It has always been the most accessible computer the company has offered and the bare bones nature was designed primarily to make people using Windows PCs switch over.
The Mac mini has been an unassuming yet stable member of Apple’s desktop lineup of Macs for nearly two decades. It has always been the most accessible computer the company has offered and the bare bones nature was designed primarily to make people using Windows PCs switch over seamlessly by bringing over their existing peripherals.
Despite its age and countless revisions, the Mac mini has only had three designs over its lifetime. The most famous one, the one that preceded the current model, was around for over 14 years. You could argue that being the cheapest computer in the lineup, the Mac mini never quite received the same love and attention as the more popular MacBook models and you’d probably be right.
Well, after 14 years, Apple has finally redesigned the Mac mini. The new design is built from the ground up for the new Apple Silicon chips whereas the previous model was built for a variety of Intel chips. This means it can now be a lot smaller, and the mini has always been a small computer to begin with.
The 2024 Mac mini comes with Apple’s latest M4 generation of chips. You get a choice of the base M4 as well as the more premium M4 Pro. There are also updated memory, storage, and connectivity options.
The model we have for review today is the $599 base model, which can also be had for $499 if you are a student. This features the M4 chip, 16GB of memory, and 256GB of storage. This seems to be the best value and most sought-after configuration, so it would be interesting to see how well it performs and if it’s worth buying for an existing Mac user or for someone thinking of making the switch from Windows.Design
The new Mac mini has the same unibody anodized aluminum construction as previous models. The big change this generation is the size, which is incredibly small considering it’s packing the same basic hardware as the previous generations.
The new Mac mini measures 5 inches by 5 inches while being just under 2 inches tall. This makes it closer to the current Apple TV 4K than the previous Mac mini in dimensions. The top and sides are perfectly flat with curved corners and sharp edges. The top features a glossy Apple logo.
The bottom houses the cover that provides access to the interiors of the machine but is sealed away as it’s not meant to be opened by the user. The base has a ring of vents that provide intake and exhaust for the cooling system inside. There’s also a power button on the right, which falls on the left once the machine is flipped right side up.
Now, much has been said about this button placement but in my usage, this wasn’t an issue. It’s not something you need to access often so it doesn’t end up being nearly as much of an inconvenience as you might assume without actually living with the machine. Still, I’m not against a better placement on the front or the back (or even the sides) and perhaps this is something Apple can look into for future revisions. But we all know that’s not going to happen.
Part of the redesign is also the rearrangement and reconfiguration of the ports. The Mac mini now has ports on the front for the first time, an area that has been largely left blank since the device dropped support for a disc drive. The back of the unit is no longer removable as it was on the previous models, and the ports are drilled directly into the aluminum shell.
Getting back to the ventilation system, I am not fond of the way the Mac mini cooling system has essentially the same design principle as a Roomba. It sucks air in from the bottom and spits it out the back. The problem with this is that it just pulls in all the dust that will inevitably be present on the surface it is on, even if the vents are placed deeper within the perimeter of the unit. It will also limit the pressure with which air can be pulled in and create a slightly turbulent noise as it goes in and out in such a cramped space.
My solution? Place it on a small pedestal. I just used a small box of a pair of wireless earbuds but you can get creative. It just needs to be smaller than the circular bottom cover so that the unit is raised above the ground and the vents don’t have anything immediately below them. This way, the cooling system will directly pull the air around it instead of sweeping it off the surface below, reducing how much dust it pulls in. Secondly, it also solves the issue with the power button, as with the unit raised, it becomes trivially easy to access it, once you memorize which side it’s on.
As for getting inside the unit, there are plenty of teardown videos that show how to do it. The Mac mini used to have accessible innards at one point and you could get inside to replace or upgrade the storage and memory. That functionality slowly went away over the years and the last iteration of the previous device had a locked basement, just like it is on this 2024 model. Still, if you are creative enough, you can get inside without too much of an issue. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it for storage or memory reasons but it might be a good idea to open it up every year to do some cleaning. The heatsink is small so it will need to be dusted regularly to remain effective.
Overall, the design of the Mac mini is really impressive in some ways and a disappointment in others. It is incredibly small for a fully functional computer and the build quality is impeccable. However, the ventilation design makes it susceptible to getting filled with dust, and access to the insides is barred, even for basic cleaning purposes. You could say it’s form over function but that’s basically been the Mac design philosophy for a while now.Hardware
The Mac mini 2024 comes with a choice of two chipsets, the base M4 and the M4 Pro. The M4 has 10 CPU cores with 4 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores. Meanwhile, the M4 Pro has 12 CPU cores with 8 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores. The M4 gets a 10-core GPU whereas the M4 Pro has a 16-core GPU. You can also further upgrade the M4 Pro model with a 14-core GPU and 20-core GPU. Both chips also have a 16-core Neural Engine NPU.
