We tested it: Here's how well Windows 11 performs on the Mac Mini (2025)

When I first tested the M4 Mac Mini, it was apparent right away that Apple's hardware has achieved a level of performance that's very hard to match on the Windows side of things. Recently, I got access to Parallels Desktop, and that got me thinking — is the M4 Mac Mini fast enough to run Windows on Arm better than an actual Windows on Arm PC with the Snapdragon X Elite? What about Intel's Lunar Lake?

Virtualization is always going to hurt the experience somewhat, and even if benchmark scores say something, it's hard to judge the full experience without some extra context. It's always going to be unlikely that a virtual machine is as fast as a real PC, but I thought it would be fun to draw the comparison anyway. So here's what I found.

What we're testing

First, let's lay some ground rules. On the Mac Mini, we're using the base level M4 model and running Windows 11 in a Parallels VM with 12GB of memory and 8 cores allocated (the maximum recommended by Parallels itself). We're comparing that against the scores on the Surface Laptop 7 (with a Snapdragon X Elite), as well as the Asus Zenbook S 14 powered by the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V. Both laptops have 32GB of RAM. I used the same scores from my previous comparison where I tested the native performance of the Apple M4.

In one of the later tests, I also compared against the Honor MagicBook Art 14, which has the same processor specs as the Surface Laptop 7.

Geekbench 6

A lighter CPU test

Starting things off with the basics, we have Geekbench 6, the baseline test for CPU performance. This is a fairly lightweight one that's better for testing short-burst peak performance, and unsurprisingly, the real PC running Windows 11 on the Snapdragon X Elite pulled ahead by a wide margin in multi-core performance. After all, the Snapdragon X Elite was already extremely close to the native performance of the Apple M4, so with the virtualization layer and two fewer cores available, it was bound to happen. However, it's worth noting that the single-core test still puts Apple's processor comfortably ahead of the Snapdragon X Elite, which is nothing short of impressive.

In fact, compared to the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V, the Apple M4 comes out on top in both metrics, and that's pretty impressive.

Cinebench 2024

Pushing things further

Next up, Cinebench 2024 is a much more demanding CPU test that runs for longer and pushes CPUs much harder. Despite being a somewhat different test, it tells a very similar story. The Snapdragon X Elite still comes out on top by far in multi-core performance, but the Apple M4 remains the best single-core performer, even through virtualization.

And just like with Geekbench, Intel falls behind in both metrics here, so the Apple M4 still manages to hold its own against modern high-end machines.

3DMark Wild Life Extreme

The only GPU test that worked on Parallels

Finally, we have graphics, and this was the hardest part to test because, as it turns out, a lot of graphics-intensive tasks don't like running in a virtual machine. This is what I was referring to at the start — some things may seem to work well, but that doesn't mean running Windows in Parallels is the optimal experience.

That being said, one test did run here, and it was 3DMark Wild Life Extreme. While it was running, the screen was black, but the frame counter that appears was still visible and it seemed accurate that what you'd expect, so I'm taking the score I was given.

This time around, things are reversed a bit. Intel is the one who wins handily in this test, though it's not by a huge margin. The Apple M4 and Snapdragon X Elite are neck-and-neck in terms of benchmark scores here, which highlights just how capable the Apple M4 GPU is, and how the Snapdragon X Elite still has some ground to make if it wants to catch up with its competitors, even on Windows.

Speedometer 3.0

Testing browser performance

Since many of my usual test didn't work, I also decided to try running Speedometer 3.0, which is a browser performance test. I ran the test on the latest version of Edge (version 134) within Parallels and put it up against the Honor MagicBook Art 14 and Asus Zenbook S 14. As you can tell, the M4 Mac Mini does suffer from worse performance here, which is to be expected in real-life scenarios when using a VM.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite comes out on top with the lowest score here, and the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V isn't too far behind, but the Apple M4 performs significantly worse in a virtualized environment. However, it should be noted that I got wildly different scores running this test multiple times, so I wouldn't draw much of a conclusion from this.

The tests that didn't run

There's a lot

As you can tell, there isn't a whole lot to go over here, and that's because, as I've already mentioned before, running Windows in Parallels is not an ideal way to use the OS. I tried running more tests, including CrossMark and more 3DMark tests such as Steel Nomad Light. These simply didn't work, though, and that's important to remember.

You're never going to prefer using Windows on a Mac Mini compared to using real hardware because many things may just not work properly, so none of these scores are trying to say otherwise. I just thought it would be a fun point of comparison to test.

The Apple M4 is still impressive

Even though it's clearly not going to be the best way to run Windows 11, I came away fairly impressed with how well the Mac Mini held up against machines that run Windows natively. Aside from Speedometer 3.0, none of the tests placed the Parallels VM at the bottom, and that's even considering that not only are we using virtualization, but the physical Windows machines being tested have more CPU cores and RAM. If you had an M4 Pro to more closely replicate those specs, the results would be even more interesting, I'm sure.

What I'm truly curious about, though, is how Qualcomm may eventually evolve its own processors. The Snapdragon X Elite is still a first-generation product for the company, and I suspect we'll see massive improvements for the next generation. I can't wait to see how it stacks up against Apple.