Apple's Mac mini has finally been upgraded with the M5 Pro chip. Here's how the latest model compares to its M4 Pro counterpart.
After the debut of the M5 Pro chip in the MacBook Pro, Apple's latest system-on-chip has made its way to another Mac. The Mac mini now ships with the M5 Pro chip, offering a worthwhile performance improvement.
Like the M5 Pro MacBook Pro, the M5 Pro Mac mini uses a tried-and-true design. You still get the same chassis and ports as with the M4 Pro Mac mini, even though Apple spent well over a year working on the M5 Pro model.
Still, you do get more processing power for close to the same price. Here's exactly how the M5 Pro Mac mini stands against its M4 Pro-based predecessor.
With the M4 Pro model, Apple made the Mac mini noticeably smaller, with a form factor measuring 5 inches by 5 inches. The M5 Pro Mac mini maintains the same aluminum design, and both computers are 2 inches tall.
M5 Pro Mac mini vs. M4 Pro Mac mini: The design of the Mac mini remains unchanged with the M5 Pro model.
The front of the M5 Pro and M4 Pro Mac mini offers two USB-C ports, like the Mac Studio, while the remaining ports are on the back of the device. The weight is the same for both Mac mini models: 1.6 pounds.
Apple's Mac mini continues to deliver the core Mac experience and still embodies the same "bring your own keyboard and mouse" strategy that Steve Jobs famously articulated more than two decades ago.
The base configuration M5 Pro chip consists of a 15-core CPU, a 16-core GPU, and a 16-core Neural Engine. Meanwhile, the high-end variant features an 18-core CPU and a 20-core GPU.
M5 Pro Mac mini vs. M4 Pro Mac mini: Apple's M5 Pro chip features Neural Accelerators in each GPU core. Image Credit: Apple.
For reference, the standard M4 Pro Mac mini shipped with a 12-core CPU and 16-core GPU, with the upgraded model offering a 14-core CPU and 20-core GPU.
Apple says the M5 Pro chip delivers around 30% faster CPU performance compared to the M4 Pro. The difference in GPU performance is even more impressive.
Like the A19 Pro chip in the iPhone 17 Pro, the M5 Pro has Neural Accelerators in each GPU core. The chip also supports third-generation hardware-accelerated ray tracing and features an enhanced shader core, per Apple's website.
The company also claims the M5 Pro offers an increase in graphics performance of up to 20%, 35% in ray-traced apps, relative to the preceding M4 Pro chip. Memory bandwidth has also been increased with the M5 Pro chip, now offering 307GB/s, up from 273GB/s on the M4 Pro.
M5 Pro Mac mini vs. M4 Pro Mac mini: The M5 Pro chip delivers better single-core performance, relative to the M4 Pro.
Combined, these hardware improvements make the M5 Pro chip a great option for AI-focused projects.
The M5 Pro Mac mini will perform better than its M4 Pro counterpart in AI-related workflows and machine learning tasks. This would include AI-enabled video or photo editing, using on-device LLMs, and so on.
On a per-app basis, Apple claims the M5 Pro system-on-chip delivers up to four times faster LLM prompt processing performance in LM Studio, while also being 1.5 times faster when processing images in Affinity.
Performance in 3D rendering software like Blender has also improved, with rendering now 1.4 times faster on the M5 Pro compared to the M4 Pro chip.
M5 Pro Mac mini vs. M4 Pro Mac mini: In terms of multi-core performance, the M5 Pro chip is a decent upgrade over the M4 Pro.
In Geekbench 7 CPU performance testing, the M4 Pro Mac mini received a single-core score of 3,395 points and a multi-core score of 22,695 points.
In place of an M5 Pro Mac mini benchmark, we used 14-inch M5 Pro MacBook Pro scores as a reference. The M5 Pro MacBook Pro achieved a single-core performance score of 3,478 points, with a multi-core performance score of 29,810 points.
Comparing the M5 Pro and M4 Pro chips, the difference in single-core performance is around 2%. Meanwhile, the multi-core performance score of the M5 Pro is 31.4% higher than that of the M4 Pro.
M5 Pro Mac mini vs. M4 Pro Mac mini: The M5 Pro chip's Metal GPU performance score is about 21% higher than the M4 Pro's.
As for the GPU, the score of the M5 Pro chip is around 21% higher than that of the preceding M4 Pro. The M4 Pro Mac mini received a Metal GPU performance score of 103,603 points, while the M5 Pro MacBook Pro scored 126,060 points in the same test.
Overall, the M5 Pro Mac mini will obviously deliver better performance than its M4 Pro counterpart, but not to the point where it's a necessary upgrade.
In terms of storage, the M4 Pro Mac mini starts with 512GB, with upgrade options including 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB. The M5 Pro model offers the same storage capacities.
M5 Pro Mac mini vs. M4 Pro Mac mini: The ports of the Mac mini haven't changed with the new M5 model.
