Mac Studio review: Apple’s Big Mac mini

If you think you need the power of the Mac Studio, then you probably need it. That is all you need to know about Apple's little desktop. The Studio is more powerful than the M1 Max-powered MacBook Pros, but it costs less and gives you access to all the ports you want from a desktop. It is the Mac Mini that many have been waiting for. Should you wait for the Mac Pro update to blow it out of the water, or should you get one?

The answer depends on your budget. If you want to go full beast mode with the M1 Ultra, the Mac Studio starts at $3,999. The prices are in line with PC workstations that are meant for editing 4K and 8K video. If it is not clear by now, the Mac Mini is for mainstream consumers. It is a small desktop meant for creative professionals working in a studio or home office.

• Sleek design
• M1 Max and M1 Ultra are seriously powerful
• Plenty of ports
• Incredibly fast SSDs
• Beefy graphics

• Not upgradeable
• Cumbersome rear headphone jack
• Apple needs better accessories

The Mac Studio is accessible to many professionals. It is more practical than the iMac Pro, which cost $4,999 when it was launched. We were confused about its intended audience. It was no surprise that that machine was discontinued last year. The entry price for the Mac Pro Apple introduced in 2019: $5,999, is a feat of industrial design that could easily scale to tens of thousands of dollars. Apple never sold the Mac Pro in their retail stores because it was so far away from consumers.

The Mac Studio has some benefits that are obvious even before you turn it on, like it doesn't take up much floor or desk space, and it's easy to move around. It isn't meant to disappear into the background like the Mac Mini. The studio deserves a prominent spot on your desk, a symbol that you have become a true creative professional.

You would definitely want it on your desk to have easy access to all of its ports. There are so many ports. There are two Thunderbolt 4 connections and a microSD card slot at the front of the building. There are four more Thunderbolt 4 sockets, two more Type-A connections, a 10 Gigabit Ethernet port, and a headphone jack on the rear. I was surprised that Apple remembered that there was a way to use old gear.

If you use speakers, the rear jack/line out connection is fine, but it is annoying for people who need to plug in their headphones all the time. I know several video editors who will be upset by this.

Apple sent two Mac Studio models for testing, one with an M1 Max chip and 64GB of RAM, and the other with the M1 Ultra chip and 128GB of RAM. With certainty, I can say that there has never been this much RAM on my desk at once. The M1 Max is the same chip that was used in the new MacBook Pro and it has a lot of the same features.

The M1 Ultra is basically two M1 Max chips joined together with an Apple die-to-die interconnect. You can double all of the statistics: It has a 20-coreCPU, 48-coreGPU, and 32-core Neural Engine. The M1 Ultra can have up to 128GB of unified RAM and 800GB of memory bandwidth, which is double what the M1 Max can offer.

While Apple's custom processors were miraculous on laptops, delivering speed and power efficiency like we've never seen before, desktop workstations are a far greater challenge. The Ryzen Threadripper 3990X has 64 cores and a power-hungry 280-watt TDP, making it a monstrously powerful chip. That chip can cost over $8,000.

The Intel Core i9-12900K is Apple's main competitor. The M1 Ultra can reach up to 90 percent higher performance in the same power envelope as the fastest 16-core PC chip available, according to the company. Apple says that the Ultra can match the peak performance of the PC chip while using less power.

The Mac Studio can deliver a lot of performance without generating much heat or fan noise. I found that for most of the time. The M1 Ultra-powered Mac Studio achieved the highest Geekbench 5 and Cinebench R23 multithreaded scores we have ever seen, all without spinning up its fan or working up a sweat. The M1 Max model scored the same as the Max-powered 16-inch MacBook Pro, and well above other 10-core systems. The M1 Ultra trounced the 14- and 16-core 12th-gen chips in multithreaded performance.

I don't work with complex 3D models often, and I am not a professional video editor. I relied on a few Apple-supplied projects to get a better sense of the Mac Studio's real-world performance: an 8K video edit in Final Cut Pro, and a 54-million voxelCT Scan in Horos Mobile. The M1 Max model took 0.2 seconds longer than the 8K version, but I was able to export it in 23 seconds. When exporting to 4K, the M1 Ultra Mac Studio took 23.5 seconds, while the M1 Max took an additional two seconds.

Both systems allowed me to explore the Horos MobileCT Scan without any problems. The unified memory architecture of Apple is helpful for large files since it gives theGPU direct access to all of the system's RAM. PC graphics cards are limited by their onboard memory. Horos Mobile could get access to a big chunk of their 64 or 128 gigabyte of RAM if they needed it, even though the flagship RTX 3090 has only 24 gigabyte of VRAM. It makes them tempting for editors to work with feature-length 8K videos.

The Mac Studios can deliver a lot of performance. There are many drawbacks when compared to PC workstations. Since they are Macs, there aren't many games to play when you need some R&R. You can give up hope on playing new games, like Elden Ring. You cannot install Windows on the Mac Studio like you could with Intel-based Macs because Apple's M1 chips are based on a mobile architecture. External GPUs are out of the question since Apple's Silicon depends on having direct access to the hardware.

If you wanted to jump to faster SSDs in a few years, you cannot upgrade the Mac Studio. There is no way to expand the memory because their RAM is built into the M1 chips. Many creatives wouldn't have much of a reason to upgrade anyways. The M1 Max model comes with 32 gigabytes of ram, while the Ultra model has 64 gigabytes of ram. The performance of the SSDs on the systems is very fast, with read speeds up to 10 Gigabytes per second and writing speeds up to 6 gigabytes per second. Those are the highest figures we have ever recorded.

The overall Mac Studio experience is great, but it is hampered by Apple's accessories. The Magic Keyboard is good to type on, but I would like more depth in the keys. The Magic Mouse is once again a disaster. It's too small for me to use comfortably, and you can only charge it from the bottom. The Magic Trackpad feels more like an Apple laptop. If you're a PC user moving to Macs, I recommend bringing over your favorite Logitech hardware.

If you just want a powerful Mac desktop, the Mac Studio will serve you well for a long time. If you are concerned that you will outgrow it soon, you have plenty of PC workstations to choose from. The NUC 12 Extreme can be upgraded with a full-sized graphics card, but it is a bit larger than before. You will be able to buy pre-configured models from third-party retailers once the machine is a do-it-yourself kit. If you want a pre-built small-form-factor PC from builders like Origin, you should pay more than the cheapest Mac Studio.

The new Mac Pro could be a good option for power-hungry creators. Based on the pricing for the last model and the fact that the $4,000 Mac Studio exists, it would likely cost over $6,000. The Mac Pro is only meant for production houses or people with deep pockets.

It's easy to tell who the Mac Studio is for, people who demand power, ports and reasonably priced hardware. It has been a long time since Apple has a Mac desktop that can compete with PC workstations under $5,000.