5 Things to Know About the M1 Mac Mini’s Soldered SSD

The SSD is soldered to the logic board You cannot upgrade or replace it after purchase. Choose your storage capacity carefully when ordering.

External storage is your only expansion option If you need more space later, you must use external drives via Thunderbolt or USB.

Higher-capacity SSDs are faster The 256GB model uses fewer NAND chips, resulting in slower read and write speeds than the 512GB or larger options.

Apple charges a premium for storage upgrades Upgrading from 256GB to 512GB costs $200, while third-party external SSDs are far cheaper per gigabyte.

Buy more than you think you need Future-proofing is critical since you cannot add internal storage. Aim for at least 512GB unless you only use cloud or external storage.