Mac Studio

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Mac Studio

Apple’s most powerful desktop Mac is brilliant for creative pros, but it won’t be for everyone

Ever since Apple introduced its first Apple silicon Mac in 2020, its direction of travel has been crystal clear. First to arrive were the M1–powered MacBook Air, Mac mini, and 13–inch MacBook Pro in 2020, followed by the gorgeous 24–inch iMac in April 2021. October 2021, Apple moved things on again with the new 14–inch and 16–inch MacBook Pro offering up new members of the M1 family, the M1 Pro and M1 Max. Now there’s this, the new Mac Studio — a Mac mini on steroids, armed with a choice of either an M1 Max or the new M1 Ultra, making it the most powerful desktop Mac ever made — or at least until the new Apple silicon–sporting Mac Pro arrives sometime in the coming months.

Thanks to the power of Apple silicon, even an M1–powered Mac mini or MacBook Air is powerful enough for most people, so it should come as no surprise to find that the Mac Studio isn’t really aimed at us — instead Apple’s target market is the creative pros who edit 8K videos, render graphics–heavy scenes and produce multitrack audio streams all day long. And the new Mac Studio is priced accordingly. $1,999 buys you a Mac Studio equipped with an M1 Max chip with a 10–core CPU, 24–core GPU and 16–core Neural Engine), 32GB of unified memory and 512GB of solid–state drive (SSD) storage. Spending $3,999 takes you into M1 Ultra territory, complete with a 20–core CPU, 48–core GPU and 32–core Neural Engine, 64GB of unified memory, and a 1TB SSD. The model on test here shows just how far Apple can push even that. Priced at $6,199 (via the Mac Studio’s Configure To Order options), it comes with a 20–core CPU, 64–core GPU, 32–core Neural Engine M1 Ultra, plus 128GB of unified memory and 2TB of SSD storage. Increasing the storage to 4TB will cost you another $600, while adding 8TB costs $1,800. It’s not really a machine for a bit of web–surfing and the occasional email then.

No matter which build–to–order Mac Studio you buy, the rest of the specs largely remain the same. On the front, you’ll find two USB–C ports (M1 Max versions) or two Thunderbolt 4 ports (M1 Ultra versions), plus an SDXC card slot, while on the rear all variants get four Thunderbolt 4 ports, a 10Gb Ethernet port, one HDMI 2.0 port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. On the underside of the unit you’ll also find a security slot, enabling you to lock the Mac Studio to your desk, making it less likely someone will walk off with it.

When it comes to design, the Mac Studio really is just like an oversized Mac mini — it has the same 7.7x7.7in footprint as the mini, but stands taller at 3.7in, and its aluminium shell has cheesegrater–style vents on its rear and underside, enabling the huge twin fans inside to suck in air and draw it over the built–in power supply and logic board. Like most other Macs, these days, the Mac Studio also comes with Wi–Fi 6 (802 11ax Wi–Fi) and Bluetooth 5.0 wireless connectivity.

It’s worth noting at this point that just like the Mac mini, the Mac Studio is sold without either an accompanying mouse, trackpad, or keyboard. To that end, Apple has launched special black editions of the Magic Mouse ($99), Magic Trackpad ($149), and Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and Numeric Keypad ($199). Notably, it hasn’t taken the opportunity to change the way the Magic Mouse charges, though, or added backlighting to the Magic Keyboard’s keys (which seems like a bit of a missed opportunity to us, given that the Mac Studio is likely to be used in studio environments with low lighting, especially when editing video and the like).

The Mac Studio is also decidedly non–user upgradeable, with ifixit.com awarding it 6 out of 10 for repairability, noting that while you could potentially swap out the removable storage using another SSD of the exact same specification, attempting to replace it with higher capacity storage is a no–go (for now). As for rest of the components — unfortunately, you’re stuck with what you chose when placing your order.

Mac Studio
Mac Studio
Mac Studio

Ultra Powerful

While you could buy the Mac Studio with an M1 Max, most creative pros are likely to opt for the M1 Ultra, as that’s where this machine’s true power lies. As Apple pointed out during its Peek Performance event, the M1 Ultra is essentially two M1 Max die “joined” together with computing tasks distributed between them using Apple’s proprietary UltraFusion architecture. This, Apple says, delivers up to 2.5TB/s of low–latency inter–processor bandwidth, which in turn helps the M1 Ultra deliver up to 3.8x faster CPU performance, 4.5x faster GPU performance and 3x faster machine learning performance than the Intel–powered Mac Pro and iMac models Apple chose to benchmark the Mac Studio against. Apple even says the Mac Studio outperforms many desktop–class PCs, and that’s true to an extent, but things are more nuanced than that.

Just like all the other Apple silicon Mac’s we’ve tried, the Mac Studio is fast to start up and super–slick to use, with almost every application we tried typically launching quickly.

Editing images in apps such as Photos or Affinity Photo is friction–free too, and even rendering 3D scenes in Blender gave us super–quick results, often taking just minutes where it can take hours on the Intel–based MacBook Pros we normally use in the office.

