M4 Mac mini offers modular SSD storage, faster base model speeds

2 weeks ago 4

Along with the dramatic external design, the new M4 Mac mini also features multiple internal changes. According to early teardowns and user reports, the new Mac mini features a removable SSD. This doesn’t mean, however, that you can buy a new Mac mini and upgrade the storage after the fact.

On the iFixit forums, user KianWee Lim posted a picture of the M4 Mac mini’s internal design showing that the SSD is not soldered to the logic board. This suggests that the SSD is modular and relatively easy for a user to remove, similar to the Mac Studio.

As we explained in 2022 about the Mac Studio, this does not mean the SSD is upgradeable. iFixit confirmed at the time that the Mac Studio doesn’t recognize different combinations of SSD than the one it was shipped with from the factory. The same likely applies to the M4 Mac mini.

Following the launch of the Mac Studio, some people speculated that Apple could sell authorized SSD storage upgrades at some point down the line. Apple similarly sells an SSD Upgrade Kit for the Mac Pro. This ultimately never came to fruition.

Faster SSD storage

As spotted by MacRumors, there is one piece of good news for M4 Mac mini users. A brief teardown video posted to social media shows that the 256GB configuration of the Mac mini uses two 128GB storage modules instead of one 256GB module like the M2 generation Mac mini.

This means that the M4 Mac mini will offer significantly faster read and write speeds, addressing one of the biggest complaints about the previous generation model. Apple similarly addressed this problem with the M3 MacBook Air earlier this year as well.

The new M4 Mac mini is available today along with the new MacBook Pro and iMac.

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