The M4 model comes with 16GB, 24GB, and 32GB of 128-bit 7500MHz LPDDR5X memory while the M4 Pro model comes with a choice of 24GB, 48GB, and 64GB of 256-bit 8532MHz LPDDR5X memory. This gives the Pro models a memory bandwidth of 273GB/s whereas the base model has 120GB/s.
In terms of storage, the base model gets 256GB while all others get 512GB as standard. This can then be upgraded to 1TB or 2TB on the M4 model and 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, or 8TB on the M4 Pro model. As usual, all these upgrades need to be done while placing the order on Apple’s website or through its retail stores as they cannot be upgraded or replaced later.
You may remember that Apple computers came with 8GB memory as standard before. However, thanks to the introduction of Apple Intelligence, the company had to bump up the base memory on all its computers to make it functional, which might be the only useful thing to have come out of the AI revolution so far.
This means the base model Mac mini is now usable in a way the previous 8GB machines simply weren’t. You can delude yourself into thinking that 8GB is adequate for a computer but it simply isn’t and hasn’t been for a while. Even sitting here right now just typing out this text with just a few browser tabs open and music playing in the background, the Mac mini is consuming over 10GB of memory out of its 16. It’s also worth noting that being a unified memory architecture, everything from the CPU, the GPU, and the NPU dip into the same pool of memory, which further makes anything less than 16GB unusable.
What’s also still not usable is the 256GB base storage. I’m not sure what revolution would be required to make Apple change that to 512GB but for now if you buy the base model, you are getting just enough storage to be able to install your everyday apps and perhaps one or two games. Unlike with the memory, the good thing with the storage situation is that you can just plug in an external SSD to get additional space. You can pretty much use the external drive like internal storage, using it to install apps and even booting from it, if necessary. It won’t be as fast as the internal drive but for most use cases a USB 3.2 Gen 2 drive is more than adequate and the Mac mini supports 40Gbps USB 4 and Thunderbolt 4, even on the base model.Connectivity
Speaking of ports, the connectivity on the 2024 Mac mini has been revised. There are no USB-A ports anymore, and the Apple Silicon models had already lost the SD card slot that used to be present on the Intel-based units. Now, there are three USB-C ports on the back, which support 40Gbps Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4 on the M4 models and also 120Gbps Thunderbolt 5 on the M4 Pro model. These ports also support DisplayPort 1.4 when used with a USB-C to DP cable. For HDMI users, there is a full-size HDMI 2.1 port alongside a Gigabit Ethernet, which can be configured to 10Gbps while ordering. Finally, there’s a power connector on the back and the power supply is built into the system, which, much to Apple’s credit, is a thing it does every generation no matter how small the computer gets.
Moving to the front, there are two USB-C ports supporting 10Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 speeds (no Thunderbolt) along with a 3.5mm powered headphone jack that supports high-impedance headphones. The headphone jack on the front would be convenient to those using headphones but there is no longer an audio port at the back, so anyone using desktop speakers would now have to leave a cable permanently attached to the front port and then clumsily route it to the back or plug in a USB DAC at the back. A second auxiliary port on the back would have been a better solution and unlikely to have put a dent in Apple’s trillion-dollar market cap.
For wireless users, there’s Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) as well as Bluetooth 5.3.
Overall, the connectivity on the Mac mini is good if you just count the number of ports. However, the lack of USB-A is frustrating, especially for a BYODKM device like the Mac mini, which people are bound to use with their existing USB keyboards and mice. Despite having five USB ports, many people will still have to rely on dongles to use their wired peripherals or purchase wireless alternatives. And what do you know, Apple just happens to have wireless keyboards, mice, and trackpads available for you to purchase.Software
The 2024 Mac mini comes with macOS 15 Sequoia out of the box, currently at 15.1.1 at the time of writing. Just like iOS updates, macOS updates are available to download as soon as they are released. Apple also supports Mac hardware for years, with the current Sequoia release supporting hardware as old as the 2017 x86 Mac Pro. Apple Silicon Macs should have an even longer update life and you can probably expect close to a decade of support.
If you are an existing Mac user, there isn’t anything on this Mac mini that would be new as all Macs essentially get the same version of the operating system. However, if you are coming from Windows then there will be a period of acclimatization before you can operate the system effectively. You will need to get used to the keyboard controls, which are quite different under macOS, and this can be a bit challenging, especially if you just plug in a standard keyboard designed for Windows that doesn’t have the macOS modifier keys.
