The Mac Mini 2 is ideal for students, and it's on sale right now

(Image credit: Apple)

Apple's latest desktop machine, the M2 Mac Mini, is small but mighty - and it's cheaper than ever at Amazon.

The Apple Silicon transition is essentially complete, with Apple's machines getting a huge power boost and battery efficiency. Things kicked off with the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, and after a few revisions, it's easy to say the best MacBook for students is par of the current lineup.

Desktops, however, have been a little slower to adapt to the M-series processors. The iMac is still running the M1, while the Mac Pro isn't quite ready to be shown just yet. In between, there are the two "headless" Macs - the Mac Mini and Mac Studio.

While the latter is a little on the pricey side at around $2000, the Mac Mini has arguably never been better - making it worth a look if you're not interested in the best laptops for students.

Amazon's latest round of deals makes the M2 Mac Mini just $499, too. It's a $100 discount that, while not huge, makes it the cheapest way to get into the macOS operating system - albeit with some caveats.

The Mac Mini is able to keep the price down because it doesn't include a monitor, mouse, or keyboard in the box. You'll need to consider that as an additional cost, but the good thing is that it means you can plug in anything you'd like - gaming peripherals, ergonomic options, ultrawide monitors and plenty more.

There are plenty of ports to accommodate those dreams, too, with HDMI, two USB-A ports, a pair of Thunderbolt 4 USB-C connections, ethernet and a headphone port.

On the inside, the M2 chip offers excellent performance across all kinds of tasks, including video editing, coding, and pretty much anything else you can think of.

Our one issue would be the 256GB of storage, which is low. Still, hooking up another drive will help, but if storage is a big concern for you, you'll find the a decent discount on the 512GB version, too.

Lloyd Coombes freelance tech and fitness writer for Live Science. He's an expert in all things Apple as well as in computer and gaming tech, with previous works published on TechRadar, Tom's Guide, Live Science and more. You'll find him regularly testing the latest MacBook or iPhone, but he spends most of his time writing about video games as Gaming Editor for the Daily Star. He also covers board games and virtual reality, just to round out the nerdy pursuits.