TL;DR: Apple announced new Mac mini and Mac Studio desktops on August 25, 2026, with M6, M5 Pro, M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips, with preorders open now and availability beginning September 22, 2026.

Apple closed out August with a compact but consequential desktop refresh. On August 25, 2026, the company announced a new Mac mini powered by the all-new M6 chip or the M5 Pro, alongside a new Mac Studio powered by the M5 Max or the all-new M5 Ultra, positioning both machines for on-device AI work and always-on agentic computing.

According to Apple in its announcement titled Apple unveils a more powerful Mac mini featuring the all-new M6 and M5 Pro, the new Mac mini is available for pre-order starting August 25, with availability beginning September 22. According to Apple in its announcement titled Apple introduces new Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra, the new Mac Studio follows the same timetable, with pre-orders starting August 25 and availability beginning September 22.

The pricing tells a second story about memory markets. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple’s new Mac Mini has fresh M6 and M5 Pro chip offerings — and higher prices, the M6 Mac mini starts at $899, while the M5 Pro model starts at $1,699, with both costing $100 more than the most recent starting prices of the M4 generation. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple launches new Mac Studios with its ‘most powerful chip ever’ — the M5 Ultra, the new Mac Studio with M5 Max starts at $2,499 with 36GB of unified memory and 512GB of storage, while the M5 Ultra model starts at $5,499 with 96GB of memory and 1TB of storage.

Two small desktops, one launch date

Apple kept the physical playbook familiar and changed the silicon inside.

According to The Verge in its report titled Apple’s new Mac Mini has fresh M6 and M5 Pro chip offerings — and higher prices, the new Mac minis have the same tiny design and footprint as the 2024 M4 / M4 Pro models, but with upgraded internals, faster performance, and speedier ethernet ports. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple launches new Mac Studios with its ‘most powerful chip ever’ — the M5 Ultra, the new Studios look identical to previous generations, utilizing the same small-form-factor chassis since its introduction in 2022, right down to the USB-A ports on the rear.

That continuity matters for buyers who already have a desk setup. The Mac mini remains Apple’s most compact desktop, while the Mac Studio remains a taller small-footprint box designed to sit on a desk and drive pro displays and external storage.

According to MacRumors in its report titled Apple's New Mac Mini and Mac Studio Are Now Available to Pre-Order, pre-orders for both machines went live on Apple’s online store and in the Apple Store app in the United States and 30 other countries and regions, with most configurations shipping Tuesday, September 22, which is also when the new models will be available to buy in Apple Store locations and at Apple Authorized Resellers.

One high-end exception ships later. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple launches new Mac Studios with its ‘most powerful chip ever’ — the M5 Ultra, its highest-end M5 Ultra configuration with 512GB of memory is coming in late October with pricing to be determined. According to MacRumors in its report titled Apple's New Mac Mini and Mac Studio Are Now Available to Pre-Order, the M5 Ultra-powered Mac Studio with 512GB of unified memory won't be available until late October, and Apple hasn't announced pricing for it yet.

Mac mini gets M6 and M5 Pro

The Mac mini line once again offers two models: an entry version with the new M6 chip and a higher-end version with the M5 Pro found in this year’s MacBook Pro.

According to The Verge in its report titled Apple’s new Mac Mini has fresh M6 and M5 Pro chip offerings — and higher prices, like last generation, the new entry-level Mac mini with an M6 chip starts with 16GB of unified memory and 256GB of storage, and the M5 Pro Mac mini starts with a 24GB / 512GB configuration. According to MacRumors in its report titled Apple's New Mac Mini and Mac Studio Are Now Available to Pre-Order, education prices reflect Apple’s discounts for schools and students, listed as $799 for the M6 mini and $1,599 for the M5 Pro mini.

Storage speed and networking see broad gains. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple’s new Mac Mini has fresh M6 and M5 Pro chip offerings — and higher prices, the storage in all of these models is now twice as fast, just like the recent crop of MacBooks Air and Pro, while both M6 and M5 Pro Mac minis now sport 2.5 gigabit ethernet ports with the same optional upgrade to 10 gigabit. According to Apple in its announcement titled Apple unveils a more powerful Mac mini featuring the all-new M6 and M5 Pro, both Mac mini models include Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, as well as upgraded 2.5Gb Ethernet, with a 10Gb option available.

Apple links the wireless upgrade to its N1 chip. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple’s new Mac Mini has fresh M6 and M5 Pro chip offerings — and higher prices, the new minis use Apple’s N1 chip for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 support.

Ports otherwise carry over. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple’s new Mac Mini has fresh M6 and M5 Pro chip offerings — and higher prices, both minis maintain two front-facing 10Gbps USB-C ports and the three on the rear of the M6 are faster Thunderbolt 4, while the rear three of the M5 Pro are even speedier Thunderbolt 5 ports.

