Why is M4 fast?
The base M4 offers about 50% faster CPU performance than M2 and roughly matches the best Intel x86 chips in single-core speed. It brings a 10-core GPU with hardware ray tracing and a 16-core Neural Engine (~38 TOPS). The M4 Mac Mini doubles the RAM, adds two CPU cores and boosts clock speed over the M2, delivering 30–50 percent faster performance in developer tasks, video compression and real-world benchmarks.While the overall design (ports, size, weight) remains almost identical between the M4 and M5 14-inch models, the internal improvements mean you may enjoy a quieter, cooler system under heavy workloads and a bit more head-room for future software, which reflects well for your long-term investment.The M2 chip has 20 billion transistors, whereas the M4 chip increases that count to 28 billion. This means that the M4 chip can deliver up to 40% better performance in productivity tasks, like handling complex Excel spreadsheets.