Apple Unveils New Mac mini and Mac Studio with M5 and M6 Chips, Available September 22
Apple announced new Mac mini and Mac Studio models on August 25, featuring M6 and M5 Pro chips in the Mac mini and M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips in the Mac Studio. Pre-orders for the Mac Studio begin immediately, with in-store availability on September 22. The M6 is Apple's first 2-nanometer chip, while the M5 Ultra is its most powerful to date. Pricing starts at $899 for the Mac mini, $2,499 for the M5 Max Mac Studio, and $5,499 for the M5 Ultra version.
Apple on August 25 introduced new Mac mini and Mac Studio models. The Mac mini is powered by M6 and M5 Pro chips, while the Mac Studio comes with M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips. The new Mac Studio is available for pre-order starting today and will officially launch in stores on September 22. Apple said in a statement that the M6 is its first chip built on a 2-nanometer process, and the M5 Ultra is the most powerful chip Apple has ever made.
The new Mac mini is the first Apple computer to feature the M6 chip family, manufactured by TSMC using a 2-nanometer process. Apple said the Mac mini with the M5 Pro chip processes large language model prompts 8.5 times faster than the previous Pro version. The computer starts at $899, up $100 from the prior model. Apple had already raised the price from $599 during the summer due to memory costs. The Mac Studio is Apple's most powerful computer without a built-in display; some models feature the M5 Max chip, which Apple says runs large language models nearly four times faster than the previous generation. Other configurations can be equipped with the M5 Ultra chip, and multiple Mac Studios can be linked to share memory and run trillion-parameter frontier AI models.
The M5 Max version of the Mac Studio starts at $2,499, unchanged from before. The M5 Ultra version starts at $5,499; previously, the Ultra-chip Mac Studio started at $5,299 with the older M3 Ultra chip.
In its announcement, Apple emphasized that its iPhone and Mac chips include a dedicated neural engine for running models and use a RAM architecture that eliminates some memory bottlenecks. Apple said that with these frameworks and new chips, developers can run and fine-tune large AI models locally on Mac. Developers often use software such as OpenClaw to create AI agents and prefer running them on dedicated Mac mini units rather than in the cloud; the Mac Studio is also a popular choice for AI researchers experimenting with local model training and deployment.