pace with other high-end Mac desktops. In some Macs, the 256GB configuration uses a single NAND chip and therefore has half the SSD interface width, resulting in lower performance. But our M4 iMac is a 1TB model, so it’s possible that all regular systems have half the SSD performance, while the M4 Pro- or M4 Max-based systems are faster.

Regardless, Apple hasn’t improved SSD performance since the M2 generation.

Should you buy an M4 Mac mini?

I really like the new Mac mini. As much as I wish it had even a single USB-A port and I think the power button placement is an own goal, I’m impressed by its compact stature, quiet operation, and excellent performance.

Now that Apple ships all Macs with at least 16GB of RAM, the entry-level M4 Mac mini, at $599, is a pretty good deal. So is the base M4 Pro model, which comes with 24GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD and costs $1,399. But it also highlights Apple’s insane upgrade pricing. Most people will want more than 256GB, and an upgrade to just 512GB is a downright avaricious $200. If you actually want to use your computer for a few years, we would suggest 1TB, which is a $400 upgrade.

A RAM upgrade wouldn’t hurt either, and that’s $200 to go from 16GB to 24GB, or $400 to go to 32GB. That’s $200 for each 8GB of RAM, and it’s highway robbery. For the M4 Pro model, jumping from 24GB to 48GB is $400, and the 64GB upgrade is $600. (Don’t ask me why $400 buys you 24GB of RAM in the M4 Pro model but 16GB in the standard model.) This isn’t just “Apple premium” prices, it’s arbitrary and predatory corporate greed at its finest. You have no alternative, so you’ll pay 5x as much as it should cost.

The M4 Mac mini is a great computer at a great price—just as long as you don’t buy the upgrades.

Best Prices Today: Apple Mac mini (M4 Pro)