Apple traditionally avoids discounts and maintains full pricing on its official website and retail stores, treating Black Friday like any other day to preserve its premium brand image. Amazon doesn’t share that restraint and just slashed the price of the brand-new Mac mini M4 with 256GB storage to $479 from the usual $599, which marks a record low on one of the most powerful compact desktops currently available.
This latest Mac mini tucks the M4 chip into a five-by-five-inch enclosure that delivers desktop-class performance while taking up less space on your desk than a large coffee mug. The $120 discount is a rare opportunity to grab Apple’s newest silicon at a reduced price instead of waiting months or years for depreciation to make it affordable.
Desktop Performance in a Tiny Package
The M4 chip brings a 10-core CPU and a 10-core GPU that handle everything from coding and video editing to casual gaming and AI tasks without breaking a sweat. You get 16GB of unified memory, different from traditional RAM because it allows both the CPU and GPU to draw from the same memory pool, eliminating bottlenecks that slow down graphics-intensive work.
The 256GB SSD provides fast storage for your operating system and applications, though you’ll want external drives for large media libraries since that capacity fills up in a hurry with 4K video projects or extensive photo collections. Built for Apple Intelligence, on-device AI processing keeps your data private while delivering features like intelligent writing assistance and advanced photo search without sending information to cloud servers.
The redesigned chassis puts USB-C ports and a headphone jack on the front for the first time, ending the annoyance of reaching around back to plug in devices or headphones multiple times per day. Thunderbolt ports on the rear support up to three displays simultaneously, letting you build a proper multi-monitor workspace that boosts productivity for coding, design work, or financial analysis. HDMI output connects directly to TVs or older monitors without requiring adapters and Gigabit Ethernet provides stable wired networking for situations where WiFi just doesn’t cut it.
Apps optimized for Apple silicon run at an incredible speed with the unified memory architecture and efficient chip design that delivers laptop-level power consumption while providing desktop performance levels. Microsoft 365, Adobe Creative Cloud, and thousands of other applications perform seamlessly-whether you’re running complex spreadsheet calculations, editing multi-layer Photoshop files, or compiling code. Native macOS applications feel instantly responsive with zero lag between clicks and actions, creating a computing experience that makes older Intel-based machines feel sluggish by comparison.
With integration to your iPhone and other Apple devices, you can create one big ecosystem: copy on one device, paste on another; mirror your iPhone screen to work with mobile apps on a bigger display; or answer FaceTime calls from your Mac while your phone charges across the room. Continuity features eliminate friction from moving between devices: start an email on your phone during a commute and finish it on your Mac when you reach your desk.
At $479 instead of $599, you’re saving $120 on Apple’s latest desktop silicon which brings the entry price for M4 performance down to a level that competes favorably with Windows mini PCs that deliver less power and worse software integration. Compared to other sales, this Black Friday discount makes the Mac mini an actual value proposition rather than just an expensive option for people locked into the Apple ecosystem.
