The five-star Mac mini drops to $499 in the January sales

When it comes to processing power, there’s no question that Apple’s chips reign supreme. In our five-star review for the 16GB Mac mini with M4 chip, Editor Max Parker wrote: “The Mac Mini M4 is a great entry-level M-series computer available at a very good price.”

Part of the reason why the M4 chip is able to handle these demanding processes with ease is thanks to the way that the unified memory works.

The 16GB of memory here allows data to be shared between the CPU, GPU and Neural Engine at great speeds, so you don’t have to deal with any noticeable slowdown, even when running several tabs in your browser.

Storage in this instance is fairly generous too. 256GB isn’t quite as robust as the 512GB option available for an extra $190, but it’s still enough to store key files locally without having to rely on external hard drives.

Thanks to Gigabit Ethernet, you can also enjoy super-fast internet connectivity, which is particularly useful if you’re looking to run intensive tasks that can make use of a speedy data connection, such as network rendering.

For those who want a compact but powerful desktop computing solution, at a price that’s far cheaper than most Windows-supporting alternatives, this Mac mini deal is well worth picking up.