Software ships new with the hardware. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple’s new Mac Mini has fresh M6 and M5 Pro chip offerings — and higher prices, both the M6 and M5 Pro Mac minis will ship with macOS 27 Golden Gate preloaded out of the box, offering full compatibility with Apple’s new Siri AI and new Apple Intelligence features. According to Apple in its announcement titled Apple unveils a more powerful Mac mini featuring the all-new M6 and M5 Pro, the new Mac mini combines that hardware with macOS 27 and the next generation of Apple Intelligence, including Siri AI.

Inside the M6: Apple’s first 2nm Mac chip

The M6 is the centerpiece of the mini update and the start of a new silicon generation.

According to The Verge in its report titled Apple’s new M6 chip gets more cores and more AI compute, the M6 is Apple’s first 2nm chip, which Apple says will bring improvements in performance and power efficiency, and it also has a Dual 16-core Neural Engine for on-device AI workloads. According to Apple in its announcement titled Apple unveils a more powerful Mac mini featuring the all-new M6 and M5 Pro, the all-new Dual 16-core Neural Engine delivers up to 2x faster performance than the previous generation.

Core counts rise across the board. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple’s new M6 chip gets more cores and more AI compute, the M6 has a 12-core CPU, up from 10 in the M5, and it includes two super cores, four performance cores, and six efficiency cores. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple’s new Mac Mini has fresh M6 and M5 Pro chip offerings — and higher prices, the M6 Mac mini now has a 12-core CPU and 12-core GPU along with 170GBps of memory bandwidth compared to the M4’s 10-core / 10-core setup and memory bandwidth of 120GBps.

Apple’s naming for “super” cores changed with recent chips. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple’s new M6 chip gets more cores and more AI compute, Apple’s “super” core terminology used to refer to performance cores, but it introduced a new type of performance core starting with the M5 Pro and M5 Max. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple’s new Mac Mini has fresh M6 and M5 Pro chip offerings — and higher prices, its CPU consists of two super cores, a naming convention that began with the M5 Pro / Max chips, four performance cores, and six efficiency cores — and it’s Apple’s first chip on a 2nm process.

Apple claims a 40 percent uplift in CPU performance over the M4 generation, and the company says the CPU offers “the world’s fastest single-threaded performance” and up to 1.2x faster multithreaded performance in comparison to the M5, according to The Verge in its reports titled Apple’s new Mac Mini has fresh M6 and M5 Pro chip offerings — and higher prices and Apple’s new M6 chip gets more cores and more AI compute.

Graphics and AI blocks get Neural Accelerators. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple’s new M6 chip gets more cores and more AI compute, the chip also has a 12-core GPU, up from 10 cores in the M5, and includes a Neural Accelerator with each core. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple’s new Mac Mini has fresh M6 and M5 Pro chip offerings — and higher prices, the new 12-core GPU with neural accelerators is up to twice as fast at graphics rendering with ray tracing than the M4 in some games.

Memory capacity for M6 tops out below Pro levels. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple’s new M6 chip gets more cores and more AI compute, it supports as much as 32GB of unified memory. According to Apple in its announcement titled Apple unveils a more powerful Mac mini featuring the all-new M6 and M5 Pro, the mini with M6 includes 16GB of standard unified memory configurable up to 32GB, as well as higher memory bandwidth up to 170GB/s.

Apple cites specific workload gains in its own testing footnotes. According to Apple in its announcement titled Apple unveils a more powerful Mac mini featuring the all-new M6 and M5 Pro, Mac mini with M6 delivers up to 13.5x faster LLM prompt processing in LM Studio when compared to Mac mini with M1, and up to 4.8x faster than M4, alongside up to 2.3x faster spreadsheet calculations in Microsoft Excel when compared to Mac mini with M1, and up to 1.5x faster than M4. The same Apple announcement lists up to 2x faster gaming performance with ray tracing in Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition when compared to Mac mini with M4.

M5 Pro mini targets heavier pro work

The step-up mini uses the M5 Pro already seen in MacBook Pro, tuned for sustained creative and technical tasks.

According to The Verge in its report titled Apple’s new Mac Mini has fresh M6 and M5 Pro chip offerings — and higher prices, the M5 Pro of the new Mac mini is configurable, much like it is on the MacBook Pro: it can be had with up to 18 CPU cores and 20 GPU cores, and it has the same 307GBps of memory bandwidth. According to Apple in its announcement titled Apple unveils a more powerful Mac mini featuring the all-new M6 and M5 Pro, M5 Pro features up to an 18-core CPU with remarkable multithreaded performance and up to a 20-core GPU with an enhanced shader core and third-generation ray tracing for complex work in 3D design, VFX, and game development.

