Price check: M2 MacBook Pro and Mac mini

Apple unveiled new MacBook Pro and Mac mini models yesterday. The laptops feature the new M2 Pro and M2 Max chipsets, while the mini gets the base M2 as well as the M2 Pro. We checked several regions around the world for the pricing and shipping dates.

The shipping dates are easy – January 24, except for the US, which lists the 23rd. However, the press release claimed January 24 as the start of shipping, so let’s go with that (i.e. Tuesday next week).

Note that the prices listed in the tables below are only for the base configurations. Apple solders the RAM and storage to the board and the unified memory model has minimums, e.g. you can’t have an M2 Pro with less than 16GB of RAM or an M2 Max with less than 32GB.

The new MacBook Pro 14"

Let’s start with the new MacBook Pro. These replace the 14” and 16” Pros with the M1 chips from October 2021. The 13” model remains unchanged.

A note about the chipsets – the base 14” configuration has an M2 Pro with a 10 core CPU and 16 core GPU. You can get the fully-enabled 12/19 core M2 Pro for $300 extra. The 16” version only uses the 12/19 core chips. The base 14” M2 Max models start with a 30 core GPU, the 38 core GPU is $200 extra (both have 12 core CPUs). The 16” M2 Max model only comes with 38 core GPUs. Yes, it’s confusing, so pay attention to the options.

Moving on to the new Mac mini, you can have an M2 or an M2 Pro. There is no M2 Max option, Apple is probably saving that for the new Studio. Like with the laptop, the M2 Pro based mini comes with the 10/16 core chip as standard and it is a $300 upgrade to get the 12/19 core chip.

The new M2-powered Mac mini • M2 mac mini with 2 Thunderbolt ports • 4 ports on the M2 Pro mini

Another thing to note is that the M2 version only has 2 Thunderbolt ports, the M2 Pro version has four. Both can have 10GB Ethernet, but it is a $100 extra.

That $600 Mac mini sounds like a steal. However, you might want extra memory and you will be paying through the nose for that – going from 8GB to 16GB RAM costs $200, from 256GB SSD to 512GB is another $200. Again, the memory is soldered, but attaching external storage is easy enough, so you could skip the SSD upgrade.