Speed and Upgrade Surprises with the New Mac Mini M4 SSDs!

The new Mac mini M4 has landed in our office today, just like it has for many customers, bringing along its fair share of highs and lows.

Overall, the reception of the device has been fairly positive, but there’s a sticking point: the built-in storage! Starting at just 256GB, this tiny Mac forces customers to shell out a hefty sum to upgrade to 512GB (+$230) or 1TB ($460)! To move up to 2TB more than doubles the price of the device, whereas buying a similar capacity drive from retailers costs under $130.

Then there’s the option of external SSDs, for example, the Crucial X9 which costs just $89 for 1TB and $132 for 2TB, clearly showing that Apple heavily marks up its internal storage, selling it at prices at least ten times higher than market rates.

We went with a Samsung T9 (1TB for $144) which nearly hits 1GB/s on the Mac mini M4, but could potentially double that if the Macs supported USB 3.2 Gen 2×2:

To surpass these speeds, you’d need to switch to Thunderbolt 4, like with the Zike enclosure which alone costs $138 (without the SSD!). In return, you reach insane speeds, 4GB/s write and over 3GB/s read with a Crucial P3 Plus SSD:

Are SSDs Being Throttled?

The defense for this pricing strategy was that Apple’s SSDs historically had higher speeds than market alternatives. Yet, our 256GB model shows lower speeds than those achieved with Thunderbolt 4 (4GB/s write and 3.5GB/s read), specifically 2GB/s write and 2.8GB/s read:

This is still better than the Mac mini M2, which had a single memory chip at 256GB and did not exceed 1.5GB/s. However, a basic MacBook Pro M4 shows 3.5GB/s write and 3GB/s read speeds with 512GB. More surprisingly, the Mac mini M4 is… slower than the Mac mini M1 launched in 2020 (2.7GB/s and 3GB/s)). To really surpass Thunderbolt 4 speeds, you need to upgrade to 512GB or even 1 or 2TB, and then you finally hit speeds of 4 to 7GB/s, as we will see in the test.

Removable Memory Chips

As some tech enthusiasts have discovered by disassembling the device, the dual memory chips of the SSDs (NAND on a daughter card) are not soldered to the motherboard, theoretically allowing storage upgrades.

In reality, these small cards are not standard, and importantly, they are not true SSDs since the controller is integrated into the M4 chip. The idea of expanding internal storage is theoretically possible but practically very challenging: some attempt to resolder memory chips directly onto the board (which requires precise desoldering with expensive equipment). Others try to replicate Apple’s proprietary daughter card, but risk getting locked out in the future…

Still, it’s somewhat reassuring to know that if there’s an issue with the Mac, theoretically, data can be recovered, unlike many other Macs where memory is soldered, particularly in laptops. However, in practice, it’s not always straightforward as Apple complicates things for DIYers by encrypting the data with the device…

When Will We See M.2 Slots?

If Apple were listening to its users, they would have included an NVME SSD slot in the M.2 format; there’s plenty of room inside the casing, and it would allow for a significant storage upgrade at minimal cost. This strategy by Tim Cook, who has been with Mac for over a decade, is becoming frankly absurd, to the point where even usually accommodating YouTubers like MKBHD are starting to express their frustration publicly.

Consider this, the Mac mini from 2010 already offered 320GB as standard, and 1TB as an option. Sure, those were hard drives, but we’re talking about useful capacities 14 years ago, during which time photos and videos have significantly grown in size, not to mention everything else.

Which SSDs for the Mac mini M4?

Here are some SSDs we use in our office and have found to be reliable over the years: