The M4 Mac Mini finally lives up to its name. After generations of a product that didn't feel like it earned the Mini moniker, especially compared to the competition on the Windows side, the latest model of Apple's mini PC is actually a compact PC, but it's not any less of a powerhouse for it. It's one of the best Macs ever.

The M4 chip shows that, once again, Apple is well in the lead when it comes to mobile processors, delivering performance on a level you just can't get in any other chip that's this efficient. I have not once heard this computer's fan, yet I can use it for all kinds of demanding workloads without issue. Even with the frustrations of learning macOS Sequoia, this is potentially the best mini PC you can get, especially at this price.

About this review: XDA purchased the M4 Mac Mini for the purposes of this review. Apple did not provide any compensation, nor did it have any input in the content of the review.

Pricing and availability

Apple announced the M4 Mac Mini on October 29th, 2024, and it was released about a week and half later on November 8th. It's available from all major retailers.

Pricing starts at $599 for the base model with the Apple M4, 16GB of memory, and 256GB of storage. This is the model I have for review. As usual for Apple, each storage or memory upgrade costs $200 extra. Models with the M4 Pro chip start at $1,399, though this also includes 24GB of memory and a 512GB SSD.

Design

It's an actual mini PC now

Ever since I saw the old Mac Mini models in person, I was baffled that it was considered a mini PC. Put up next to other mini PCs, the old Mac Mini was massive, and it almost felt like false advertising calling it that. Thankfully, that has finally been rectified with the M4 Mac Mini.

Mind you, this latest model isn't the smallest mini PC I've reviewed, nor is it even in second place. Most mini PCs I've reviewed are smaller, but for most of them, the difference is small enough now that I don't think it really matters. It's still much larger than the Khadas Mind, but it's on par with models like the Asus NUC 14 Pro or the Geekom Mini IT13 review.

The Mac Mini does outshine most of them in terms of the overall look and feel, though. The sleek all-metal look with no fans in sight works perfectly for this kind of machine, and it really feels a bit more special. I wish Apple would stop messing around and make extra colors for the Mac Mini rather than force me to stick with silver, but this looks really nice.

Lifting the computer slightly to press the power button is far from the worst part of my day

Of course, I can't talk about the design of the Mac Mini without mentioning the power button. I still don't understand why Apple thought it was a great idea to put the power button on the underside of the computer, but this is the same company with a mouse that can't be used while charging. However, I'd be lying if I said this is a huge deal. I think it's a stupid decision, but lifting the computer slightly to press the power button is far from the worst part of my day.

Plenty of ports

Ports-wise, the Mac Mini is fairly impressive, too. It may not have the sheer quantity and variety of ports that other mini PCs have, but Apple has always opted for a more futuristic approach to its ports. That is to say, there's no USB Type-A here, but you do get five USB-C ports, which is not bad at all. The three ports on the back all support Thunderbolt 4, or even Thunderbolt 5 if you have the M4 Pro model. And you still get things like Ethernet (with single-gigabit speeds in the base model and an optional upgrade to 10Gbps) and HDMI for more classic ports.

I do like having USB Type-A ports on my PCs, simply because I prefer using the wireless dongle for my keyboard and mouse over using Bluetooth. But it's hard to dock points for that when the industry should be moving to USB-C anyway.

Performance

Apple continues to dominate

As I've already mentioned, I have the base M4 model of the Mac Mini for review, but if you think that's a problem for performance, you'd be wrong. Sure, it only has 16GB of memory, but for this price, you can't find a mini PC in the Windows space that offers this level of performance. I already wrote about the Apple M4 performance compared to the latest Intel Lunar Lake and Qualcomm processors, and you can see Apple is well ahead of the competition there.

But for a review of the Mac Mini itself, the focus needs to be on competing products with a similar form factor. And really, there is no competition right now. In day-to-day use, the Mac Mini performed admirably at every turn. I experienced a couple of odd slowdowns in specific instances, but they felt more like bugs than actual performance problems. Let's look at the benchmarks first:

In terms of CPU performance, the competition does come somewhat close, but both Intel and AMD processors use a lot more power. The Intel Core Ultra 9 185H, specifically, is stated to use up to 115W during turbo. And the base TDP is 45W, while the Apple M4 peaks at around 40W. And when you look at the GPU performance, the Apple M4 leaves both competitors in the dust, even with the power consumption difference. You also need to look at the price, as both of the competitor PCs here are maxed out and cost noticeably more than the base Mac Mini.

