The Bench · 9 November 2026
Should you buy the Mac mini M6?
Apple's smallest Mac got a faster chip and the same small box. For most people it is the best small desktop you can buy — but not with the base storage, and not for every job. Here is who should buy it, who should buy the M5 Pro, and who should buy Windows.
The M6 Mac mini looks exactly like the one it replaces: the same five-inch square of aluminium, the same two USB-C ports on the front. Inside, the chip has gone from ten CPU cores to twelve, the graphics from ten cores to twelve, and there are now two Neural Engines rather than one. Wi-Fi 7 and 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet come as standard. The short answer to the headline is yes for most people, with two conditions: buy more storage than the base model has, and be honest about whether your work is one of the jobs below that it does badly.
What you get, and the one thing to change
12-core CPU, 12-core GPU, 16GB memory, 256GB SSD. Three Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI and 2.5GbE at the back.
£899.00 at AmazonFor everyday work — browsing, office apps, photo editing, light video — the base M6 is more computer than most people will use. It is quiet, it uses very little power, and it will run three external displays. The weak spot is storage. 256GB fills quickly once you add a photo library, a few large apps and the system's own housekeeping, and several reviewers made it the main complaint. The memory has the same catch in a different form: it is part of the chip, so whatever you order is what you have for the life of the machine.
The practical rule: 16GB of memory is fine for general use, 24GB is the sensible minimum for development or local AI, and storage is the thing to spend on first if you can only spend on one. If you cannot stretch to a bigger internal drive, an external one is a perfectly good answer for anything that is not the system itself — see the stand at the end of this piece.
M6 or M5 Pro?
15-core CPU, 16-core GPU, 24GB memory (up to 64GB), Thunderbolt 5, roughly twice the memory bandwidth of the M6.
£1699.00 at AmazonThe naming is confusing, so to be clear: the M5 Pro is the more powerful model, even though the number is lower. The M6 has the newer core design and wins on single-threaded speed, which is what makes a computer feel quick. The M5 Pro has more of everything else — more CPU and GPU cores, up to 64GB of memory, and around 307GB/s of memory bandwidth against the M6's 153 to 170GB/s. Its rear ports are Thunderbolt 5.
Those numbers matter for long video exports, large code builds, and above all for running big AI models, where memory size decides what you can load and bandwidth decides how fast it answers. If none of that is your work, the M6 is the better buy and the difference is better spent on storage.
For Apple software development
If you want to build apps for iPhone, iPad or Mac, you need a Mac: Xcode only runs on macOS, and an app cannot be submitted to the App Store without it. The Mac mini is the cheapest way to get a Mac that does this well. Even the base M6 compiles a typical Swift project quickly. Memory is where Xcode work starts to strain — Xcode, a couple of running Simulators and a browser full of documentation will use 16GB without trying — so 24GB is worth it. Xcode and its Simulator runtimes also take tens of gigabytes of disk on their own, which is another reason the 256GB base model is the wrong one for a developer.
For general coding
For web, backend and scripting work, macOS is a comfortable place to be. It is a Unix system underneath, so the terminal, Git, Python, Node and the rest behave the way the tutorials say they will, and Homebrew installs nearly anything else. The thing to know is containers. Docker on a Mac runs Linux in a virtual machine, and the Mac's ARM chip runs ARM images natively; images built only for Intel and AMD processors run under emulation, which works but is noticeably slower. If your team's tooling assumes Windows — .NET desktop apps, DirectX, Visual Studio rather than VS Code — buy a Windows machine instead.
For AI development and local models
This is the job Apple has been talking up, and the reason is unified memory. On a Mac the graphics share the main memory, so a 24GB machine can give most of that to a language model, where a typical graphics card has a fraction of it. In practice 16GB runs small models comfortably, 24 to 32GB handles mid-size models of around 20 to 30 billion parameters in compressed form, and anything larger wants the M5 Pro with 48 or 64GB. In Gizmodo's test, a 24GB M6 ran Google's Gemma 4 26B model through Ollama and finished a coding task in a minute and a half; a similar-sized 27B model struggled. That is about the ceiling of the M6.
Two limits. First, the Mac does not run CUDA, NVIDIA's toolkit that much AI research code assumes. Apple's own MLX framework and PyTorch's Mac backend cover a lot of everyday work, but if you are training models or using code written for NVIDIA cards, a Mac is the wrong tool. Second, if your aim is to run the largest open models at home, the Windows boxes built on AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ chip offer up to 128GB of shared memory, which is more than any Mac mini can be ordered with.
