As confirmed by the “Expand Mac mini” website, the NAND storage on new Mac mini models with M6 and M5 Pro chips is soldered to the logic board, while older models with M4 and M4 Pro chips have removable storage that can be upgraded. In other words, the new Mac mini does not support aftermarket storage upgrades. “Expand Mac mini” offers plug-and-play SSD modules that are functionally equivalent to Apple’s proprietary modules, but hundreds of dollars cheaper. As a result, customers were able to save a significant amount of money by configuring their Mac mini with the minimum 256GB capacity that was available in Apple’s online store and then installing a higher capacity aftermarket module. With the new models this is no longer possible. “We will continue to look for an opportunity, but support for the M6 and M5 Pro now seems unlikely,” the Expand Mac mini website said in a blog post. Mac mini models with M1 chip and M2/M2 Pro chips also had NAND soldered to the logic board, so M4/M4 Pro configurations with removable storage have proven to be a one-time exception for now. Apple has not commented on the rollback. Additionally, all new Mac mini configurations with 256GB of storage have a single NAND chip, rather than a pair of 128GB chips. As a result, 256GB configurations have slower SSD speeds compared to configurations with 512GB of storage or more that have dual NAND chips, according to AAPL Ch. testing with Blackmagic’s Disk Speed Test benchmark tool. Mac mini configuration Read speed Write speed M6, 512 GB 6371.5 MB/s 6577.4 MB/s M6, 256 GB 3216.8 MB/s 3000.2 MB/s M4, 256 GB 2792.5 MB/s 2014.5 MB/s The drive speed test scores of the new 256 GB model were about half than those of Models with 512 GB of storage or more. The average customer is unlikely to notice the difference, but power users will appreciate knowing that they should opt for at least 512GB of storage to achieve the fastest possible SSD speeds. Fortunately, even with 256GB of storage, the new Mac mini appears to have significantly faster SSD speeds compared to the previous 256GB model. The Mac mini models with M2/M2 Pro and 256GB of storage also had a single NAND chip, so the M4/M4 Pro configurations turned out to be a unique exception to this as well.
