Apple Mac mini (2024, M4 Pro)

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The M3 line of processors were but a blip in Apple's saga of reinventing and refining its Mac computers, and the Mac mini compact desktop missed a third-generation update. About a year and 10 months later, the M4 Pro processor is here to lift the Mac mini (starting at $1,399 with M4 Pro; $2,199 as tested) to soaring new heights. Despite being Apple's most affordable computer when configured with the base M4 chip (at just $599), the Mac mini can scale up to challenge, in some ways, some of the best desktops and even some full-size workstations. For achieving such a broad impact on the computing world, the 2024 Apple Mac mini with M4 Pro earns a hearty Editors’ Choice award for small-form-factor desktops.

Configurations: A Top Desktop Value, at High End or Low

While we haven't tested the base-model M4 Mac mini yet, based on our experience with the M4 chip in the 2024 iMac the mini seems sure to be a top-tier value among budget desktops at its $599 starting price, if only for the included software and smooth performance. Our review unit here is much more densely packed than the base model, with upgrades to a 14-core M4 Pro processor, 48GB of unified memory, and a 1TB solid-state drive for a cool $2,199.

You get just the Mac mini in the box, with no peripherals. (Some bundled input accessories would have been appreciated, given the $2,200 outlay!) While Apple's hands-off attitude invites—really, forces—you to use your own favorite keyboard and mouse (its new USB-C Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse start at $258 as a pair), just make sure they work over USB-C or that you have an A-to-C adapter.

Breaking down the pricing a little more, Apple bumped up the starting memory in all of its computers to 16GB from the former 8GB baseline without changing prices. This is exciting news, but it also helps highlight the next target due for such a value-added upgrade: storage.

Apple still sells all entry-model Macs with 256GB of solid-state storage, which has been considered quite small for a while, especially at Apple's prices. If 256GB makes sense anywhere, it's with the $599 consumer Mac mini, which starts with that SSD, the slightly more advanced 10-core rather than the base iMac's 8-core version of the M4 processor (another nod to the Mac mini's value), and 16GB of memory. While everyone wants more storage, this $599 model is otherwise an undeniable value in budget computing.

Each upgrade step in memory or storage for Apple's pre-set configurations costs an additional $200 until you start doubling beyond 1TB. The new Mac mini supports up to 32GB of RAM (with an 18GB option in between) and as much as 2TB of SSD space. You can also bump up the Ethernet connection from 1Gbps to 10Gbps for another $100. The most tricked-out non-Pro M4 Mac mini costs $1,899.

You'll find a few more configuration starting points to choose from at Apple's online store, but to get to our M4 Pro review model in the price maze, you must start your journey with Apple's least-expensive M4 Pro model, at $1,399. That model opens the door to the 12-core M4 Pro, and the price also nets you 24GB of memory and a 512GB SSD. Opting for a model with the M4 Pro also unlocks Thunderbolt 5 for all of the Mac mini’s rear USB-C ports.

Most upgrades here cost the standard $200, but again, more substantial jumps call for twice that, like doubling the memory to 48GB or doubling the SSD space beyond 1TB to 2TB. While our $2,199 review configuration is plenty pricey, it's nowhere near the ceiling: $4,699 for the 14-core M4 Pro paired with 64GB of memory and an 8TB SSD.

When we dig into the performance on display here, you'll understand more why the Mac mini is a serious value in more than one sense of the word. However, none of the Mac mini's internal components is upgradable after purchase, which only adds stress to the decision at checkout. If you can, when in doubt, go for the next storage level—you won't regret it.

Design: More Sizzle in Less Space

Anyone familiar with Apple computers will notice how the new Mac mini looks like a tiny Mac Studio at a glance. Did Apple take any lessons from designing its ultimate desktop and apply them to the Mac mini? It certainly looks that way.

And how tiny it is—just 5 inches across in either direction and 2 inches tall, which is far smaller in footprint but thicker than before. The new Mac mini weighs just 1.6 pounds and, as you've likely seen in the promo shots, practically fits in the palm of your hand. The footprint is pretty close to that of a CD jewel case.

