Apple has refreshed its smallest desktop, giving the Mac mini a choice of two new Apple Silicon chips: the standard M6 and the higher-end M5 Pro. Apple is pitching the update heavily around AI workloads, alongside the usual gains in everyday speed.

Mac Mini with M6
The base M6 chip steps up to a 12-core CPU and 12-core GPU, both gaining two cores over the previous generation. For the first time on a Mac mini, the GPU cores include dedicated Neural Accelerators, which Apple says delivers up to 4x faster AI performance and 2x faster graphics compared to the M4 model it replaces. A new 16-core Neural Engine (doubled up, running two in parallel) is rated at up to 2x faster than before. Memory starts at 16GB and can be configured up to 32GB, with memory bandwidth rising to 170GB/s.

Mac Mini with M5 Pro
For more demanding work, the M5 Pro option scales up to an 18-core CPU and 20-core GPU, aimed at tasks like video rendering, 3D work, and app development. It supports up to 64GB of unified memory with 307GB/s of bandwidth — enough, Apple says, to run larger local AI models and work with complex 3D scenes or large research datasets without slowing down.