The new M6 Mac mini has arrived, bringing more performance, newer connectivity and the latest generation of Apple silicon.
But there’s one change that immediately stood out to me.
The price.
The new M6 Mac mini starts at £899 in the UK.
My M4 Mac mini cost £599.
That £300 difference completely changes how I think about a computer that, until now, has been one of the easiest Macs for me to recommend.
The M6 Mac mini could be a fantastic computer. It could even represent good value for someone who needs its additional performance.
But that isn’t really my problem with it.
My problem is that the £599 Mac mini is gone.
Why the £599 M4 Mac mini was so easy to recommend
When I bought my M4 Mac mini, I obviously cared about performance.
I create videos, edit photos and use my Mac for plenty of creator focused workloads, so I needed something capable.
But one of the best things about the M4 Mac mini wasn’t actually the M4 chip.
It was what Apple was offering for £599.
You got 16GB of unified memory and enough performance for far more than basic everyday computing.
You could edit videos.
You could edit photos.
You could use it for work, studying and general computing.
You could even build a capable content creation setup around it.
If somebody already owned a monitor, keyboard and mouse and wanted their first Mac, the recommendation was incredibly simple.
Buy the Mac mini.
The same was true for someone starting a YouTube channel who needed an affordable editing computer.
Mac mini.
Someone who wanted macOS without spending close to £1,000?
Mac mini.
There was a reason the answer kept being the same.
At £599, the M4 Mac mini just made sense.
The compromises were easier to accept at £599
Of course, buying a Mac mini has always involved some compromises.
You’re only buying the computer.
There’s no display, keyboard or mouse included. There’s no battery, and Apple’s base storage options have never exactly been generous.
If you already own everything else, that’s not necessarily a problem.
If you don’t, your £599 computer can quickly become a more expensive setup.
But at £599, I could accept that.
You were getting an incredibly capable little computer and providing everything else yourself.
At £899, I start looking at those compromises differently.
We’re not talking about a small generational price increase.
The starting price is £300 higher than the M4 Mac mini I bought.
That’s a 50 percent increase.
Once you’re getting that close to £1,000, the conversation changes.
The M6 Mac mini is obviously more powerful
None of this means I’m ignoring what Apple has actually improved.
The M6 Mac mini is a more powerful computer than my M4.
That’s exactly what you’d expect from a new generation.
There are improvements to CPU and GPU performance, memory, storage and connectivity, alongside Apple’s continuing focus on AI workloads.
I’m not going to pretend those improvements don’t matter.
For someone running demanding workloads, they could matter enormously.
But I think there’s another question worth asking:
Did the Mac mini need considerably more performance if achieving it meant losing that £599 starting point?
What made the M4 Mac mini special wasn’t that it was the fastest Mac available.
It was how much performance Apple gave you for £599.
Affordable and “most affordable” aren’t the same thing
The Mac mini may remain Apple’s most affordable desktop Mac.
That doesn’t automatically make £899 affordable.
The M4 Mac mini occupied an unusual position.
It was inexpensive enough to recommend to someone looking for their first Mac, while simultaneously being powerful enough to recommend to someone creating content.
I could recommend the same £599 computer to someone who mainly browsed the web and answered emails and someone who wanted to edit YouTube videos.
That’s impressive.
At £899, I might still recommend the Mac mini.
But now I need to ask more questions.
What are you going to use it for?
Do you already have a monitor, keyboard and mouse?
Do you need a portable computer instead?
What else could you buy for £899?
Could you find an M4 Mac mini for considerably less?
Those questions weren’t nearly as important when the answer started at £599.
The M6 has actually made me appreciate my M4 more
There’s another side to new technology that I think is easy to forget.
My M4 Mac mini hasn’t suddenly become worse because the M6 exists.
It hasn’t become slower overnight.
It still handles the same workloads it handled before Apple’s announcement.
It still does everything I bought it to do.
It’s very easy to see a new product launch, look at the bigger numbers and suddenly feel like whatever is sitting on your desk is outdated.
So I’ve asked myself a much more useful question.
Does the M6 Mac mini solve a problem I’m currently having with my M4?
For me, the answer is no.
If anything, seeing the new Mac mini starting at £899 has made me appreciate just how good the M4 was at £599.
We’ve already seen something similar with the iPad Air
The Mac mini price also caught my attention because I feel like I’ve only just had this conversation.
I recently looked at what has happened to the price of the iPad Air.
That’s another Apple product where the price I originally paid and the price someone buying one today are considerably different.
That starts to make this more interesting than one isolated Mac mini price increase.
I understand that prices change.
Components cost money. Manufacturing costs change. Exchange rates fluctuate. There are plenty of factors involved in determining what Apple products eventually cost in the UK.
But I’m particularly interested in which Apple products are becoming more expensive.
The iPad Air has traditionally represented a more accessible alternative to the iPad Pro.
The Mac mini has represented one of the easiest ways into the Mac.
Now the Mac mini starts at £899.
With Apple’s next generation of iPhones approaching too, I’ll be watching those UK prices very closely.
If we continue seeing increases across products that previously represented more accessible entry points, this becomes a much wider discussion about Apple’s pricing.
What is the budget Mac now?
This is the question I’m struggling with most.
Imagine someone has approximately £600 and asks me:
“I want a Mac. What should I buy?”
When the M4 Mac mini launched, I had an immediate answer.
Today, I’m not sure there’s an equivalent new Mac I can recommend.
Instead, I’d probably start looking elsewhere.
A refurbished Mac might make sense.
Buying used becomes an option.
Remaining M4 Mac mini stock could become particularly interesting if retailers start discounting it following the arrival of the M6.
In fact, if you can find an M4 Mac mini at a significant discount, I’d be giving it serious consideration.
But that’s fundamentally different from being able to visit Apple and buy the current Mac mini for £599.
We haven’t necessarily lost a good Mac.
We’ve lost the cheap one.
Is the M6 Mac mini worth £899?
Potentially.
That’s an important distinction.
I’m not saying the M6 Mac mini isn’t worth its asking price.
For someone working with heavier video production, 3D applications, AI workloads or other demanding tasks, the additional M6 performance could make £899 perfectly reasonable.
I haven’t used one yet either, so I’m certainly not going to declare that a computer I haven’t tested isn’t worth buying.
My issue isn’t really whether M6 is worth £899.
It’s whether moving the Mac mini to £899 has removed something more valuable from Apple’s lineup.
An affordable Mac that was powerful enough for almost everybody.
The £599 Mac mini was enough Mac
When I first saw the new price, my immediate reaction was that the M6 Mac mini had become too expensive.
The more I’ve thought about it, the more I think that’s slightly different from what actually bothers me.
The M6 could be worth £899.
What bothers me is that the £599 Mac mini doesn’t exist anymore.
The M4 Mac mini wasn’t Apple’s most powerful computer.
It wasn’t the fanciest Mac you could buy.
It didn’t need to be.
It was simply enough Mac for a lot of people.
And it did an awful lot for not an awful lot of money.
Ironically, the arrival of the M6 Mac mini has made the previous generation easier for me to recommend, not harder.
If someone asked me today which Mac mini they should buy, I’d probably tell them to see whether they can still find an M4 at a good price.
The M6 Mac mini might be a better computer.
But that doesn’t automatically make it a better deal.
Watch the video
I’ve gone into much more detail about why I think the disappearance of the £599 Mac mini matters in my latest video:
Watch: The £599 Mac Mini Is Gone. And That’s a Problem.
I’d be interested to know what you think too. Would you still buy an M6 Mac mini at £899, or would you now look for an M4 instead?