The Latest Mac Mini Is $500 Right Now

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Amazon Big Deal Days is coming October 7-8, and Lifehacker is sharing the best sales based on product reviews, comparisons, and price-tracking tools before it’s over.

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Apple's Mac Mini lineup, a desktop computer that fits in the palm of your hand, has offered excellent value for the money ever since the company introduced its own M-series chipsets. The latest M4 Mac mini is quite powerful, takes up very little space on your desk, and it has (probably) enough ports for you to get work done: a headphone jack, two USB-C ports, three Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI, and an Ethernet port. During October Prime Day, you can get the M4 Mac mini for as low as $499, which is $100 off its list price. While you do have to purchase a monitor, keyboard, and mouse separately, it's still a good deal overall.

Apple 2024 Mac Mini

$902.22 at Amazon

$999.00 Save $96.78

Get Deal

Get Deal

$902.22 at Amazon

$999.00 Save $96.78

I think the Mac Mini at $499 is a sweet deal, even if it's not the lowest ever price. It went down to $470 a few months ago, but the current offer is the second lowest price I've seen since the M4 Mac Mini launched a year ago. The base model has 16GB RAM, but its 256GB storage is measly. If you store lots of photos, videos, and want to install large apps on the Mac, you're going to run out of 256GB pretty soon. 

The good news is that you can easily connect external storage to expand the Mac mini's capacity, but it does come with a caveat. It's just not as convenient as having more internal storage. Apple's upgrade pricing for RAM and storage on Macs is a complete rip-off, so going for higher variants of the Mac Mini will lead to a significantly higher cost. Even during October Prime Day, the Mac mini models with more RAM and storage don't really have good discounts. At the time of writing, the same computer with 512GB storage costs $760, which is really hard to justify. Another annoyance with the Mac Mini is the awkwardly placed power button, which is at the base of the device for some unknown reason.

If you're the kind of person who wants a fuss-free desktop to do basic tasks and you're sure you can live with the relatively low internal storage, $499 is a great price for the M4 Mac mini's base model. Having said that, be aware that new Macs are just around the corner and if the Mac Mini gets refreshed this month, you may be able to score an even bigger discount on the outgoing model.

Looking for something else? Retailers like Walmart and Best Buy have Prime Day competition sales that are especially useful if you don’t have Amazon Prime.

• Walmart’s Prime Day competition sale runs from Oct. 6 at 7 p.m. ET through Oct. 12 and includes deals up to 50% off. It’s an especially good option if you have Walmart+.

• Best Buy’s Prime Day competition sale runs from Sept. 27 through Oct. 12, and has some of the best tech sales online. It’s an especially good option if you’re a My Best Buy “Plus” or “Total” member.

• Target’s Prime Day competition sale runs from Oct. 5 through Oct. 11, and it has deals going up to 50% off. You can become a Circle member for free.

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