AI compute is a stated focus. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple’s new Mac Mini has fresh M6 and M5 Pro chip offerings — and higher prices, Apple claims the Mac mini with an M5 Pro has significant gains in AI compute and graphics over the outgoing M4 Pro model, thanks in part to the neural accelerator in each GPU core, which should permit heavier AI workloads, including photo and video upscaling, and running larger diffusion models. According to Apple in its announcement titled Apple unveils a more powerful Mac mini featuring the all-new M6 and M5 Pro, with Neural Accelerators in each GPU core, M5 Pro also delivers significant gains in AI compute compared to the previous Mac mini, allowing users to tackle more advanced AI workflows like photo and video upscaling, and running large diffusion models faster than ever.

Memory headroom is substantially higher than the base M6 model. According to Apple in its announcement titled Apple unveils a more powerful Mac mini featuring the all-new M6 and M5 Pro, Mac mini with M5 Pro supports up to 64GB of unified memory with 307GB/s of memory bandwidth, enabling users to run even larger local AI models, work with complex 3D scenes, edit ProRes RAW files, and load large custom datasets for research.

Apple also frames the mini as an always-on machine. According to Apple in its announcement titled Apple unveils a more powerful Mac mini featuring the all-new M6 and M5 Pro, with industry-leading performance per watt, Mac mini with M5 Pro is quiet, efficient, and ideal as an always-on desktop for AI agents or creative workflows. According to Reuters in its report titled Apple launches faster Mac mini, Mac Studio to tap AI boom, Apple on Tuesday unveiled a more powerful Mac mini aimed at consumers looking to host AI agents remotely.

That positioning follows recent demand patterns. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple’s new Mac Mini has fresh M6 and M5 Pro chip offerings — and higher prices, while preorders start immediately, the new Mac minis won’t ship until September 22nd — hopefully enough time for Apple to stock up on inventory, as the last-gen models became scarce due to higher than expected demand for running AI agents.

Mac Studio unifies on M5 Max and M5 Ultra

The Mac Studio refresh corrects an awkward split in the prior lineup.

According to The Verge in its report titled Apple launches new Mac Studios with its ‘most powerful chip ever’ — the M5 Ultra, this reunification under one chip generation comes over a year after Apple awkwardly split the Studio between M4 Max and M3 Ultra offerings, noting that the older-sounding M3 Ultra was actually the more powerful one, and there was never an M4 Ultra chip.

The new range starts with familiar capacity points. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple launches new Mac Studios with its ‘most powerful chip ever’ — the M5 Ultra, while the RAM and storage amounts for the new Mac Studios match their predecessors, like recent MacBooks, they have storage that’s twice as fast. According to Apple in its announcement titled Apple introduces new Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra, Mac Studio delivers up to 2x faster storage, along with higher memory bandwidth.

Entry Studio pricing matches the prior current price after an earlier increase. According to MacRumors in its report titled Apple's New Mac Mini and Mac Studio Are Now Available to Pre-Order, Mac Studio pricing starts at $2,499, while education pricing is listed at $2,299 for the M5 Max model and $5,099 for the M5 Ultra model. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple launches new Mac Studios with its ‘most powerful chip ever’ — the M5 Ultra, the new Mac Studio with the existing M5 Max chip comes with 36GB of unified memory and 512GB of storage, starting at $2,499, which matches the current starting price of the M4 Max model after its $500 price hike in June.

The Ultra model pushes memory far beyond laptop limits. According to Apple in its announcement titled Apple introduces new Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra, with the powerful M5 Ultra, Mac Studio scales up to a 36-core CPU, up to an 80-core GPU, and 512GB of unified memory, enabling users to run enormous LLMs entirely on device. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple’s new M6 chip gets more cores and more AI compute, the M5 Ultra supports up to 512GB of “high-bandwidth” unified memory, which as usual with the M series isn’t upgradeable after purchase.

M5 Ultra: quad-die design and AI claims

Apple is direct about where the M5 Ultra sits in its lineup.

According to The Verge in its report titled Apple’s new M6 chip gets more cores and more AI compute, Apple is launching a new M5 Ultra alongside an upgraded Mac Studio that it says is its “most powerful chip ever,” designed for tasks like 3D rendering and running frontier AI models. According to Apple in its announcement titled Apple introduces new Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra, M5 Ultra is described as Apple’s most powerful silicon ever.

The construction uses Apple’s interconnect to fuse server-class blocks. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple’s new M6 chip gets more cores and more AI compute, Apple says that the M5 Ultra uses the company’s UltraFusion interconnect technology to connect two dual-die M5 Max chips together as one quad-die architecture. According to Apple in its announcement titled Apple introduces new Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra, Apple achieved the result by using its next-gen UltraFusion connection to merge two dual-die M5 Max chips together into a quad-die architecture, as described by The Verge in its report titled Apple launches new Mac Studios with its ‘most powerful chip ever’ — the M5 Ultra.

