Just yesterday, Apple refreshed its 14-inch MacBook Pro with the new M6 chip inside, and it’s currently available for preorder. This is the first MacBook to get the chip (but certainly not the last), and I look forward to testing this thing out myself. But I do already have a good sense of how well it’ll perform, as I already tested this same chip in the latest Mac Mini. And it points to an issue with the current state of the Mac lineup.
The 14-inch M6 MacBook Pro currently costs $1,999. That gets you 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. Even for as good as these laptops are, that feels like too much money for those specs. Apple raised prices across all Macs earlier this year, but the base 14-inch MacBook Pro got hit the hardest, with a $300 bump. It was already an awkward configuration, as it used the same M5 chip as the much cheaper MacBook Air models. It was such bad pricing that it ended up on my “do not buy” list. The addition of the M6 seems like it’ll add some value, especially with the improvements to GPU performance I saw in the M6 Mac Mini. It also has the dual Neural Engine, which can speed up certain AI tasks in creative applications, especially for content creators. I won’t pretend to make a final evaluation until I’ve thoroughly tested the machine myself.
The Smarter Buy
But consider this. The M6 Mac Mini is on sale for $779 right now, $120 off its retail price. The 13-inch M5 MacBook Air is similarly $150 off its retail price right now. You could buy both for the same price as one M6 MacBook Pro. That’s kind of insane when you think about it. You miss out on the MacBook Pro’s excellent Mini-LED display and powerful speakers, but to me, it’s a tempting alternative for a $2,000 budget.
It’s even more compelling when you consider how many people are using Mac Minis these days—more as always-on AI agent boxes that you can control remotely with any old MacBook. Pairing the M6 Mac Mini and M5 MacBook air together is a recipe for AI goodness (especially if you configure the Mac Mini up to 32 GB or 64 GB of memory).
Another alternative is the M5 MacBook Pro with an M5 Pro chip inside for only $200 more. It looks identical on the outside, and has better performance on the inside.
I’m still interested to see how the new M6 MacBook Pro performs, but the price alone makes me wonder if there aren’t better ways of spending your money—even while staying within the Mac lineup.