The Mac mini's resemblance to the Mac Studio is obvious from the clearly visible and prominently uplifted base (which, on the underside, reveals the airflow cutouts for a relatively big cooling fan inside) to the vertically oriented front-facing USB-C ports. Of course, the Mac mini isn't quite as robust as its Studio hero: The front ports are "just" USB-C 3.1 connectors rated at 10Gbps. But they're nevertheless helpful in freeing up the beefier Thunderbolt 4 or 5 ports around the back for better things.

The front-facing audio jack is also a helpful feature, and reassures us that analog audio still has a place in Apple's design philosophy. In addition to the Thunderbolt port array around the back, the Mac mini has an HDMI port and an Ethernet jack.

With the M4 Pro and Thunderbolt 5, the Mac mini supports up to three displays simultaneously at 6K resolution and 60Hz. It can also power one 6K/60Hz panel with a second screen up to 8K/60Hz or a 4K panel at up to a 240Hz refresh rate. These higher-end 8K/60Hz and 4K/240Hz display configurations require the HDMI port.

Not to endlessly tease the performance, but a desktop this small becomes truly remarkable when you see what it can do. The fact that you can get workstation-competitive speeds out of something you could tuck behind your monitor will never cease to amaze.

While it's commonly known that technology almost paradoxically gets smaller as it grows more powerful, it's not often that you see something like a desktop computer do that so quickly—in just one product revision. This 50-cubic-inch desktop throws punches with workstations several times its size.

Using the M4 Pro Mac mini: A Sometimes Loud, But Laudable, Desktop

The Mac mini works hard to reach this competitive power level, and it'll let you know it. When the M4 Pro inside this tiny tower is pushed to its limits, you’ll hear the cooling system from across the room. The high-pitched fan whirring might inspire you to pump up the volume of the TV show you're watching while your CGI project is rendering.

Of course, this won't be your experience using the Mac mini most of the time: The cooling fan ramps down quickly after completing heavy tasks. What will be more pervasive throughout your Mac mini experience is macOS Sequoia with Apple Intelligence.

The most exciting change to macOS with the Sequoia update has to be the new window-management feature, addressing my biggest Mac pet peeve for years. It has vastly improved in Sequoia. Apple calls it "window tiling," which automatically activates when you click and drag an app by its menu bar to any edge of the screen while holding the Option key. This creates little resizing bars between the app windows but doesn’t make them flush against each other as Windows 11 does. Regardless, it's leagues better than before.

I find the iPhone mirroring feature that's new to Sequoia less helpful than most "ecosystem" integrations, but only because I got what I needed out of it in its earlier form. Answering text messages on my Mac, adding calendar events that would show up on my iPhone, and opening browser tabs from my iPad or iPhone on my Mac in Safari was more than enough, much less everything that Continuity already enabled.

The new mirroring feature lets you use your iPhone remotely and virtually while it's locked. This might help you see iPhone notifications on your Mac, but is anyone's iPhone that far away very often? Still, I'll admit that playing Pokemon TCG Pocket on my Mac in a convenient little side window is fun, though the experience is sometimes laggy (in rendering, not responsiveness), and the apps' visuals are blurred.

Of course, Apple Intelligence is the star of the show, which is particularly interesting because Apple (through macOS prompts) says that the AI assistant is still in beta testing. It even says in its user guide that because it uses generative AI models, "outputs may be inaccurate, unexpected, or offensive."

I noodled about with some of Apple Intelligence's features most pertinent to my life, like the Writing Tools. As expected, I found this feature to be a bit too limited to be helpful in my day-to-day work, but I can see the power for someone who struggles with writing. Using the Concise function on highlighted text to boil it down strips out too much personality, while the Friendly function gets too wordy and often misses the sentence's or paragraph's original point. Also, the Proofread function, which edits your text for grammar and spelling, doesn't go nearly as far as tools like Grammarly in the improvements it suggests.

