Apple's desktop lineup got noticeably harder to shop this fall. The Mac mini now comes in two very different versions, an M6 model from $899 and an M5 Pro model from $1,699, while the Mac Studio starts at $2,499 with an M5 Max and climbs to $5,499 for an M5 Ultra. AppleInsider's M5 Pro Mac mini review this week reached an awkward conclusion: it's a great little computer that gets hard to recommend once you start ticking upgrade boxes. We wanted to see whether the numbers back that up, so we pulled Apple's own spec sheets and store prices and worked through the math.
All prices here are Apple's U.S. starting prices as listed on its online store on October 6. Where we use a configured price, it comes from a published review, and we say which one.
The four starting points side by side
| Mac mini (M6) | Mac mini (M5 Pro) | Mac Studio (M5 Max) | Mac Studio (M5 Ultra) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $899 | $1,699 | $2,499 | $5,499 |
| CPU | 12-core (2 super, 4 performance, 6 efficiency) | 15-core (5 super, 10 performance) | 18-core (6 super, 12 performance) | 30-core (10 super, 20 performance) |
| GPU | 12-core | 16-core | 32-core | 64-core |
| Neural Engine | Dual 16-core | 16-core | 16-core | 32-core |
| Base memory | 16GB | 24GB | 36GB | 96GB |
| Memory bandwidth | 153GB/s (170GB/s with 24GB or 32GB) | 307GB/s | 460GB/s | 1.2TB/s |
| Most memory you can order | 32GB | 64GB | 128GB (needs the 40-core GPU chip, from $3,099) | 512GB (needs the 36-core CPU chip, from $6,799) |
| Base storage | 256GB | 512GB | 512GB | 1TB |
| Thunderbolt | 3x Thunderbolt 4 | 3x Thunderbolt 5 | 4x Thunderbolt 5 | 6x Thunderbolt 5 (two on the front) |
| Ethernet | 2.5Gb (10Gb optional) | 2.5Gb (10Gb optional) | 10Gb | 10Gb |
A couple of things jump out once you line them up. The M6 is the newest chip in the room, and The Verge says it now leads every chip it has tested in single-core performance, so for everyday apps the cheapest Mac desktop is also the snappiest. The M5 Pro wins on core count and bandwidth instead, which is why The Verge found it 40 to 50 percent faster in multi-threaded CPU and GPU tests, and why its 4K Premiere export finished in 1 minute 51 seconds against 2 minutes 34 seconds on the M6. The Mac Studio also adds things the mini never gets at any price, like an SD card slot, USB-A ports and 10Gb Ethernet as standard.
What your money buys, per gigabyte
Raw specs only go so far, so we divided each starting price by its memory and by its memory bandwidth. Memory size decides how big a project or AI model fits, and bandwidth decides how fast the chip can chew through it.
| Configuration | Price | Price per GB of memory | Price per GB/s of bandwidth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mac mini M6, 16GB / 256GB | $899 | $56 | $5.88 |
| Mac mini M6, 24GB / 512GB (The Verge's review unit) | $1,299 | $54 | $7.64 |
| Mac mini M5 Pro, 24GB / 512GB | $1,699 | $71 | $5.53 |
| Mac Studio M5 Max, 36GB / 512GB | $2,499 | $69 | $5.43 |
| Mac Studio M5 Ultra, 96GB / 1TB | $5,499 | $57 | $4.58 |
By capacity, the M6 minis hand you the cheapest gigabytes in the lineup, and only the Ultra comes close. By bandwidth, the picture flips. The 24GB M6 becomes the worst deal on the chart, and the base Mac Studio actually undercuts the M5 Pro mini a little per GB/s while also giving you 12GB more memory.
The upgrade ladder is where the M5 Pro mini really gets squeezed. AppleInsider reports that going from 24GB to 48GB adds $600 and 64GB adds another $400, which puts a 15-core M5 Pro mini at $2,299 with 48GB and $2,699 with 64GB. The Verge's review unit, with the 18-core chip, 48GB, 1TB and 10Gb Ethernet, came to $2,899. That's $400 more than a base Mac Studio, which has faster memory, better cooling and more ports, even if it starts with less RAM.
If you're buying it for local AI
A lot of Mac mini demand this year has come from people running AI models at home, and The Verge notes that Apple's press release for these chips mentions AI nearly 40 times. Here a simple rule of thumb helps. When a model generates text, it has to read roughly its whole set of weights from memory for every token, so bandwidth divided by model size gives you a ceiling on speed. Real-world numbers land below that ceiling, but it's a fair way to compare machines.
Take a model whose quantized weights occupy about 14GB. The ceiling works out to roughly 12 tokens per second on a 24GB M6 (170 divided by 14), 22 on the M5 Pro (307 divided by 14), 33 on the M5 Max Studio (460 divided by 14) and about 86 on the Ultra (1,200 divided by 14). That same model won't fit comfortably on a 16GB M6 at all, because macOS and your apps need room too. AppleInsider points out one wrinkle in the other direction: the M6 has a dual Neural Engine while the M5 Pro has a single one, so smaller on-device tasks like Photos analysis can run faster on the cheaper mini. For big chat models, though, memory and bandwidth matter far more than the Neural Engine.
Which one we'd buy
This part is our opinion. For most people, the M6 Mac mini is still the right Mac desktop, but we'd skip the $899 base model, since 256GB of storage fills up fast and AppleInsider's review headline called it excellent hardware "badly hampered by too-small SSD." AppleInsider's M5 Pro reviewer also said he preferred a $1,099 M6 configuration with more storage over the entry M5 Pro, and we agree that's the sweet spot for office work, coding, photo libraries and light video.
The M5 Pro mini makes sense if you edit video or 3D for a living, own Thunderbolt 5 storage, or need more than 32GB but have a tiny desk. Buy it close to the $1,699 or $1,899 starting points, though. Once your configured price passes about $2,300, the Mac Studio is the better computer for the money.
If local AI is the main reason you're shopping, start at the $2,499 Mac Studio rather than a maxed-out mini. You get 460GB/s instead of 307GB/s for roughly what a 48GB mini costs, and you can grow to 128GB on the 40-core GPU version. The M5 Ultra is specialist gear: worth it if you truly need 256GB or 512GB of memory or that 1.2TB/s of bandwidth, and overkill for nearly everyone else. And if you're not in a hurry, AppleInsider reports Apple has an unannounced reveal expected October 13 and rumors of more new Macs before the end of the month, so waiting two weeks costs you very little.
What we used: Apple's Mac mini tech specs and Mac Studio tech specs, Apple's Mac mini and Mac Studio store pages, AppleInsider's M5 Pro Mac mini review and M6 Mac mini review, and The Verge's Mac mini review.