Apple’s new Macs are some of the best desktop and laptop PCs you can buy right now, thanks to the excellent performance of the company's M1 System-on-a-Chip designs. The Mac Mini was one of the first Macs to switch from Intel to M1 last year, and now the entry-level model is once again on sale for $600. That's $100 off the original MSRP and $59 below the usual price, matching the previous sale we covered in May.
The updated Mac Mini has an 8-core Apple M1, which combines the GPU, CPU, Neural Engine, I/O and other functions into a single chip. The M1 also brought incredible battery life to the MacBook lineup, but since the Mini is a desktop computer, power consumption isn't super important. The main advantage of the M1 Mac Mini is improved performance over previous Intel-based models, and some upcoming macOS features will only be available on M1-based Macs.
Apple Mac Mini (M1, 2020)
Apple's latest Mac Mini has a super-fast M1 processor, and the configuration on sale has 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD for storage. The $59 discount is applied at checkout.
Many macOS applications are already updated to run natively on M1 Macs, and you can also run most older software through the included Rosetta compatibility layer. In many cases, emulated Intel software still runs faster than it would on native Intel Macs.
The specific configuration on sale has an M1 chip, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD for storage, Thunderbolt / USB 4 support, HDMI, Wi-Fi 6, and Gigabit Ethernet. It would have been nice to see more memory available, but the rest of the hardware is excellent. You'll also need your own monitor, keyboard, and mouse.