Additionally, Apple Intelligence with Siri doesn't seem to be fully baked just yet. Most of my more complex questions and follow-ups were met with links to websites rather than direct answers. Siri will surely improve with Apple Intelligence as this apparent public beta test continues, but it's still pretty limited in what it can answer right now.

By contrast, I'm actually impressed with Apple Intelligence's ability to summarize webpages using the Reader tool in Safari. It summarizes PCMag's product reviews quite well, hitting the most salient points of each review I push through it in pithy singular paragraphs.

Even if Apple Intelligence is in its infancy, it incrementally enhances the overall Mac experience, which in turn is unaffected by this desktop's substantial size reduction.

Testing the 2024 Apple Mac mini: Pint-Size, But Power-Packed

Our Mac mini review configuration represents the machine's higher-end potential, even if it's not quite the highest it can go. Despite this, you’ll see the M4 Pro mini compete in some tests with Windows-based workstations several times its size.

This specialized miniature work machine can also handle serious play, supporting graphically demanding games like Baldur's Gate 3, Final Fantasy 14 Online, and Total War: Warhammer 3. In 2025, Macs like this one will run Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most visually intense AAA games to date. The brand-new Civilization 7 will also run natively on Mac when it launches in early 2025.

We gathered the following systems for comparison using our updated benchmark testing suite...

We naturally had to include the 2023 Mac mini ($1,799 as tested) to see how the M4 Pro looked against its M2 Pro. Then we have the 16-inch 2024 Apple MacBook Pro ($3,649 as tested), which posted surprising results for the M4 Pro compared with the Mac mini. Next is a gaming mini PC, an Asus ROG NUC 970 ($1,799 as tested), with Intel's best "Meteor Lake" mobile CPU, which we are in the process of reviewing. Finally, we have the latest Falcon Northwest Talon, a Core Ultra Series 200 desktop workstation configured to cost beyond $7,000, only to be edged out by the M4 Pro Mac mini in a few tests.

Productivity & Content Creation Tests

The macOS platform limits somewhat our number of available benchmark tests. (UL's key PCMark 10 tests, in particular, are not available under macOS.) But the rest of our tests are comparable across platforms, giving us more competitive insight for Macs than ever. Our primary performance tests are CPU-centric or processor-intensive: Maxon's Cinebench 2024 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene; Primate Labs' Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning; and we see how long it takes the video editing tool HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution.

Finally, workstation maker Puget Systems' PugetBench for Creators test utility rates a PC's image-editing prowess with a variety of automated operations in Adobe Photoshop 25, one of Macs' most popular programs.

Before getting into this, let’s be clear that the M4 Pro Mac mini is a speed demon, in a few tests challenging much pricier workstations and hanging tough in others. However, the same 14-core M4 Pro chip turned out to be just a smidge faster inside the 16-inch MacBook Pro laptop than in the Mac mini desktop. This upends the conventional logic of a given processor always performing better in a desktop environment versus a laptop one. The MacBook Pro's advantage wasn't massive and likely wouldn't even be noticeable in everyday use, but it's interesting regardless.

Beyond that, the M4 Pro Mac mini was (unsurprisingly) leaps and bounds beyond its M2 Pro predecessor in every test. So rest assured that this 2024 model could be a worthwhile upgrade even if you bought a Mac mini in 2023, made even better by the associated design and connectivity upgrades.

With the Mac mini available in configurations priced similarly to the Asus ROG NUC 970 we tested, the M4 Pro simply makes for a faster mini PC overall, much less with Intel's highest-end "Meteor Lake" chip inside. Pare down the memory or storage a bit, and you get a competitive alternative from Apple.

Comparisons with the Falcon Northwest workstation are mostly academic (these systems are very different animals), but it's nevertheless notable how the Mac mini largely kept up with Intel's most powerful "Arrow Lake" desktop processor, which debuted just weeks before the M4 line did. Interestingly enough, aside from the clear win in Photoshop, the rest of the M4 Pro's small victories were in single-core performance tests, which lines up with Apple's recent claims of the single fastest CPU core in computing. However, the Core Ultra 9 285K has 10 more cores than the M4 Pro, and more cores prove superior in tasks like video encoding and rendering (HandBrake) and other workstation-grade tasks (see below). This illuminates the potential need, from some users, for Apple’s 16-core M4 Max chip, though for now you can get it only in the 14-inch and 16-inch 2024 MacBook Pro.