Ryzen AI Max+ 395 with up to 128GB of shared memory. Slower per token than an M5 Pro, but it can load models no Mac mini can.
For gaming
The M6 is a decent 1080p gaming machine, which would have been an absurd sentence about a Mac mini a few years ago. Tom's Hardware measured Cyberpunk 2077 at about 58 frames per second at 1080p and 37 at 1440p, and MetalFX upscaling helps further in the games that support it. The problem is not the hardware but the library. Most big PC games are never released for macOS, and multiplayer games that use kernel-level anti-cheat will not run at all, even through translation tools such as CrossOver. Check that the specific games you play are available for Mac before you buy one to play them.
If gaming is the main reason you want a small computer, a Windows mini PC or a console is the better buy. If it is a side interest, the Mac mini will handle what is available, and any Bluetooth controller pairs with it.
Pairs with macOS over Bluetooth and works in nearly every Mac game that supports a controller.
£59.99 at AmazonThe Windows alternatives
Ryzen AI 9 HX 470, Radeon 890M, 32GB and 2TB out of the box, and both can be upgraded later.
£1399.00 at AmazonThe most direct rival is a mini PC like GEEKOM's A9 Max. In Gizmodo's comparison the M6 was about 18% faster in Cinebench, while the GEEKOM finished a Blender render about 15 seconds sooner, so in raw speed the two are close. The difference is in what you get for the money. The GEEKOM comes with 2TB of storage and its memory and SSD can be replaced, where the Mac's cannot. It runs Windows games natively. Against it, reviewers found its factory memory fitted as a single stick, which holds both the processor and the graphics back until you add a second.
The choice between them is mostly the operating system. If you need Xcode, want an iPhone and Mac that work together, or value a silent machine, buy the Mac. If you want Windows games, upgradability or a lot of storage without paying Apple's prices for it, buy the mini PC.
The education discount
Apple's UK Education Store takes a flat £100 off the Mac mini, which brings the base M6 from £899 to £799. It is a fixed amount set per model, not a percentage. University students qualify, including those with an offer who have not started yet, as do parents buying for them, university staff, and teachers at UK schools. Eligibility is checked through UNiDAYS, usually with an academic email address. There is a limit of one desktop Mac per person per year.
Apple's 2026 Back to School offer, which added a gift card to some purchases, ended on 22 October and did not include the Mac mini anyway, so there is no reason to wait for it. If you qualify, the discount also makes the step up to more memory or storage easier to justify.
What else to buy with it
A Mac mini comes with a power cable and nothing else: no keyboard, no mouse, no screen. Here is what we would put on the desk with it.
Made for the 2024 chassis the M6 shares. Adds front ports and an M.2 SSD slot — the cheapest fix for 256GB.
£99.99 at Amazon
The only way to get Touch ID on a Mac mini. Worth it for unlocking and passwords alone.
£149.00 at Amazon
The better choice if you switch between the Mac and a work laptop: one key moves it between three computers.
£99.99 at Amazon
The mouse most developers settle on. Bluetooth only, which a Mac mini is happy with.
£89.99 at Amazon
27-inch 4K at 120Hz. At this size 4K is what keeps macOS text sharp; 1440p looks soft.
£319.00 at AmazonThe verdict
Buy the M6 Mac mini if you want a small, quiet computer for everyday work, coding or building Apple apps, with 24GB of memory and at least 512GB of storage if you can manage it. Buy the M5 Pro if you edit video seriously or want to run larger AI models. Buy a Windows mini PC if gaming matters most, if you need more storage than Apple will sell you at a reasonable price, or if you need NVIDIA's software. And if you are a student or teach, buy it from the Education Store.
Each machine above has its own page in the index with its full specification and where it is currently sold.
The retailer links in this piece are affiliate links — we earn a commission when you buy through them, at no extra cost to you. Prices are read out of our offer table as the page loads rather than typed into the copy, but they are the maker’s UK RRP rather than a live retailer price: the retailer’s own page is the final word.
Sources
- Apple UK — Mac mini technical specifications
- MacRumors — Apple announces new Mac mini with M6 and M5 Pro chips (25 August 2026)
- Gizmodo — M6 Mac mini review (local AI test and comparison with the GEEKOM A9 Max)
- Tom's Hardware — Apple Mac mini (Late 2026) review
- AppleInsider — M6 Mac mini review: excellent hardware hampered by too-small SSD
- Guru3D — GEEKOM A9 Max (2026) review
- Apple UK Education Store — Mac mini
- Lewis Lovelock — Apple student discount UK: the maths (UK standard and education prices)