The M4 Mac mini has removable, modular storage – and an important SSD upgrade

It's even more appealing than before

News By David Nield published 9 November 2024

• The M4 Mac mini has removable storage, it's been revealed
• It also uses two SSDs for each configuration
• The changes could enable custom upgrades for the Mac

In our Apple Mac mini (M4, 2024) review we described it as potentially the best Mac ever – and certainly the smallest to date – and as users start to pull apart the dinky computer, we're finding even more to like about it.

First up, from an iFixit post (via @MudkipOnYT) we now know the internal SSD storage is modular and can be removed, rather than being soldered to the motherboard. That means there's the potential for custom storage upgrades.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, it's worth pointing out that the Mac Studio (M2 Ultra) has a similar storage setup, but custom upgrades are difficult to do: the computer uses Apple's own bespoke SSDs, you can't just slot in any off-the-shelf replacement.

We'll have to wait and see whether upgrades on the M4 Mac mini are as tricky, but Apple fans have already been able to identify the SSD in question and upgrade the Mac mini to 2TB of storage (you can actually get it with as much as 8TB straight from Apple).

Two for one

While questions remain about just how viable it's going to be to start swapping SSDs in and out – potentially at a lower cost than buying the equivalent configuration from Apple – it's a promising step forward for Mac mini repairability and customization.

The other upgrade over the previous Apple Mac mini (M2, 2023), as spotted by @ohgkg (via MacRumors), is that even the lowest 256GB version makes use of two SSD modules – allowing for faster read and write speeds, compared with a single chip.

As a consequence, there shouldn't be any difference in SSD speeds between the 256GB storage configuration and any other, which is reassuring for those thinking about buying the cheapest M4 Mac mini option direct from Apple.

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