In Geekbench 5’s single–core processor test, the Mac Studio hit a consistent score of 1,784, putting it on a par with other M1 Macs (see the table above). This isn’t too surprising as the underlying architecture is the same. Where the Mac Studio really hits it out of the ballpark is in the multicore test, where that 20–core M1 Ultra CPU achieved 23,944 — or over twice that of a 27–inch iMac with a 3.6GHz 10–core Intel Core i9, which averaged 10,002.

The Mac Studio aced our DaVinci Resolve benchmark test too (rendering an effects–laden 2.5–minute video), taking just 3 minutes, 39 seconds to produce the finished clip, compared to 6 minutes, 30 seconds on the 27– inch Intel iMac, and 28 minutes, 42 seconds on a Mac mini equipped with a standard M1.

Mac Stidio with M1 Ultra Chip Benchmarks

Features: Apple M1 Ultra chip (20–core CPU, 64–core GPU, 32–core Neural Engine), 2TB storage, 128GB of unified memory, Wi–Fi 6 (802.11ax), Bluetooth 5.0, 6xThunderbolt 4 ports (2xfront, 4x rear), 2x USB–A ports, 1x 10Gb Ethernet port, 1x HDMI 2.0 port, 1x3.5mm headphone jack, 1xSDXC card slot, 7.7x7.7x3.7in, 7.9 pounds

$6,199 (model on test)

Geekbench 5 Single–Core Teat

This tests the capability of a single processor core. Many more common tasks on a Mac will only use a single core at a time. Geekbench 5 is a universal app running on Monterey.

Index score (higher is better).

  • Mac Studio 3.22GHz M1 Ultra (2022) – 1784
  • Mac mini 3.0GHz 8–core M1 (2020) – 1742
  • iMac 27in 3.6GHz 10–core Intel Core i9 (2020) – 1388

Handbrake Video Encoding

We transcode a Blu–ray–quality video file into H.264 format using HandBrake to test the multicore processor performance. Handbrake is available as a universal binary.

Duration (lower is better).

  • Mac Studio 3.22GHz M1 Ultra (2022) – 9 mins 10 secs
  • Mac mini 3.0GHz 8–core M1 (2020) – 23 mins 38 secs
  • iMac 27in 3.6GHz 10–core Intel Core i9 (2020) – 7 mins 33 secs

Tomb Raider(1920X1080)

For a real–world gaming test, we use the benchmarking tool in this game, with the graphics quality set to High, and the resolution set to 1920x1080. Not yet optimized for M1.

Frames per sec (higher is better).

  • Mac Studio 3.22GHz M1 Ultra (2022) – 30
  • Mac mini 3.0GHz 8–core M1 (2020) – 30
  • iMac 27in 3.6GHz 10–core Intel Core i9 (2020) – 59

DaVinci Resolve

In Blackmagic Design’s editing tool for video professionals, we exported an effects–laden, 2.5–minute project to the H.264 format. The latest version of the app (Version 17.1) now runs natively on M1 Macs.

Duration (lower is better).

  • Mac Studio 3.22GHz M1 Ultra (2022) – 3 mins 39 secs
  • Mac mini 3.0GHz 8–core M1 (2020) – 28 mins 42 secs
  • iMac 27in 3.6GHz 10–core Intel Core i9 (2020) – 6 mins 30 secs

However the Mac Studio delivered mixed results in our next two tests. In Handbrake, the Mac Studio managed to transcode a one–hour long 4K video into MP4 in 9 minutes, 10 seconds; 2 minutes, 13 seconds slower than an Intel Core i9 iMac. Gaming performance in Rise of the Tomb Raider was also sub–par, averaging 30 frames per second (fps), compared to the Intel Core i9 iMac’s 59fps. That could be because the game isn’t optimized for the M1, but the Mac Studio also performed surprisingly poorly during our Shadow of the Tomb Raider test. While there it managed to clock up 117fps — it did so only by frequently dropping frames using the in–game benchmark setting at 1980x1080 resolution, while actual use in–game resulted in the same jerky performance. The Mac Studio may be a great rendering machine, but games console or even gaming PC replacement it is not.

So should you buy the Mac Studio? If you’re a creative pro who edits 8K video all day, the answer is yes. But for the rest of us? You could justify buying the $1,999 M1 Max version as an ageing iMac replacement. But the M1 Ultra? No. As interesting and as powerful as it is, it’s overkill for the day–to–day tasks you’re most likely to want to do.

Mac Studio Price

  • $1,999 (M1 Max 10-Core CPU, 24-Core GPU, 32GB Unified Memory, 512GB SSD)
  • $3,999 (M1 Ultra 20-Core CPU, 48-Core GPU, 64GB Unified Memory, 1TB SSD)

Upgrades for base $1,999 model:

  • Apple M1 Max with 10-core CPU, 32-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine + $200
  • Apple M1 Ultra with 20-core CPU, 48-core GPU, 32-core Neural Engine + $1400
  • Apple M1 Ultra with 20-core CPU, 64-core GPU, 32-core Neural Engine + $2400
  • 64GB Unified Memory + $400
  • 1TB SSD + $200
  • 2TB SSD + $600
  • 4TB SSD + $1200
  • 8TB SSD + $2400
Super–quick and powerful, the M1 Ultra Mac Studio is overkill for the most of us.
Mac Studio
Mac Studio

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