Apple's New Mac Mini Models Feature Soldered Storage and Slower 256GB SSDs

Apple's newest Mac Mini equipped with M6 and M5 Pro processors now has its NAND flash storage permanently soldered to the logic board, eliminating the possibility of aftermarket upgrades that were available on earlier M4 and M4 Pro versions. The change means users must select their desired capacity at purchase, as internal storage cannot be replaced later.

The website "Expand Mac mini," which previously sold compatible plug-and-play SSD modules at lower prices than Apple's own offerings, noted that it expects no opening for supporting the new models. Earlier Mac Mini generations with M1, M2 and M2 Pro chips also used soldered NAND, making the removable-storage M4/M4 Pro models a brief exception.

Testing by AAPL Ch. using Blackmagic's Disk Speed Test shows that the 256 GB configurations, which contain a single NAND chip, achieve roughly half the read and write speeds of the 512 GB and larger models that employ dual NAND chips. Reported speeds for the M6 256 GB model were about 3,200 MB/s read and 3,000 MB/s write, compared with over 6,300 MB/s read and 6,500 MB/s write for the 512 GB version. While the performance gap may be unnoticed by most consumers, users with demanding workloads may need to opt for at least 512 GB to obtain the fastest SSD performance.