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

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 (opens in new tab), 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.

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Mac Mini M2 (256GB): was $599, now $499 at Amazon (opens in new tab)

Save $100: The Mac Mini is packing Apple's latest M2 chip, and is the cheapest way to get started with Mac.

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Mac Mini M2 (512GB): was $799, now $689 at Amazon (opens in new tab)

Save $110: The 512GB storage version of the Mac Mini M2 is also on sale, with 14% off the MSRP.

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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 (opens in new tab), too.