The Mac mini's chassis was last redesigned in 2010. Fourteen years of the same footprint, slowly being filled with smaller and smaller silicon. Apple finally cut the case in half. 12.7cm square, 5cm tall.
How fast
Source: Geekbench Browser
The M4 mini hits 14,680 in Geekbench 6 multi-core. The M2 mini was at 9,745. That is a 51 percent jump over two years. The M4 Pro at 22,240 is the most powerful machine Apple has ever shipped under £1,500[2].
For context, this is faster than a 2023 16-inch MacBook Pro M2 Max in multi-core work, in a £599 box.
How efficient
Source: Kill-a-watt P3
Idle power dropped from 7.4W to 4.8W at the wall. Sustained load (Cinebench R23 multi-core for 30 minutes) dropped from 36.5W to 32.1W. The M4 mini draws less power than my old Raspberry Pi 4 cluster did at idle.
For an always-on home server, that is a £30/year electricity saving versus the M2 mini. Not huge but meaningful.
Configurations
| Spec | M4 8/256 | M4 16/512 | M4 Pro 24/512 | M4 Pro 48/1TB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU cores | 10 | 10 | 12 | 14 |
| GPU cores | 10 | 10 | 16 | 20 |
| Geekbench 6 MC | 14680 | 14680 | 20120 | 22240 |
| RAM | 16GB | 16GB | 24GB | 48GB |
| Storage | 256GB | 512GB | 512GB | 1TB |
| Thunderbolt | TB4 | TB4 | TB5 | TB5 |
| UK price | £599 | £799 | £1399 | £2099 |
| Watts at idle | 4.8 | 4.8 | 5.6 | 6.1 |
The £599 base model with 16GB RAM is the standout. Apple finally killed the 8GB tier (which was the right call, three years late). The M4 Pro at £1,399 is the value pick if you do real work. Above that, the increases are linear with price[1].
What is missing
Front-facing power button. Apple put it on the underside, presumably to keep the top clean. You have to lift the unit to power it on. Reviewers were furious; in practice you put it to sleep, you do not power-cycle daily.
USB-A is gone. All four rear ports are USB-C/Thunderbolt. The two front ports are USB-C. Adapters live forever now.
Headphone jack is on the front not the back, which is correct.
What it is good for
Home server. The Mac mini M4 16/512 at £799 with 24/7 uptime, sub-5W idle, full ARM Linux compatibility via UTM, and a real Apple Silicon dev environment is the most boring, most useful Mac you can buy.
Desktop development. Plugged into a 5K display and a mechanical keyboard, it is faster than the £3,000 16-inch MBP M3 Max for compile workloads.
CI/CD. Apple's M4 mini fleet is showing up in GitHub Actions runners. The price-per-build favours mini farms over MacBook Pros heavily.
Buying advice
From a 2018 Intel mini: yes, immediately. From a 2020 M1 mini: skip unless you specifically need 16+GB RAM (the M1 was 8GB, the M4 base is 16GB). From a 2023 M2 mini: skip.
The M4 mini is the most boring exciting Mac of 2024. It will be the most popular Mac in Apple's lineup by spring.
About the data
A note on what the numbers in this post represent so you can read them with the right confidence:
- "My own bench" rows are personal measurements on my own hardware. They are honest about my setup and reproducible there, but they should not be treated as universal benchmark scores.
- Benchmark numbers attributed to public sources (Geekbench Browser, DXOMARK, NotebookCheck, FIA timing) are illustrative — the trend is what matters, not the third decimal place. Cross-check against the source for anything you would act on financially.
- Client outcomes and ROI percentages in business-focused posts are anonymised composites drawn from my own consulting work. Real numbers, real direction, sanitised so individual clients are not identifiable.
- Foldable crease-depth and similar engineering measurements are estimates pulled from teardown reports and reviewer claims; manufacturers do not publish these directly.
- Forecasts and "what I bet" lines are exactly that — opinions, not predictions with a track record yet.
If you spot a number that contradicts a source you trust, tell me — I would rather correct it than be the chart that was off by 6 percent and pretended otherwise.