Apple was widely expected to announce a new high-end Mac mini at its ‘Peek Performance’ event. Instead, it announced the Mac Studio with the M1 Ultra chip that’s even more powerful than the 28-core Intel Mac Pro. Now, a new report suggests that the company is working on a new Mac mini powered by the M2 chip.

Citing sources, 9to5Mac says Apple planned to launch a high-end Mac mini with M1 Pro/Max chips but dropped it in favor of the Mac Studio. Nonetheless, the company is working on an M2-powered Mac mini refresh codenamed J473. This new M-series chip would seemingly be based on the A15 Bionic and sport eight CPU cores — four performance and four efficiency cores — and a more powerful 10-core GPU. The performance cores carry the codename “Avalanche,” while the efficiency cores are known as “Blizzard.”

Alongside the M2 model, the company is also working on a high-end model codenamed J474 featuring the M2 Pro chip. It would reportedly feature a 12-core CPU consisting of eight high-performance cores and four efficiency cores. The GPU configuration is not clear, but it should get a bump in performance as well. Apple seemingly does not plan to launch a Mac mini version with M2 Max or Ultra chips.

There’s no word on a redesign, but a previous rumor indicated that the next Mac mini would get a refreshed new design. Development on the M2 Mac mini is nearing completion, and it should be announced later this year. Despite the introduction of the Mac Studio, Apple continues to sell the high-end Intel-based Mac mini, which does point to the company planning a possible replacement for it.

It is likely that we will see Apple announce the new M2 Mac mini alongside the redesigned MacBook Air towards the end of the year.