Apple's surprise new Mac mini and Studio bring masses more power for creatives, and there's a way to save over $500

New Apple Mac mini — (Image credit: Apple / Future)

Surprise & Shine is the name for Apple's 9 September event, where we expect to hear about the iPhone 18 and long-rumoured foldable iPhone Ultra. But perhaps a bigger surprise was this week's largely unexpected announcement of a new Max mini and Mac Studio.

The Cupertino tech giant has upgraded the silicon in both of its desktop computers. The new Mac mini comes with a choice between Apple's M5 Pro or new M6 chip, while the Mac Studio comes with either the M5 Max or M5 Ultra. In each case it's an iterative but significant jump that should mean better performance in creative software.

Preorders are now live, with prices starting at $899 / £899 for the base M6 Mac mini and $2,499 / £2,499 for the Mac Studio with M5 Max chip. Premium configurations of the M5 Ultra cost well over $10,000, but there are ways to save on all models. The Apple Store is offering trade-in credit if you have swap an older Mac: up to $480 for an older Mac mini and up to $580 for a MacBook Air.

New 2026 Mac mini and Mac Studio: who are they for?

At the top of the ladder for film studios, 3D artists, AI researchers, and data scientists, the base model of the M5 Max Mac Studio comes with 96GB of memory and a 1TB SSD, and it goes up from there.

Configurations with a mammoth 512GB memory will start shipping in October (what RAM crisis?, I hear you ask). Apple's aiming at users looking to run large language models (LLMs) entirely on-device or those who need extreme compute power for rendering, simulation, and frontier-class AI models.

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New Apple Mac mini and display — (Image credit: Apple)

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Joe is a regular freelance journalist and editor at Creative Bloq. He writes news, features and buying guides and keeps track of the best equipment and software for creatives, from video editing programs to monitors and accessories. A veteran news writer and photographer, he now works as a project manager at the London and Buenos Aires-based design, production and branding agency Hermana Creatives. There he manages a team of designers, photographers and video editors who specialise in producing visual content and design assets for the hospitality sector. He also dances Argentine tango.