Points per dollar: ranking every used Mac desktop

The 2020 M1 Mac mini is still the best used Mac desktop value. It delivers 19.4 Geekbench 7 multi-core points per dollar of median asking price on Sept. 15, and the 2024 M4 mini has closed to 18.7 — a gap of 0.7 points, down from 1.5 in our Aug. 24-25 reading.

That one number compares 11 used Mac desktops across six years and two product lines. More points per dollar means more processor performance for the money; memory, storage and I/O still matter and are not captured here.

Every one of the 11 asking-price medians fell between the two readings, from 0.4% on the M1 Ultra Studio to 21.9% on the M3 Ultra. Two positions changed hands, both a newer chip passing an older one: the M4 mini took second from the M2 mini, and the M4 Max took best-value Studio from the M1 Max.

Used Mac desktop value rankings

Ranked by the Sept. 15 reading. Machine names link to live listings for that model.

Machine	Year	Median ask, Sept. 15	n	Sources	Multi-core	Pts/$	Rank	Single-core
Mac mini M1	2020	$444.98	171	4	8,645	19.4	1	2,191
Mac mini M4	2024	$820.00	445	9	15,349	18.7	2	3,276
Mac mini M2	2023	$597.50	116	3	9,808	16.4	3	2,398
Mac mini M2 Pro	2023	$1,042.49	46	3	13,639	13.1	4	2,401
Mac mini M4 Pro	2024	$1,745.36	118	7	21,830	12.5	5	3,332
Mac Studio M4 Max	2025	$3,079.06	122	8	25,800	8.4	6	3,498
Mac Studio M1 Max	2022	$1,737.00	108	4	14,252	8.2	7	2,226
Mac Studio M2 Max	2023	$2,184.50	50	3	17,371	8.0	8	2,535
Mac Studio M2 Ultra	2023	$4,049.50	40	1	28,246	7.0	9	2,518
Mac Studio M1 Ultra	2022	$4,859.10	39	3	23,344	4.8	10	2,224
Mac Studio M3 Ultra	2025	$7,425.84	88	4	35,270	4.7	11	2,917

The Aug. 24-25 reading, kept for comparison

The rows are in the same order as the table above, so the two readings can be read across. The benchmark figures are identical in both, so every change in points per dollar is a change in asking price.

Machine	Median ask, Aug. 24-25	Pts/$ then	Rank then	Change in ask
Mac mini M1	$509	17.0	1	−12.6%
Mac mini M4	$990	15.5	3	−17.2%
Mac mini M2	$610	16.1	2	−2.0%
Mac mini M2 Pro	$1,180	11.6	4	−11.7%
Mac mini M4 Pro	$1,956	11.2	5	−10.8%
Mac Studio M4 Max	$3,511	7.3	7	−12.3%
Mac Studio M1 Max	$1,863	7.7	6	−6.8%
Mac Studio M2 Max	$2,559	6.8	8	−14.6%
Mac Studio M2 Ultra	$4,262	6.6	9	−5.0%
Mac Studio M1 Ultra	$4,878	4.8	10	−0.4%
Mac Studio M3 Ultra	$9,509	3.7	11	−21.9%

The direction is not a surprise. Apple announced the replacements for four of these machines on Aug. 25, and a matched panel of the same listing URLs shows asking prices for the replaced models down 11.9% three weeks later. What the value column adds is where that decline landed: it fell hardest on the machines that were priced worst, so the board compressed rather than shuffled.

Three things fall out of the current column.

Why every Mac mini outranks every Mac Studio

The worst mini value, the M4 Pro at 12.5 points per dollar, still outscores the best Studio, and the margin has widened. In August the comparison was 11.2 against the M1 Max’s 7.7, a 45% advantage. On Sept. 15 it is 12.5 against the M4 Max’s 8.4, a 49% advantage, with 4.1 points between the two lines and no overlap anywhere in between.

The best-value Studio changed identity: the M4 Max passed the M1 Max, 8.4 to 8.2. That is a 0.17-point margin on the underlying arithmetic, close enough that the next daily panel could reverse it, and it happened because the M4 Max’s ask fell 12.3% while the M1 Max’s fell 6.8%.

A used Studio’s price buys memory capacity, memory bandwidth and I/O — the things a benchmark table doesn’t show — and buyers are paying for exactly those, not for processor speed. If multi-core throughput is what you need, the secondhand market is still saying “buy a mini,” and saying it louder than it was three weeks ago.

Why M1, M2 and M4 Mac mini values are so close

This is the claim the refresh changed most. The three minis are no longer one tight group; they are a tight pair and a straggler.

Six years separate the M1 mini from the M4 mini, and 0.7 points per dollar now separate their values — 19.4 against 18.7, down from a 1.5-point gap in August. $444.98 buys 8,645 points and $820.00 buys 15,349, and the ratio barely moves. That is the efficient-pricing finding, and it got stronger.