Counts and bandwidth are the highest Apple has shipped in a Mac. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple’s new M6 chip gets more cores and more AI compute, the M5 Ultra has an up to 36-core CPU with 12 super cores and 24 performance cores, an up to 80-core GPU, and a 32-core Neural Engine. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple launches new Mac Studios with its ‘most powerful chip ever’ — the M5 Ultra, the memory bandwidth of the M5 Ultra is now up to 1.2TB per second, compared with 819GB per second for the M3 Ultra.

Apple’s comparative claims focus on AI, graphics and CPU. According to Apple in its announcement titled Apple introduces new Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra, Mac Studio with M5 Ultra achieves up to 4.3x the peak AI compute performance of M3 Ultra and 9.8x more than M1 Ultra. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple launches new Mac Studios with its ‘most powerful chip ever’ — the M5 Ultra, the M5 Ultra and its up to 36-core CPU and 80-core GPU are said to have up to 1.8x faster graphics and 1.3x faster CPU speed than the M3 Ultra.

Clustering is a new emphasis for local model work. According to Apple in its announcement titled Apple introduces new Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra, Thunderbolt 5 enables multiple Mac Studio systems to be clustered, bringing up to 3x faster performance for distributed AI inference when compared to a single system. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple launches new Mac Studios with its ‘most powerful chip ever’ — the M5 Ultra, Apple describes the new Studios as “A monumental step for AI” with a claim of up to 4.3x faster AI compute in the M5 Ultra.

For developers, Apple points to software frameworks. According to Apple in its announcement titled Apple introduces new Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra, Core AI is a brand-new framework for building, running, and deploying AI models on Apple silicon, while MLX, Apple’s open-source machine learning framework optimized for Apple silicon, enables developers to run, train, and fine-tune models with exceptional efficiency on Mac.

Display and wireless support round out the Studio changes. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple launches new Mac Studios with its ‘most powerful chip ever’ — the M5 Ultra, the machines are small enough to fit under a monitor, including support for up to four of Apple’s 5K / 120Hz Studio Display XDR monitors running at full resolution. According to The Verge in the same report, the Mac Studios also pack Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 support, while Thunderbolt 5 rounds out extensive connectivity for external storage, PCIe expansion chassis, and hub solutions, as detailed by Apple in its announcement titled Apple introduces new Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra.

Why prices rose

Buyers will pay more at entry than they did at the last launch, though less than a simple launch-to-launch comparison suggests.

According to MacRumors in its report titled Apple's New Mac Mini and Mac Studio Are Now Available to Pre-Order, both Mac mini models cost more than the machines they replace, noting that the rapid buildout of AI data centers has pushed up demand for memory and storage chips across the tech industry. According to MacRumors in the same report, Apple in June raised the M4 Pro Mac mini to $1,599, up from the $1,399 it launched at in October 2024, while the M5 Pro version adds another $100 on top of that.

The base mini shows the same pattern. According to MacRumors in its report titled Apple's New Mac Mini and Mac Studio Are Now Available to Pre-Order, the $899 M6 mini is $300 more than the M4 model's $599 original launch price, but only $100 more than the $799 that Apple re-priced it to in June. According to The Verge in its report titled Two new small, powerful Macs, the minis have starting prices that are $100 more expensive than the previous generation.

Studio pricing also reflects earlier adjustments. According to The Verge in its report titled Apple launches new Mac Studios with its ‘most powerful chip ever’ — the M5 Ultra, the new $5,499 M5 Ultra model starts with 96GB of memory and 1TB of storage, which is only $200 more than the starting price of the outgoing M3 Ultra model, but the M3 Ultra launched at a much lower $3,999 last year. According to MacRumors in its report titled Apple's New Mac Mini and Mac Studio Are Now Available to Pre-Order, Mac Studio pricing starts at $2,499, $500 more than the original price of the M4 Max model when it came out in March 2025, as noted in related coverage of 13 things buyers might have missed.

Apple executive Johny Srouji framed the releases as versatility and power gains rather than cost commentary. According to Apple in its announcement titled Apple unveils a more powerful Mac mini featuring the all-new M6 and M5 Pro, Srouji said: “Mac mini has always been our most versatile Mac.” According to Apple in its announcement titled Apple introduces new Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra, Srouji said: “Mac Studio is the ultimate desktop for on-device AI and the world’s most demanding pro workflows.”

With the recent sunsetting of its Mac Pro line of desktops, these Mac Studios are as powerful as Apple computers get, according to The Verge in its report titled Apple launches new Mac Studios with its ‘most powerful chip ever’ — the M5 Ultra.

Sources referenced