Apple Puts M6 in Mac mini, M5 Ultra in Mac Studio

Apple updated two desktops on August 25, 2026 with no launch event: the Mac mini moves to the M6 or the M5 Pro, and the Mac Studio to the M5 Max or the M5 Ultra. Orders open immediately, and machines ship from September 22, 2026.

The M6 steps down to 2 nanometers

Silicon Angle places the M6 on TSMC's 2-nanometer node, and heise online reports the same 2-nm manufacturing. The chip carries 12 CPU cores across three performance classes plus 12 GPU cores, with up to 32 GB of unified memory and up to 170 GB/s of bandwidth. Apple claims up to 40 percent more multithreaded performance than the M4. The two reports label the three CPU classes differently, though both put the total at 12 cores.

M5 Pro, M5 Max and M5 Ultra

The M5 Pro in the higher-end Mac mini takes up to 64 GB of unified memory. Apple markets it with up to four times faster AI workloads; Silicon Angle ties that figure to large-language-model processing against the M4 Pro, and cites a factor of 4.8 against the M4.

The entry Mac Studio uses the M5 Max, with 18 CPU cores, 40 GPU cores, up to 128 GB of unified memory and up to 614 GB/s of bandwidth. Apple puts it at up to 30 percent faster on the CPU and up to 50 percent faster on the GPU than the M4 Max.

At the top sits the M5 Ultra: 36 CPU cores, 80 GPU cores, up to 512 GB of unified memory and 1.2 TB/s of bandwidth, a 50 percent increase. The UltraFusion link between its two joined dies carries 4.4 TB/s, up from 2.5 TB/s on the M3 Ultra, according to heise. Apple also cites up to 30 percent more multithreaded performance, up to 4.5 times the AI performance and up to 80 percent more graphics performance; neither report we read states the comparison baseline for those three numbers.

Why the 512 GB ceiling matters

A large language model only loads in full when there is enough contiguous memory to hold it. At up to 512 GB of unified memory running at 1.2 TB/s, the Mac Studio lands in territory normally held by workstations with discrete accelerator cards — in a chassis that fits on a desk. Buyers who need that tier have to wait, though: the 512 GB configuration does not arrive until the end of October.

Prices and ports

In the US, Silicon Angle lists starting prices of $899 for the M6 Mac mini, $1,699 for the M5 Pro version, $2,499 for the M5 Max Mac Studio and $5,499 for the M5 Ultra. German list prices run 1,049, 1,999, 2,999 and 6,599 euros; the two price lists are not directly comparable.

Apple splits the two Mac mini models on connectivity: the M6 machine gets three Thunderbolt 4 ports, and only the M5 Pro version gets Thunderbolt 5, which is what enables clustering. 2.5-gigabit Ethernet is standard, with 10 Gbit/s as a paid upgrade. Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 come from Apple's own N1 chip, which also ships in the new Mac Studio.

What is still unconfirmed

A third trade report on the same machines was unreachable at the time of writing, so this article rests on heise online and Silicon Angle. The memory and SSD configurations of the base models remain unconfirmed — only one of the two reports lists them, and does so ambiguously. Every performance figure here comes from Apple; no independent benchmarks are available yet.