New Mac Mini Has Two Storage Downsides, Including Unremovable SSD

Tuesday September 22, 2026 8:23 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol

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.

mac mini blue
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.

Related Roundup: Mac mini

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Top Rated Comments

turbineseaplane

4 weeks ago

Boo

What a crummy move to lockdown the SSDs

Doing that upgrade was a super nerdy thing and not at all impacting Apple’s bottom line in the grand scheme of things.

Just constant anti-consumer moves from this company now.
It’s such a bummer to watch this in real time over the years.

Score: 109 Votes (Like | Disagree)

kalsta

4 weeks ago

Whether we expected this or not isn’t the issue. For Apple to go to this extra effort—for no other reason than to prevent some customers from doing their own upgrades—is absolutely anti-consumer. It’s classic short-term profiteering to appease investors—the same kind of things politicians do to try and win an upcoming election, with no thought as to whether it will benefit everyone in the long term.

I’m not declaring that ‘Apple is doomed’. But what they are doing is slowly eroding the love and goodwill that fans like myself used to have for Apple and its products. I still buy Apple products because they are still better than the alternatives (IMO) and I’m somewhat locked into the ecosystem. But overall, there’s less joy about the experience, and I don’t do nearly as much Apple-evangelising as I used to. And I know I’m not alone in that.

Happy customers are what ultimately built Apple’s success, and unhappy customers are what will slowly erode it over the next few decades if Apple doesn’t start shifting gears.

Score: 58 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Gloor

4 weeks ago

Very crappy decision from Apple. So disappointed about this :(

Score: 42 Votes (Like | Disagree)

JoeG4

4 weeks ago

Ugh. Yep. Somebody at Apple has an obsession with producing as much ewaste as possible. With slow write speeds like that the speed argument doesn't even happen to be a valid excuse. They should have used a m.2 2230 in there. They also should keep the firmware on a separate flash chip.

Since the firmware is also stored in that NAND chip, if the NAND chip gets cooked these apple silicon macs become paperweights.

I could go on a similar rant about the much larger Mac Studio where there's way more than enough room for a full sized set of m.2 nvme sticks. Easily. They could even keep the stupid proprietary nand setup for the boot disk if they wanted.

Score: 40 Votes (Like | Disagree)

rjp1

4 weeks ago

Apple is aggressively anti-consumer, but we are all here 🤷‍♂️

One day, Apple’s greed will be their downfall. I’m not saying any time soon, but one day.

Score: 36 Votes (Like | Disagree)