Apple's New Mac Mini and Mac Studio Are Real: M6, M5 Pro, M5 Max, and M5 Ultra, Shipping September 22

Two of the three desktop Macs we previously covered as reported and unconfirmed just stopped being rumors. On August 25, Apple published official Newsroom press releases and opened pre-orders for a new Mac mini and a new Mac Studio, both landing well ahead of the September 9 iPhone event. This is Apple's own announcement, with real pricing and a real ship date, not analyst reporting.

Mac Mini: M6 or M5 Pro, Starting at $899

The new Mac mini comes in two configurations. The base model uses Apple's new M6 chip — notably, Apple's first chip built on a 2nm process, and the first to use three distinct CPU core types in one design: 2 "super cores" tuned for maximum single-threaded performance, 4 performance cores, and 6 efficiency cores, for a 12-core total. Apple is marketing it as the world's fastest single-threaded chip. The step-up configuration swaps in the M5 Pro chip, the same silicon that debuted in the MacBook Pro earlier this year, for heavier multi-threaded workloads. Both models include Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and upgraded 2.5Gb Ethernet with a 10Gb option, and both ship running macOS 27 with Siri AI and Apple Intelligence built in.

Pricing: the M6 Mac mini starts at $899 ($799 for education), and the M5 Pro model starts at $1,699 ($1,599 for education). That's a real, Apple-confirmed price increase worth noting honestly — the base Mac mini launched at $599 in October 2024, was quietly repriced to $799 back in June 2026 amid the same memory-chip shortage Apple has cited on earnings calls, and now starts at $899 with the new chip. Apple attributes part of the increase to rising memory and storage component costs across the industry, the same pressure this site has covered pushing up iPhone 18 Pro price expectations.

Mac Studio: M5 Max and M5 Ultra, No Redesign

The Mac Studio — which has effectively become Apple's flagship desktop since the Mac Pro was reportedly deprioritized — gets a bigger chip jump. The M5 Max configuration starts at $2,499, and the M5 Ultra configuration starts at $5,499, with Apple citing up to 1.3x faster CPU performance, 1.8x faster graphics, and 4.3x faster AI-specific performance over the outgoing M4 Max/M3 Ultra models. The M5 Ultra tier supports up to 512GB of unified memory, aimed explicitly at running large local AI models on-device — though per Apple's own release, that specific 512GB configuration won't actually ship until late October, weeks after the rest of the lineup. Connectivity carries over the same Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 as the Mac mini, plus Thunderbolt 5, support for up to eight external displays, and PCIe expansion chassis compatibility. As with the earlier reporting we covered, there's no chassis redesign — the compact squircle enclosure is unchanged.

What This Doesn't Confirm: The iMac

It would be easy to assume this announcement covers all three desktops this site previously grouped together, but it doesn't. Apple's Newsroom releases this week cover only the Mac mini and Mac Studio — there's no iMac in either press release. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman continues to report a separate M6 iMac refresh is coming, with new color options, before the end of 2026, but as of this article that remains sourced reporting, not an Apple announcement, and Gurman's own reporting is explicit that Apple isn't planning a major redesign — chip and color changes only. We'll treat the iMac as unconfirmed until Apple actually says otherwise.

Availability

Both the Mac mini and Mac Studio are available to pre-order now direct from Apple in the US and 30 other countries and regions, with most configurations arriving September 22 — both online and at physical Apple Store and Apple Authorized Reseller locations. The 512GB Mac Studio configuration is the one exception, arriving in late October instead.

Unlike most Mac coverage on this site, the Mac mini and Mac Studio specs, pricing, and September 22 ship date here are Apple-confirmed facts from Apple's own Newsroom announcement — not leaker or analyst reporting. The iMac remains unconfirmed and is not part of this announcement.