New Mac desktops arrive with four distinct starting points
The choice between Mac mini and Mac Studio starts with your workload and budget, not the newest chip name.
Hardware · Macfolio · 22 September 2026
Apple's new Mac mini and Mac Studio became available on September 22. In the US, the M6 mini starts at $899 and the M5 Pro mini at $1,699. Mac Studio starts at $2,499 with M5 Max or $5,499 with M5 Ultra.
The range covers very different budgets. There is also an availability exception: Apple says the Mac Studio configuration with 512GB of unified memory is coming in late October.
Start with what the machine must handle
Our take: list the projects, memory demands, peripherals, and displays a desktop must support before choosing a chip tier. A faster headline specification does not tell you whether your work is limited by compute, memory, or storage.
The late arrival of the highest-memory configuration is especially relevant to teams planning local AI workloads around it. General availability of the range does not mean every configuration is ready on the same day.