Smaller than chopsticks or around the size of many travel combs: The new five-inch by five-inch M4 Mac Mini is a marvel of engineering. Yet, making it more powerful than before is the presence of the new M4 processor from Apple.
The all-new design is less than half the size of the previous generation and weighs around 1.5 pounds. Apple says it has an innovative thermal architecture to avoid overheating.
The M2-powered Mac mini, which arrived in early 2023, was already a powerful machine for photographers and videographers, offering performance that punched way above its size but came with an affordable price tag. The new Mini aims to take the experience to a new high, thanks to its redesigned chassis.
It has a footprint that’s less than half the size of its predecessor, measuring just five by five inches (12.7 by 12.7 centimetres). The old Mac mini is 7.75 by 7.75 inches (19.7 by 19.7 centimetres). The shrinkage comes with an increase in height, going from 1.41 inches (3.58 centimetres) to two inches (five centimetres).
The new thermal architecture is the secret sauce that John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice-president of hardware engineering, and his team have worked on. There is “an innovative thermal architecture, which guides air to different levels of the system, while all venting is done through the foot”.
The Mac mini with M4 Pro comes with Thunderbolt 5 for the first time, which more than doubles transfer speeds, so users will be able to use faster external storage and connect to more accessories at the same time.
There are two variants — one comes with the M4 chip and the other, M4 Pro. Ensuring all your needs are taken care of is the choice of ports. On the front of each version, the Mac Mini has a pair of USB-C ports and a 3.5mm headphone jack. On the back, the M4 version has three Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI port, and an Ethernet jack. The M4 Pro-powered Mac Mini has three Thunderbolt 5-compatible USB-C ports. The M4 Pro Mac mini is the first Mac to support Thunderbolt 5, promising up to 120 Gb/s data transfer speeds, more than double the throughput of Thunderbolt 4. The USB-A port is now history.
According to Apple, when compared to the best-selling PC desktop in its price range, Mac Mini is up to 6x faster at one-twentieth the size. Mac Mini with M4 features a 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, and now starts with 16GB of unified memory. Users will feel the performance of M4 in everything they do, be it video editing, compiling codes or music production.
The M4 Pro Mac Mini delivers more power with its 14 CPU and 20 GPU cores. RAM can be configured up to 32GB with the regular M4 or 64GB with the M4 Pro.
In the coming days, we may see the M4 Pro chip come to the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros, besides the appearance of the M4 Max chip that’s not available in the Mini.
And there’s one more thing: The new Mac Mini is Apple’s first carbon-neutral Mac. The computer is made using over 50 per cent recycled content overall, including 100 per cent recycled aluminium in the enclosure, 100 per cent recycled gold plating in the circuit boards, and 100 per cent recycled rare Earth elements in all magnets. The electricity used to manufacture the computer is sourced from 100 per cent renewable energy. The device ships in entirely fibre-based packaging.
Mac Mini with M4 starts at ₹59,900 and ₹49,900 for education. Mac Mini with M4 Pro starts at ₹149,900 and ₹139,900 for education.
Let’s compare
When compared to the Mac mini with Intel Core i7, Mac mini with M4 Pro:
- Performs spreadsheet calculations up to 4x faster in Microsoft Excel
- Executes scene-edit detection up to 9.4x faster in Adobe Premiere Pro.3
- Transcribes with on-device AI speech-to-text up to 20x faster in MacWhisper
- Processes basecalling for DNA sequencing in Oxford Nanopore MinKNOW up to 26x faster
When compared to the Mac mini with M2 Pro, Mac mini with M4 Pro:
- Applies up to 1.8x more audio effect plugins in a Logic Pro project
- Renders motion graphics to RAM up to 2x faster in Motion
- Completes 3D renders up to 2.9x faster in Blender