Graphics & Gaming Tests

Because of how the 3DMark suite of tests works on macOS using its iOS app compatibility feature, we could not run our graphics benchmarks on the new Mac computers before publishing our reviews. We will soon update these reviews with graphics test results and comparisons.

In the meantime, I ran the 2022 strategy game Total War: Warhammer 3 on this and a few other recent Mac systems at Ultra and Low settings at 1080p resolution in the game's "Battle" benchmark, which generates a score in average frames per second (fps).

On the M4 Pro Mac mini, Total War: Warhammer 3 produced a playable but not smooth 40-plus fps at Ultra settings and more than 120fps at Low settings. Anecdotally, using the recommended settings function, I saw steady 60fps gameplay with decent details on display.

The M4 Pro's 20-core GPU continues to lift the Mac line's gaming performance for mainstream-level gameplay. That's impressive for its size and price relative to Windows gaming rigs, mini or otherwise. Of course, you'll still miss out on many great computer games if you go with a Mac. But few buyers are making desktop gaming a primary or even secondary reason for buying any Mac.

Of course, more important, the M4 Pro Mac mini is clearly an ace at tasks centered around visual media. That's showcased below in our workstation test suite.

Workstation Tests

Testing for workstation performance is another area where the Mac misses out on one of our main benchmarks: SPECviewperf, which doesn't work with macOS. Other than that, however, the rest of our workstation test suite is cross-comparable.

First up is (usually!) Adobe's Premiere Pro video editing app, tested using the PugetBench for Creators extension. Alas, the M4 line of Macs has been unable to run the test under the utility at the time of review.

Next up is PugetBench for Creators again, used to test Blackmagic's DaVinci Resolve Studio 18 video editor. The utility executes automated tasks to push the CPU and GPU, letting us gauge the upper limits of performance in real-world media creation. Higher numbers are better.

Finally, we have the Blender Benchmark, which tests each system in the open-source Blender 3D content creation suite for modeling, animation, simulation, and compositing. The test times each system in Blender 4.2 at rendering three scenes (Monster, Junk Shop, and Classroom) to measure CPU and GPU rendering performance. Higher numbers are better there, too.

In PugetBench's DaVinci Resolve Studio benchmark, the new Intel chip took a comfortable lead, but both M4 Pro Macs showed definitely workable performance. Similarly, the Blender CPU and GPU benchmarks showed the Falcon Northwest Talon's Intel and Nvidia parts safely ahead of the M4 Pro. This reinforces the Macs' position as creative media-focused workstations versus powerhouses for more specialized tasks like 3D model rendering that benefit from more cores crunching at once. The M2 Ultra Mac Studio (not charted above) can better keep up with such tasks, beating the Talon by more than 1,000 points in DaVinci Resolve.

Regardless, the M4 Pro Mac mini is clearly worthy of being the center of some hefty media-production workstation setups, or could serve as the engine driving other creative work.

Verdict: The Ultimate Mini Desktop

Improved inside and out with the arrival of M4 silicon, the 2024 Mac mini is not only Apple's best compact Mac to date but the best mini desktop, period. Apple serves both ends of the home and professional computing markets: the Mac mini's ultra-low starting price at one end, and ranging to its massive potential at the other once you pile on the upgrades. It's the most affordable way into the macOS experience, when it needs to be, and it rises to challenge formidable opponents when duty and dollars call for a compact warrior.

While the cooling system works hard at peak power, and you'll hear it working, the Mac mini is to mini PCs what the MacBook Air is to ultraportable laptops. Our testing data show a marked improvement over the previous Mac mini with M2 Pro, and quite competitive results with some of the best iterations of Intel's desktop and mobile chips. For its superb level of versatility and potency, Apple's Mac mini with M4 Pro earns our Editors' Choice award for small-form-factor desktops.