Being a professional content creator costs a lot. Not only do you need a high-end camera with accompanying equipment, but you also need a computer with enough processing power to handle all of your high-res footage. The iMac all-in-one, Mac Mini, and Mac Pro are all Apple products. There is now a perfect middle ground thanks to the new Mac Studio.
The M1 Max or M1 Ultra are the two processor choices for the Mac Studio. Both are much more powerful than Apple's cheaper desktop Macs. It starts at $2,000 and isn't cheap, but you'll be hard-pressed to find an equivalent similar to it.
This is a review of the Mac Studio, but I talk about the display as well. It is Apple's new external monitor. You can use any display with the Mac Studio, and connect the studio display to most computers, but some features are limited on Windows.
A small desktop.
The Mac studio is very dense. It is nearly 6 pounds heavier than my dog. The editor of WIRED exclaimed that it was the Mac Studio when he came over to help me film a video.
The Mac Studio is three pounds heavier than the Mac Mini. Apple kept its footprint at 7.7 inches so it wouldn't take up more space and just make some vertical room for it. It fits perfectly under the display.
The silver machine is a chonker. You will wonder if it is really made by Apple, because the outside is home to so many ports. The back of the device has a built-in speaker, a 10-gigabyte Ethernet port, and a headphone jack. I don't need to attach several dongles to the Mac Studio because the ports are awesome.
I would like it to stay put a little better. There is a thin plastic ring on the bottom of the Mac Studio, but if you use it on a glass desk, it will slide around when you plug and remove things. I had to hold the machine down with one hand to keep it from sliding off the edge of the desk, because you have to apply a bit of pressure to make sure cables click in. It is a small nitpick.
Pro performance
I forgive you for some number-speak. Remember when you could choose between an M1 Ultra and an M1 Max processor? Apple says the M1 Max has up to 50 percent faster performance than a Mac Pro, with graphics performance that is three times faster. The M1 Ultra, which consists of two M1 Max chips fused together, offers up to 90 percent faster CPUs performance than the Mac Pro and 80 percent faster graphics. The Mac Studio can be configured with up to 8 Terabytes of storage.
The Mac Pro offers up modularity, but what is the point of it now? If not in 2023, Apple teased that it will release a new Mac Pro at the end of the year. For now, the Mac Studio is all a power user will need.
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