The Mac Mini, along with its more mobile Mac cousins, the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro, was the first Apple computer to abandon Intel silicon in favor of Apple’s new M1 processor. Our first tests with the M1 machines show a substantial performance increase over their predecessors, and now we are seeing discounts appearing for the new machines.
You can find discounts on M1 MacBooks, but the Mac Mini remains the cheapest entry point for MacOS. The base model of the M1 Mac Mini costs $ 699 and has 8 gigabytes of RAM and a 256 GB solid state drive. The advanced model costs $ 899 and doubles the storage capacity to 512 GB. Amazon currently offers both discounted configurations; you can save $ 99 in the baseline configuration and $ 50 in the advanced model.
One advantage of paying full price and buying from Apple, however, is that you can customize the machine and add more RAM or a larger capacity SSD, while models sold on Amazon and other retailers are fixed configurations. And unlike most other desktops, the Mac Mini’s RAM cannot be upgraded by the user. The M1 system on an Apple chip integrates CPU, GPU, RAM and other components for greater power and efficiency, but the disadvantage of this integration is the lack of DIMM slots that would allow you to add additional RAM after purchase.
It is also important to note that the The Apple Store offers students an educational discount, but you’ll only save $ 20 on the price of a new Mac Mini, although some upgrades are also discounted. For example, doubling the RAM to 16 GB costs $ 180 with the education discount, instead of the normal $ 200.
Read on to see the best prices currently available for Apple’s Mac Mini. We update this page regularly.
Mac Mini discounts, compared
|
Model, CPU, storage capacity |
List price |
Best price (current) |
Best price (of all time) |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Mac Mini, M1 chip, 256 GB SSD |
$ 699 |
$ 600 |
$ 600 |
|
Mac Mini, M1 chip, 512 GB SSD |
$ 899 |
$ 849 |
$ 829 |
* Please note that “all time” means the best price we have seen at an Apple Authorized Reseller for the life of the product.
When you arrive at the Amazon page for the basic Mac Mini with the M1 chip, 8 GB of RAM and a 256 GB SSD, you will see a price of $ 669 and wonder how I got the $ 100 discount. Check out the green print below price on Amazon – says you will save $ 69.01 at checkout. And sure enough, when you add the Mac Mini to your cart, the price drops to $ 600 for a total savings of $ 99 – the initial $ 30 plus the additional $ 69 in savings at checkout. This is the lowest price we’ve seen for the M1 Mac Mini.
Dan Ackerman / CNET
You won’t find any extra savings when adding the Mac Mini step-up to your cart on Amazon, but this model is currently $ 50 off. At $ 849, it’s $ 20 above the all-time low price of $ 829.
See this:
Practice with the whole new line of the Apple Mac M1
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