The Newest Mac Mini Now Costs $500.

Amazon Big Deal Days is running from October 7th to 8th, and before it ends, Lifehacker will be sharing the best sales based on product reviews, comparisons, and price tracking tools.
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New to Prime Day? We’ve got everything you need to get started . Sales information is accurate at the time of publication, but prices and stock levels are subject to change.
Apple’s Mac Mini line—desktops that fit in the palm of your hand—has offered excellent value for money since the company introduced its own M-series chipsets. The latest Mac mini M4 is quite powerful, takes up very little desk space, and has (arguably) enough ports to get the job done: a headphone jack, two USB-C ports, three Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI, and an Ethernet port. On Prime Day this October, you can get the Mac mini M4 for just $499 , $100 off its retail price. While you’ll need to buy a monitor, keyboard, and mouse separately, it’s a great deal overall.
I think the $499 Mac Mini is a great deal, even if it’s not the lowest price ever. It dropped to $470 a few months ago, but the current offer is the second-lowest I’ve seen since the Mac Mini M4 launched a year ago. The base model has 16GB of RAM, but 256GB of storage is a pittance. If you store a lot of photos and videos and want to install large apps on your Mac, you’ll quickly run out of 256GB.
The good news is that you can easily connect external storage to expand the Mac mini’s capacity, but there’s a catch. It’s simply not as convenient as having more internal storage. Apple’s pricing for Mac RAM and storage upgrades is a complete steal, so upgrading to more powerful Mac mini versions will significantly increase the cost. Even during Prime Day in October, Mac mini models with more RAM and storage aren’t discounted much. At the time of writing, the same computer with 512GB of storage costs $760, which is truly hard to justify. Another annoying aspect of the Mac mini is the awkwardly placed power button, which , for some unknown reason, is located at the base of the device .
If you’re looking for a simple, easy-to-use desktop for basic tasks and can live with the relatively small amount of storage, $499 is a great price for the base Mac mini M4 model. However, keep in mind that new Macs are just around the corner, and if the Mac mini gets a refresh this month, you might be able to get an even bigger discount on the older model.
Looking for something different? Retailers like Walmart and Best Buy are running Prime Day sales, which are especially helpful if you don’t have an Amazon Prime subscription.
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Walmart’s Prime Day sale runs from 7:00 PM ET on October 6th through October 12th and includes discounts of up to 50%. This is an especially great deal for those with a Walmart+ subscription.
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Best Buy’s Prime Day sale runs from September 27th to October 12th and is one of the best tech sales in the world. It’s especially great for My Best Buy Plus or Total members.
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Target’s Prime Day sale runs from October 5th to 11th, with discounts up to 50%. Joining Circle is free.