But let's talk about real-life usage. Editing photos in Lightroom, using the AI Denoise filter takes around 40 seconds to complete on a 24MP RAW image. On a computer like the Asus NUC 14 Pro, that would take over two minutes. Intel Lunar Lake would do much better, of course, but mini PCs with those processors are basically non-existent. I suspect AMD Ryzen AI 300 chips may also do very well here, but I haven't been able to test one yet.

I have not once heard the Mac Mini's cooling system, nor has it ever felt more than slightly warm.

In another test, I decided to render this YouTube video on the Mac Mini and compare it to the Khadas Mind with the Mind Graphics accessory, which has an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 desktop GPU. Using DaVinci Resolve on both PCs, and getting the settings as close as possible for the export, the Khadas Mind took 8 minutes and 36 seconds to export, while the Mac Mini did the job in 8 minutes and 3 seconds. I didn't try to mess too much with encoding options since they varied a lot between Windows and macOS, but no matter how you slice it, that's extremely impressive. However, let's not get it twisted, this isn't a chip that's meant to replace a high-end GPU. Using that same setup to run the AI Denoise filter in Lightroom only takes about 10 seconds, compared to 40 on the M4 Mac Mini.

You have to remember how little power the Mac Mini uses. The M4 chip is estimated to use up to 40W under high loads, while the Nvidia GPU alone can use 160W, while the Intel Core i7-1360P in the Khadas Mind can go up to 64W. In any of these tests, the Windows PCs would be audibly pinning up their fans to keep cool. But I have not once heard the Mac Mini's cooling system, nor has it ever felt more than slightly warm.

I haven't had a lot of time to game on the Mac Mini, but I did try Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and the built-in benchmark ran at 1080p and max settings, achieving 42 frames per second. For a game running under emulation, that's very impressive. Actually playing the game also felt pretty smooth, and it was absolutely playable for me.

Upgrades just aren't feasible

The big problem with the Mac Mini, then, is upgradeability. Everything about the M4 Mac Mini is designed not to be upgraded. The SSD does come in a daughter board that some users have managed to upgrade, but the unified memory is always going to be what it is. That's a big problem if you're getting the 16GB version, which may end up limiting you a lot a couple of years from now.

Everything about the M4 Mac Mini is designed not to be upgraded

This is an area where most mini PCs this size don't really struggle. Any mini PC in the Windows space will let you easily upgrade the RAM and storage without much in the way of frills. Something like the Khadas Mind is more locked down, but that's also a much smaller unit. Apple is only limiting your options so it can charge you more for upgrades, which are incredibly overpriced. While the base model is very affordable, getting a truly powerful one costs far more than it should.

Should you buy the Mac Mini?

It's hard not to love the M4 Mac Mini. The combination of sheer performance and efficiency, with near-silent operation even under heavy load, make this a dream for me. I want a setup that delivers the performance I need, but that is as efficient as possible, and the Mac Mini is clearly in the lead on this front. I'm even tempted to make it my main computer.

I do worry a lot about the performance of this model with just 16GB of RAM. It's great for now, but I have some fears about how long it may be useful to me. And with upgrades being as expensive as they are, I wouldn't blame you for not wanting to splurge on a higher-end model, either. But it's hard to deny that this is one of the most impressive pieces of computing hardware out there, and I recommend it to almost anyone, if you're willing to learn how macOS works. I can only hope that the Windows space will have something this impressive to offer sooner rather than later.

You should buy the M4 Mac Mini if:

• You want a desktop PC that's compact enough to fit under a monitor
• You're looking for the best performance per watt
• You need multiple displays and other accessories

You shouldn't buy the M4 Mac Mini if:

• You want to upgrade your computer later
• You need performance for high-end content creation (such as editing 8K video)
• You really need USB Type-A ports and don't want a USB hub