This is our own footage: we picked up Apple's new Mac mini M6 and put it straight to work editing real footage, to answer the question the video opens with: is this tiny desktop actually powerful enough to replace a high-end editing PC? The video above is the full test.
Apple's M6 Mac mini has been out in Malaysia for a few days at the time we shot this, so rather than another unboxing that stops at the spec sheet, we opened DaVinci Resolve on it and graded real clips. Video is where a Mac mini's chip either earns its size or does not, and it is also where our own coverage of the wider Apple lineup keeps landing: our MacBook Pro M5 Pro and M5 Max launch piece found Apple claiming up to 5.4x faster DaVinci Resolve rendering than the M1 Max on that chip, and our DaVinci Resolve 21.1 AI editing piece covers what the free edition can and cannot do once you are inside the software the M6 was carrying in this test.
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What our video actually shows
At 0:27 in our video, the Mac mini M6 is running DaVinci Resolve with a real clip loaded: a person swimming at sunset, graded with the app's cinematic colour tools and playing back smoothly on the timeline while the effects render live. That is the moment the video is built around, not a spec slide.
At 0:38, the desk shows the machine mid-workflow rather than idle: a render or import running in the background while another window stays open on top of it, which is closer to how an editor actually works a real project than a single clean timeline ever is.
The unboxing
Before any of that, the video opens the way most Mac mini unboxings do: the box on the desk, the seal broken, and the machine itself, which is still small enough to sit in one hand next to a keyboard. Apple's design has not changed the footprint since the M4 generation, which we covered in our original Mac mini M4 launch piece; what changed this generation is entirely inside the case.
What is actually inside, and what it costs in Malaysia
Since the video itself does not read out a spec sheet, here is what Apple states for the configuration this test used, straight from Apple's own Malaysia newsroom and spec pages rather than a reseller's summary. The base Mac mini M6 carries a 12-core CPU (2 performance-boosted "super" cores plus 4 performance and 6 efficiency cores), a 12-core GPU, a dual 16-core Neural Engine, and up to 170GB/s of memory bandwidth on the base configuration. Apple's own claim against the outgoing M4 model is 40% faster CPU performance, up to 2x faster graphics, 2x faster storage and up to 4x faster AI performance. Connectivity moved to Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, with 2 front USB-C ports, three rear Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI and a 2.5Gb Ethernet port (configurable to 10Gb).
In Malaysia, the Mac mini with M6 starts at RM3,799 (RM3,399 for education buyers) with 16GB of unified memory and 256GB of storage, configurable up to 32GB and 1TB. The higher-tier Mac mini with M5 Pro starts at RM7,499. Apple opened pre-orders on 27 August 2026, with units reaching buyers and Apple Store shelves from 22 September, the day after this video went up.
Who this is actually for
A 12-core M6 with a dual 16-core Neural Engine is squarely built for exactly what the video shows: colour grading and exporting video without a render bar that ruins the workflow. For a Malaysian creator deciding between a Mac mini and a laptop, the trade is portability versus that RM3,799 starting price buying more machine than an equivalent MacBook; the M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro line we covered separately is the one to look at if the edit has to travel. If you are building the filmmaking side of that skill set rather than just the hardware, our phone and camera filmmaking course, Pocket Cinematic, covers exposure, framing and colour control that carries over directly into a grading pass like the one in this video.
What this video does not settle is a full benchmark verdict: 65 seconds of real editing is a genuine first look, not a lab test, and we have not run our own render-time numbers on this unit yet. Judged on what it shows, the Mac mini M6 graded and played back a real clip without stalling on a machine you can hold in one hand, which is the case Apple is making with this generation.
