Mac mini M4 teardowns just revealed modular SSD storage — but there’s a catch

The M4 Mac mini is a huge upgrade from its predecessors in a lot of obvious ways, with a faster processor, a tiny form factor and 16GB RAM as standard. Now some teardowns are showing that it’s also improved on the inside.

While previous generations of the Mac mini had the SSD storage soldered to the logic board, multiple teardowns of the new model show removable modules.

However, while that’s a big win for ease of official repairability, there’s no reason to believe this will be directly helpful to the average buyer, even if they are happy to crack open the Mac mini’s tiny shell.

A modular SSD was also part of 2022’s Mac Studio, but iFixIt found that while a straight like-for-like drive swap between Studios would work with a DFU restore, you can’t just drop a larger capacity drive in and have the computer function. That’s because although the NAND chips are part of the SSD, the controller is still embedded in the SoC.

In other words, user upgrades are still not an easy operation. One account on X shows that a 2TB upgrade is possible, just as diligent YouTubers have managed with the Studio, but it involves the kind of warranty-voiding surgery that most people will not want to try at home.

Sure enough, the first video of an M4 Mac mini upgrade has already been published on YouTube. But again, the process isn't for novices by any means.

When the Mac Studio launched and the modular SSD was discovered, some speculated that Apple might start selling official SSD storage upgrade kits at some point down the line, just as it does for the Mac Pro. But given nothing has emerged two years after launch, it would be brave to buy a lower-spec Mac mini with the expectation that something will come at a later date.

Instead, those wanting more storage for their M4 Mac mini would be sensible to pay for it at checkout — even if the prices are a touch hard to swallow. On the $599 base unit, upgrading the storage to 512GB, 1TB or 2TB are selectable options at checkout, but will set you back an extra $200, $400 or $800 respectively.

But the teardowns do show one good piece of news for those sticking with the basic 256GB model. This time around, Apple is using two 128GB storage modules rather than a single 256GB one as with the previous generation. This is something Apple also did with the M3 MacBook Air, and it should offer considerably faster read and write speeds.