The M2 mini is what broke ranks. Its ask fell 2.0% while the M4’s fell 17.2%, so it dropped from second place to third and now sits 3.0 points behind the M1 and 2.3 behind the M4. In August it was 0.9 behind the M1 and 0.6 ahead of the M4. At a $597.50 median it is the one mini in this group whose price has not followed the market down.

The tiebreaker between the M1 and the M4 is the single-core column: the M4’s 3,276 is about 50% above the M1’s 2,191, and single-core is what a machine feels like to use. Rank one on the metric, but the metric understates the newer chips for interactive work — and at a 0.7-point spread, that understatement is now larger than the gap it would have to overcome.

Why the M3 Ultra ranks last

The worst value on the board is still the shortage itself, but the shortage is half of what it was. The M3 Ultra’s median ask fell from $9,509 on Aug. 24-25 to $7,425.84 on Sept. 15, a 21.9% drop and the largest move in the table. Against Apple’s $5,299 U.S. list price for the 96GB/1TB M3 Ultra Studio, read Aug. 25, the gap above list falls from $4,210 to $2,127 — from 79% over list to 40%.

Two cautions on that premium. The median mixes memory and storage configurations, and this machine ships in configurations up to 512GB, so part of the gap above a 96GB list price is upgraded hardware rather than pure scarcity pricing. And this row is the widest in the panel: its 88 observations across four sources run from $721 to $25,000, so the median is the only figure on the row worth quoting.

The consequence for the ranking is that last place has almost stopped meaning anything. At 4.7 points per dollar the M3 Ultra trails the M1 Ultra Studio’s 4.8 by about 0.05 points. In August that margin was 1.1. The two worst values in the used Mac market are now effectively tied, and one of them is a 2022 machine.

That premium has a shipping-day deadline, so every row of this table is a snapshot with a shelf life — the dates are in the columns, and we rerun this table against the daily panel.

How these numbers are made

This section exists so the figures above can be quoted without being reconstructed. One figure per sentence, each beside its source and date.

An asking price is what a seller is currently advertising, including explicit shipping where it is captured. It is not a completed sale, not an offer we have transacted and not a guarantee that the listing still exists when you read this.

Each median is the middle of the in-stock asks observed for that chip on one day. The Sept. 15 column comes from a live catalog current as of 2026-09-15T22:12:09Z, in a file generated at 2026-09-15T23:45:02Z. Row samples run from 39 observations on the M1 Ultra Studio to 445 on the M4 mini, and source counts from one on the M2 Ultra Studio to nine on the M4 mini — a single-source row describes one seller’s pricing, not a market. The whole Apple Silicon panel behind that column holds 1,344 offers from 12 sources, with retained history running Aug. 21 through Sept. 15.

Medians mix memory and storage configurations within each chip. A row with many upgraded listings reads high, which understates the value of the base configuration on that chip; the M4 Pro mini and the M3 Ultra Studio are the clearest cases here.

One observation is counted per listing URL and per condition per day, so a single listing seen 20 times in a day moves the median once. Auction bids, completed sales, parts-only listings, new machines, unclassified hardware and implausibly low observations are excluded. Used, open-box and refurbished listings are all eligible and are pooled, so these medians do not separate a refurbisher’s price from a private seller’s.

The Geekbench 7 multi-core and single-core figures are public chart averages recorded Aug. 22, 2026. They are comparable references, not our own tests, and they are identical in both readings — which is why the entire change in points per dollar between the two columns is a change in price.

Points per dollar is our arithmetic on two separately sourced numbers: a chart-average benchmark divided by a median ask. It is not an observation, and it does not price memory, storage, bandwidth, ports, warranty or condition.

The underlying panel regenerates daily at the Mac price tracker. Apple’s M6 and M5 Pro Mac minis ship Sept. 22, which will move these rows again.

What to do with this table

The machine you already own

If the Mac on your desk finishes your work, this is not an instruction to replace it. The table ranks what a dollar buys in the secondhand market, not whether you need to spend one. An old Intel mini in a drawer already covers several real jobs for nothing, and the cheapest good decision on this page is usually to skip it.

Where the top-ranked machines are sold

The top two rows — the M1 and M4 minis — are ordinary marketplace hardware. Start with live M1 mini offers and live M4 mini offers. Compare retailer protections in our channel guide, then run the 10-minute inspection for Activation Lock and MDM enrollment before paying.

Renewed Mac mini search results on Amazon. Renewed listings vary by seller, chip generation, memory and storage, and the results mix all of them, so confirm the exact processor and configuration on the listing itself and check its return terms against the protections in the channel guide above.

If you are choosing between two specific minis

The base-versus-Pro question has its own arithmetic — speed, bandwidth, ports and current asks — in our M4 versus M4 Pro comparison, which uses the same Sept. 15 medians as the table above.