This little box is genuinely hard to argue with. At $599 you get the M4 chip, 16GB of RAM and a design so compact it fits in your palm. The previous model started with 8GB. That alone is a big deal. Doubling the base memory without raising the price is exactly the kind of move that makes this worth paying attention to.

Performance is legitimately impressive. Single core scores beat out machines costing two or three times as much. Everyday tasks like browsing, photo editing and video work all run without a hitch and the thing stays nearly silent doing it. Even light gaming works better than you'd expect from a machine this size at this price. It won't replace a proper gaming rig but older titles and a growing list of newer ones run just fine.

The redesign is a real upgrade too. It's noticeably smaller than the old model and the two front USB-C ports plus a headphone jack finally make cable management less of a nightmare. It can drive up to three external displays which is solid for a base model desktop. If you already own a monitor, keyboard and mouse this is one of the cleanest desktop setups you can put together for under a grand.

There are real trade offs though. RAM and storage upgrades cost way more than they should. There's no USB-A port which will annoy some people. The power button is on the bottom of the device which is just a weird call. And if you want to game seriously or push heavy sustained workloads, you're going to hit limits fast. But for most people doing most things, none of that matters much. This is the desktop to beat right now at this size and price.