As confirmed by the website "Expand Mac mini," NAND storage in the new Mac mini models with the M6 and M5 Pro chips is soldered to the logic board, whereas the previous models with the 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, yet 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 on Apple's online store and later installing a higher-capacity aftermarket module. With the new models, that is no longer possible.
"We will keep looking for an opening, but support for the M6 and M5 Pro now looks unlikely," the "Expand Mac mini" website said, in a blog post.
Mac mini models with the M1 chip and M2/M2 Pro chips also had NAND soldered to the logic board, so the M4/M4 Pro configurations having removable storage has proven to be a one-off exception for now. Apple has not commented on the reversal.
In addition, all new Mac mini configurations with 256GB of storage reportedly 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 do have dual NAND chips, according to AAPL Ch.'s testing with Blackmagic's Disk Speed Test benchmark tool.
| Mac mini Configuration | Read Speed | Write Speed |
|---|---|---|
| M6, 512GB | 6,371.5 MB/s | 6,577.4 MB/s |
| M6, 256GB | 3,216.8 MB/s | 3,000.2 MB/s |
| M4, 256GB | 2,792.5 MB/s | 2,014.5 MB/s |
The new 256GB model's Disk Speed Test scores were roughly half that of models with 512GB of storage or more. The average customer is unlikely to notice the difference, but power users will appreciate knowing that they need to opt for at least 512GB of storage in order to achieve the fastest SSD speeds possible.
Fortunately, even with 256GB of storage, it appears that the new Mac mini has meaningfully faster SSD speeds compared to the previous 256GB model.
Mac mini models with M2/M2 Pro and 256GB of storage also had a single NAND chip, so the M4/M4 Pro configurations proved to be a one-off exception for this too.