Wokyis M5 Mac mini dock review: Specs, features, price

The Wokyis M5 gives your M4 Mac mini a cute retro Mac form factor, storage, a five-inch screen, and USB-A ports. What’s not to like?

AppleInsider has looked at a lot of docks over the years. They get dull after a while, since they’re all based on designs from one or two Chinese manufacturers.

We’ve never tried one as interesting as the Wokyis M5.

It’s a good way to do nostalgia. Instead of slavishly duplicating the old, it takes a modern core, adds a retro flair, and then goes beyond by making it more than just a decorative element.

And, we buried the lede a little. While the Wokyis M5 is best with the Mac mini M4, it works with any Mac with a Thunderbolt port.

Wokyis M5 Mac mini Dock review: Physical design

You can see it in the pictures. The Wokyis M5 is an off-white plastic enclosure that takes the classic Mac design cues and blends them with modern hardware.

Measuring 6.06 inches by 5.71 inches by 5.16 inches, it’s certainly larger than your typical dock, and smaller than that Mac Plus that you remember. It’s not supposed to be small, but really more of an enclosure for your current-style Mac mini to sit inside, with most of the unit perched on top.

In effect, it has a footprint that’s a little larger than the Mac mini itself, but it also saves desk space by holding the Mac mini, SSD, and ports. However, adding the Mac mini does raise the height to 6.21 inches in total.

Much like the classic Macintosh, there is a display. This isn’t the 512×342 black and white display in that Mac Plus. Instead, it’s a five-inch 720p screen that looks great, if not quite as bright as I like.

Wokyis M5 Mac mini Dock review: Connectivity

While the dock completely covers your Mac mini, there is still access available to the front and back ports of the Mac, thanks to a removable base plate.

There are two varieties of the dock. We’re testing the M5 10 gigabit per second version.

The front ports include two USB-A 10Gbps connections, a USB-C 10Gbps port, an SD card reader and microSD Card reader, and a six-color square power button for the display itself. Thank the lawyers for the generic graphic there.

Around the back is the USB-C host port to connect to the Mac mini, two USB-A 10Gbps ports, a power input for the dock, a headphone jack, and an HDMI-in port.

The other version is the M5 80Gbps, which has Thunderbolt 5 host support around the back. The list of ports is very close to identical, except the 15W power input is replaced with one that can take 36W of power delivery, the host port is changed to Thunderbolt 5, there’s an extra USB-C 10Gbps port, and the HDMI input is switched out for an 8K 60Hz-capable DisplayPort output.

Wokyis M5 Mac mini Dock review: Display

The built-in display is intended to be driven by the installed Mac, either through the HDMI-in port or using Thunderbolt 5, depending on the model.

That screen measures a tiny five inches diagonally, but has an oddly useful native resolution of 1,280 by 720. This is about 290 PPI, making it about “Retina” quality.

While power is handled at the front, two buttons control brightness in the handle divot at the top.

Admittedly, the display is a little small to be really useful for daily work, but it isn’t really designed for that purpose. It is a decorative feature, and in our testing, it was pretty good for Messages, Slack, Discord, and other at-a-glance communication services.

Wokyis M5 Mac mini Dock review: Storage and speed

Inside the rear of the dock is a metal door. Behind that door, intended to be used as a heat sink, is a slot for fitting an M.2 NVMe SSD. It can fit a single drive in M.2 2230, 2242, 2260, and 2280 forms.

However, the speed it functions at is dictated by the model of the dock. The 10Gbps version will only operate at a maximum speed of 10Gbps in total, across the entire dock. We’re not sure what port the Thunderbolt 5 version uses, but in theory, that will be able to hit about 60 gigabits per second on the faster connection.

This does underscore a small, evergreen issue with docks, in that USB-C models are often held back by the limited amount of bandwidth.

For the 10Gbps model, that bandwidth has to apply to all connected hardware. That means you can’t really use it to deal with the NVMe drive and another connected external drive and expect full-bore speeds from both simultaneously. Bandwidth is constrained.

This is not really an issue for the 80Gbps Thunderbolt 5 version, since there’s masses of bandwidth available for all of the connected devices to use, and even the display.

Wokyis M5 Mac mini Dock review: Cute, smart, but probably wait for Thunderbolt 5

As an exercise in nostalgia, the Wokyis hits all of the right notes without directly copying Apple’s classic hardware. Having a compact reminder of Apple’s history, which also happens to be functional, is a great desk trinket to have.

That it actually works as an extra display for your Mac mini is a bonus.

Cuteness aside, the USB-C version is good for users without any need for fast data transfers or lots of bandwidth. If you’re an AppleInsider regular, you really should wait for the Thunderbolt 5 version, which will be coming out in October for about $100 more.

Wokyis M5 Mac mini Dock pros

• Cute historical aesthetics
• Actually usable display
• Compact footprint

Wokyis M5 Mac mini Dock cons

• USB-C model is bandwidth-limited

Rating: 4 out of 5

You don’t have to be an OG Mac user like me to like this. It’s effective and cost-effective port expansion on a USB-C Mac, with a SSD bay, and a five-inch 1080p screen.

Yes, the 10 gigabit one is bandwidth-constrained. It is, however, about the same price as docks with similar functionality, and has that screen to boot.

Best of all, the Thunderbolt 5 one is coming in October for about $150 more at retail. That one will be a 4.5 out of 5, assuming it works right, and we have no reason to believe that it won’t.

Where to buy the Wokyis M5 Mac mini Dock

The Wokyis M5 Mac mini Dock is currently sold via Kickstarter. The 10Gbps USB-C version is priced at $109, with an expected post-Kickstarter price of $169 after it ships in September.

The Thunderbolt 5 variant, due in October, costs $209 under Kickstarter, with a post-campaign price of $389.

The Kickstarter campaign is set to run until August 30.

Crowdfunding projects carry the risk of a product failing to ship as promised, or not shipping at all, after a campaign is over. Due to this, AppleInsider doesn’t cover the majority of crowdfunding efforts as a rule, unless hardware is available and after an assessment of the campaign and principals.