Apple's latest Mac mini brings real speed and power for far more than everyday tasks in a practically pocketable form you can fit almost anywhere.

The impressive new desktop machine is the first to receive an update to Apple's latest M6 chip while remaining smaller than a headphones box. It is the cheapest computer Apple sells with an M-series chip, but like every other memory-containing piece of electronics, it has been hit by RAMageddon, driving up the starting price to £899 (€1,049/$899/A$1,449) from the £599 or equivalent of its M4 predecessor.

Apple introduced the Mac mini's dainty form with 2024's M4 model, which remains the same for the new M6 version. A lot has changed since the M2 Mac mini, which was pretty compact. The current mini measures just 12.7cm square and 5cm thick, with rounded corners and a solid aluminium body. It's happy to sit on a desk, but is small and light enough to mount behind a monitor to turn any screen into a DIY iMac.

The machine is fairly minimalist. A small LED on the front shows you when it's on. The back has three Thunderbolt 4 (USB4) ports, a 2.5Gb ethernet socket, an HDMI 2.1 port, and a figure-eight power cable. It lacks any USB-A ports, but adapters are readily available for legacy devices not yet converted to USB-C, such as flash drives or printers.

It has basic speakers built in, which are good enough for macOS's notification sounds.

The mini runs the latest macOS 27 Golden Gate, which brings welcome refinements to Apple's Liquid Glass design that was introduced last year. But the big update is a relaunch of Apple's Siri assistant and AI tools. Siri AI, as it is now known, is vastly superior at understanding and performing tasks, such as finding information on your Mac or the web, and has a dedicated app to see previous interactions. It can read what's on your screen, so you can ask it to track parcels from just a code in your email or find an object from an image with the CMD+Shift+Space keyboard shortcut.

Siri is integrated into Spotlight search, which is handy but sometimes results in it trying to search the web instead of launching an app or a file on your Mac if you mistype, which can be frustrating.

Apple Intelligence is smarter too. Writing, proofing and summarising tools are built in and accessible from most apps, along with a collection of other features. The most surprisingly useful tool I found was file and folder naming suggestions, which made matching long file-naming schemes a doddle. Boring but very useful.

• 256, 512GB, 1 or 2TB SSD

• Operating system: macOS 27 Golden Gate

• Ports back: 3x Thunderbolt/USB 4, HDMI 2.1, 2.5Gb Ethernet

• Ports front: 2x USB-C (USB3), headphones

• wifi 7, Bluetooth 6, Thread

The Mac mini is offered with the newest Apple Silicon chip, the M6 (as tested) or with an M5 Pro, which has greater performance in multicore or graphics applications.

For most people the M6 is more than enough, with the fastest single core performance of any of Apple's chips by about 8.5% in testing. That means it absolutely flies along with apps launching near instantly and tasks just flying by. Compared with the previous generation M4 Mac mini, the new machine is about 25% faster in single core tasks, 50% faster in multicore tasks with graphics performance about 75% faster. That makes it a giant leap over older machines coming to the end of their useful lives.

The Mac mini is made with 50% recycled materials. Apple breaks down the computer's environmental impact in its report. Apple offers trade-in and free recycling schemes, including for non-Apple products.

The Mac mini M6 costs from £899 (€1,049/$899/A$1,449) with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

For comparison, the A18 Pro MacBook Neo costs from £699, the M5 MacBook Air starts at £1,299, the M4 iMac starts at £1,499 and the Mac Studio costs from £2,499.

The Mac mini is a fantastic general computer squeezed into a tiny box that fits just about anywhere. The new M6 chip has buckets of power and performance for practically anything. If you know you need more graphics performance the M5 Pro chip is also available, but at a significant cost.

The port selection is very good for a machine of this size, only lacking traditional USB-A ports of those commonly needed. With three Thunderbolt 4 (USB4) ports it's easy to add a dock or hub if you really need more connectivity.

The only downside is the RAMageddon-linked price hike that makes the Mac mini M6 slightly less of an instant recommendation than its predecessor. At £899 (€1,049/$899/A$1,449), it is still a lot of Mac for the money, just not the total bargain the M4 version used to be.

very fast M6 chip, quiet and cool running, plenty of ports, headphones socket, 2.5GbE, wifi 7, Bluetooth 6 and Thread support.

price hike, no expandable/replaceable storage or memory, no USB-A ports, no SD card slot, only 256GB of storage in base model, power button on base is difficult to reach.