The first Apple Silicon generation that isn't a better deal
Every Apple Silicon generation until now delivered more speed per dollar than the one before it. By Apple's own performance claims, the desktops announced Tuesday break the streak.
The M6 Mac mini is faster than the M4, but it is not a better launch value on general processor performance. Divide price by benchmark score and the M6 costs about $41.80 per 1,000 claimed Geekbench multi-core points. The M4 cost $39 per 1,000 points at its 2024 launch, half what the M1 charged in 2020.
That makes this the first Apple Silicon generation to launch with worse claimed price-performance than its predecessor had at launch. The new machines are faster. The prices grew faster.
Mac mini price-performance by generation
| Chip | Year | Launch price | GB7 multi-core | $ per 1,000 pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M1 | 2020 | $699 | 8,645 | $80.90 |
| M2 | 2023 | $599 | 9,808 | $61.10 |
| M4 | 2024 | $599 | 15,349 | $39.00 |
| M4, today’s list | — | $799 | 15,349 | $52.10 |
| M6, claimed | 2026 | $899 | ~21,500 | ~$41.80 |
The M6 row rests on the one clean processor claim in Apple’s announcement: “40 percent faster CPU performance” than the M4. Take Apple at its word and the math still lands above the M4’s launch number. Against what the M4 costs today, after the June 25 repricing, the M6 is the better deal — but that is a comparison against a raised price, not against the trend.
Apple made no comparable processor claim for the $1,699 M5 Pro mini. Its announced numbers are workload multipliers: 4x faster LLM prompt processing than the M4 Pro, 1.4x faster Blender rendering. We are not deriving a benchmark estimate from those.
Mac Studio price-performance by generation
| Chip | Year | Launch price | GB7 multi-core | $ per 1,000 pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M1 Ultra | 2022 | $3,999 | 23,344 | $171.30 |
| M2 Ultra | 2023 | $3,999 | 28,246 | $141.60 |
| M3 Ultra | 2025 | $3,999 | 35,270 | $113.40 |
| M3 Ultra, today’s list | — | $5,299 | 35,270 | $150.30 |
| M5 Ultra, claimed | 2026 | $5,499 | ~45,900 | ~$119.90 |
Same pattern, bigger dollars. The M5 Ultra estimate uses the 1.3x multithreaded improvement over M3 Ultra that Apple provided to press. At $5,499, that works out to roughly $120 per 1,000 points, against the $113 the M3 Ultra charged at its 2025 launch — before Apple raised it to $5,299 in June, the single worst price-performance list price in the Studio’s history at $150.
The M5 Max follows the M5 Pro’s pattern: AI multipliers only, 3.9x LLM prompt processing over the M4 Max, no general processor claim. Its $2,499 starting price matches the M4 Max’s raised June price exactly.
What Apple is selling has changed
The claims themselves say where the money went. The M6 announcement leads with 13.5x faster LLM prompt processing than the M1 generation and a dual Neural Engine; the 40% CPU figure sits well below it. The M5 Ultra’s headline is “4.3x the peak AI compute performance” over M3 Ultra.
These chips are priced on AI throughput, and the same force sets the cost side: the memory that AI datacenters bid away is the memory in these machines. Buyers whose workloads look like the marketing — local models, image generation — may find the new generation a bargain on the metric Apple is now selling. Buyers who wanted the old bargain, more computer for less money, are looking at the first generation in the Apple Silicon era that doesn’t offer it.
Geekbench charts will fill with measured M6 and M5 numbers within weeks, and we will rerun both tables with claims replaced by measurements.
About the data: Geekbench 7 figures are chart averages we record as comparable references, not our own lab tests. New-generation rows are derived from manufacturer performance claims and labeled as claimed; measured chart averages will replace them once the new machines populate the charts. Launch and current prices are Apple's published U.S. list prices for base configurations, from our price custody.