Apple's new Mac mini and Mac Studio are officially on sale, with prices starting at 6,999 yuan after the price hike

On September 22, Apple announced that the new Mac mini and Mac Studio are officially available for sale. The two products were previously unveiled on August 25 and opened for pre-order at 9 a.m. on August 27, and are finally in stock after nearly a month of waiting. In accordance with the arrangements of Apple's official website and Apple Store retail stores, the new devices will be shipped to customers starting today, and will be simultaneously launched at Apple Store retail stores and authorized resellers. Among them, the high-end Mac Studio model equipped with 512GB unified memory will be launched in late October due to production capacity arrangements, and all other versions will be delivered as scheduled.

Pricing of Mac mini and Mac Studio Image Source: Apple Official Website

In terms of pricing, the Mac mini with M6 chip starts at 6999 yuan, and the price for the Education Store is 6199 yuan; the version with M5 Pro chip starts at 12999 yuan, and the education price is 12199 yuan. Mac Studio offers two chip options, M5 Max and M5 Ultra, with starting prices of 19999 yuan and 46999 yuan respectively, and the corresponding education prices are 18399 yuan and 43599 yuan.

On e-commerce channels, JD as the debut platform has simultaneously launched overlapping activities including national subsidies, education discounts and trade-in programs. After enjoying the 15% national subsidy and 800-yuan education discount, the minimum final price of Mac mini after trade-in is about 3969 yuan; the minimum final price of Mac Studio after stacking subsidies is about 16599 yuan.

From the perspective of pricing, the price of this new product has increased significantly compared with previous generations. On June 25 this year, Apple adjusted the global prices of multiple Mac products. Among them, the starting price of the M4 version of Mac mini for the Chinese mainland market was raised from 4499 yuan to 5999 yuan, and the starting price of Mac Studio was raised from 16499 yuan to 19999 yuan. On this basis, the new M6 version of Mac mini has increased by another 1000 yuan compared with the corresponding model of the previous generation, and the M5 Pro version has increased by 500 yuan. This means that the entry threshold for Mac mini has risen by a total of about 1000 yuan within one year.

In terms of configuration, the new Mac mini provides two chip options: M6 and M5 Pro. The M6 chip is Apple's first processor built on a 2nm process, equipped with a 12-core central processing unit containing 2 ultra cores, 4 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores, adding 2 more CPU cores than the previous M4; it is also equipped with a 12-core graphics processing unit with 2 additional cores, and for the first time a built-in neural network accelerator for each GPU core. Combined with the dual 16-core Neural Engine, its peak AI computing performance is nearly 30% higher than that of M5, and more than 8 times higher than that of M1.

Official data from Apple shows that compared with the previous-generation Mac mini equipped with M4 chip, the new M6 model delivers up to 4 times higher AI performance and up to 2 times faster graphics processing speed. It has a memory bandwidth of 153GB/s, supports hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and its media processing engine supports hardware acceleration for H.264, HEVC, ProRes and ProRes RAW. In terms of memory, Mac mini offers unified memory options from 16GB to 64GB, with storage starting at 256GB. It supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, is equipped with an upgraded 2.5Gb Ethernet port, and provides a 10Gb Ethernet port configuration option, with the latest macOS 27 system pre-installed.

Configurations of Mac mini and Mac Studio

Mac Studio is positioned as a professional desktop workstation, offering two chips: M5 Max and M5 Ultra. The M5 Max version is equipped with an 18 to 36-core CPU and a 32 to 80-core GPU, with unified memory starting from 36GB. M5 Ultra is Apple's first chip adopting a Quad-Die architecture, which interconnects two dual-die M5 Max into a quad-die architecture through Ultra Fusion technology, and is also the most powerful chip Apple has ever made. It is equipped with a 36-core CPU and an 80-core GPU, with unified memory up to 512GB and storage supporting up to 16TB.

Apple officially stated that the new Mac Studio delivers up to 4.3 times higher local AI performance, with more advanced graphics performance, and is designed for extremely heavy professional workflows and on-device large model operation.

It is worth noting that Mac mini, this small form factor desktop, has gained rising popularity among tech enthusiasts in the past year, and is widely used to run local AI agents. Earlier this year, it was even resold at marked-up prices on second-hand platforms due to surging demand.

In the past, Mac mini had a very clear position in Apple's product matrix: an affordable entry-level Mac, and the lowest threshold for users to enter the macOS ecosystem. After being made popular by tech enthusiasts, Apple has focused on enhancing the neural network accelerator, memory bandwidth and large model inference indicators on the M6 chip this time, which can be regarded as catering to this trend.

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Jiemian News", author: Li Kefeng, published with authorization from 36Kr.