Tomorrow, the new Mac Studio with M4 Max and M3 Ultra chips goes on sale, and the first reviews of the device have already been published. Apple itself claims that “the new Mac Studio is the most powerful Mac we’ve ever made.” Experts also praised the performance of the new PC, calling it “even excessive” for many users. The authors of the reviews noted the presence of Thunderbolt 5 interfaces and improved support for a larger number of external displays.
Image source: Apple
The new Mac Studio workstations are built on both the latest M4 Max chip and the improved M3 Ultra. The devices, aimed at professionals, feature Thunderbolt 5, support for up to 512GB of unified memory, and SSDs with a capacity of up to 16TB. Thanks to the new chips, Mac Studio catches up with other current Mac models by getting hardware acceleration of ray tracing for the first time.
This is the first update for the Mac Studio since June 2023. The design of the device is virtually unchanged — it’s still the same squat, square silver box with two USB Type-C ports and an SD card slot on the front.
Chris Welch of The Verge gave the M4 Max-powered Mac Studio high marks: “It’s important to note that there are objective advantages to choosing the M4 Max Mac Studio model. It outperforms the M3 Ultra in single-core performance, which is especially important for making most everyday apps run faster.”
Welch found the M3 Ultra to be “overkill for many”: “If you need that level of power, you already know exactly how to get the most out of it. It’s designed for visual effects artists and animators, and for professionals doing ambitious audio and video production projects. Do you regularly crunch large amounts of medical data? Then you might be able to use all those cores and memory to their full potential. And as AI continues to evolve, the 256GB or 512GB configurations might be attractive to those interested in running complex LLM models locally on their machine.”
Andrew Cunningham of Ars Technica believes that “it’s the magnitude of Apple’s generational upgrades that makes this Studio update seem odd,” as the top-end Studio gets an M3 Ultra chip instead of an M4 Ultra. He argues that “this makes the higher-end Studio not that much of a step up from the base model.”
Vavro also noted that users who want to get ready to work in 8K resolution on multiple monitors now should pay attention to the Mac Studio with the M3 Ultra chip, which supports up to four 8K displays with a refresh rate of 60 Hz.
He added that Thunderbolt 5 hardware is still fairly rare on the market, despite the standard’s debut in 2023: “While 8K displays and 8K TVs are already available, 8K content has only started to appear in small doses since 2023 and remains a rarity in both Mac apps and streaming services. So while it’s great to get Thunderbolt 5 ports on the most powerful Mac desktop, it’s not a reason to upgrade unless you plan to invest in a ton of Thunderbolt 5-enabled accessories.”
Vavro believes that Thunderbolt 5 is not necessary for his purposes, and that the best use for the new standard at the moment is to use a super-fast external SSD.
The new Mac Studio goes on sale Wednesday, March 12. In the U.S., prices start at $1,999 for the M4 Max configuration and $3,999 for the M3 Ultra configuration.
We present to your attention a selection of video reviews of the new Mac Studio:
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