This must-have miniature Macintosh retro dock gives your M4 Mac Mini a 1980s makeover — equipped with a 5-inch HD display and M.2 NVMe SSD slot

Many people love adding retro accessories to their modern devices to evoke the nostalgia of the ‘80s and ‘90s, while also making them far more useful. One such gadget is the M5 Retro Dock Station from Wokyis, which is available on Amazon for $169.99.

The dock slots neatly onto the M4 Mac Mini and connects via its USB-C port. When installed, it gives you a tiny 5-inch 720p display that you can use as a secondary monitor for various tasks, such as displaying widgets, serving as a digital photo album, playing media, or simply as a desktop clock. More importantly, it comes with an M.2 NVMe slot to expand the storage on your Mac mini with one of the best SSDs on the market — a crucial feature given Apple’s egregious pricing on storage expansion.

The dock actually comes in two flavors — the $169.99 version delivers transfer speeds of up to 10 Gbps and offers four USB-A ports, three USB-C ports (although one is for power and the other is required to connect to your Mac), an SD card slot, a microSD card slot, an HDMI port, and a 3.5mm jack. The more expensive Thunderbolt 5 version, which costs $339.99, trades the HDMI port for a DisplayPort output and adds an extra USB-C port at the back. This accessory is specifically designed for the Mac mini, but it also works with any other device that supports DisplayPort over USB-C. This includes MacBooks, Windows PCs, Android devices, and even Raspberry Pis.

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The Wokyis docking station will put a retro Macintosh on your desk without the hassle of transplanting the innards of a Mac Mini into the body of an iMac G3 or G4. Allowing you to set it up in a matter of minutes, and without risking damaging your computer.

Apple’s Mac Mini has seen a surge in popularity recently, especially as many people are configuring it to run OpenClaw locally. Because of this, we’ve seen a shortage of these computers, with even the cheapest variant now having a delivery window of five to six weeks. Cupertino has even removed the 512GB option for the Mac Studio from the Apple Store, while raising the price of the 256GB upgrade to $2,000.

Despite its size and influence over hardware suppliers, the company cannot escape the ongoing chip crisis, warning that shortages could last for months. But if you already have a Mac Mini on your desk, then perhaps this accessory can distract you from the fact that you’ll probably need to hold on to it for much longer, as upgrading — on both Mac and PC — is becoming more expensive than ever.

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