The new Mac mini is smaller than its predecessor and has more ports.
A day after releasing its first iMacs with the M4 series chips, Apple unveiled the refreshed Mac mini, its cheapest and smallest computer.
As rumors suggested, after years of only minor refreshments, the new device now comes with a significant redesign.
The new Mac mini, which Apple says is the first company’s carbon-neutral Mac, measures 5 by 5 inches, compared to 7.75 x 7.75 inches in last year's model, making it more portable.
The upgraded device now also includes front-facing ports - two USB-C ports that support USB 3 and a 3.5 mm audio jack.
On the back, there are three Thunderbolt 4 slots, one more than on the previous Mac mini. This new Thunderbolt port also means that the new Mac does not have a place for USB-A.
Apart from design, the most significant upgrade to the Mac mini is the new chip. Last year’s Mac mini came with the M2 chip, while this year's device skips the M3 moving directly to the M4.
The new chip, which features a 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU, will be around 50% faster than in last year’s model.
Additionally, the refreshed Mac mini now includes a base configuration of 16GB of RAM, an upgrade from the 8GB offered in the previous model.
Mac mini with M4 Pro
For those who want faster performance, there is the enhanced version of the Mac mini with the M4 Pro chip.
The M4 Pro features up to 14 CPU cores, including 10 performance cores and four efficiency cores, and up to 20 GPU cores. Both chips bring hardware-accelerated ray tracing to the Mac mini for the first time.
Another difference compared to regular M4 Mac mini is Thunderbolt 5 ports instead of Thunderbolt 4. According to Apple, Thunderbolt 5 delivers up to 120 Gb/s data transfer speeds on Mac mini, and more than doubles the throughput of Thunderbolt 4.
M4 Pro also supports up to 64GB of unified memory and 273GB/s of memory bandwidth for accelerating workloads, which Apple says is twice as much bandwidth as any AI PC chip.
The base Mac mini M4 model with 16 GB of RAM will start at $599, matching last year’s starting price. The new Mac will be available to pre-order on Tuesday, with availability beginning November 8.
Meanwhile, the base model of Mac mini with the M4 Pro chip starts at $1,399.
On Monday, Apple unveiled its refreshed iMac computer and started rolling out Apple Intelligence via updates.
On Wednesday, the company is expected to announce a 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro computers.
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