Apple Mac Studio review (M2 Ultra, 2023): A better Mac for pros

Last year’s Mac Studio was the super-powered Mac mini many Apple fans were begging for. But, for the most demanding users, it was unclear if it was worth shelling out $3,999 for the high-end Mac Studio with an M1 Ultra chip, or if they should just wait for the inevitable Mac Pro refresh. Now that Apple has revamped the Mac Pro with an M2 Ultra chip, the company’s desktop lineup finally has something for everyone.

At the most basic level, there’s the $599 Mac Mini. If you need a bit more power, you can get that same slim machine with an M2 Pro chip for $1,299. Meanwhile, all-in-one fans have several iMacs to choose from, starting at $1,299 (though it’s probably worth waiting for an M2 spec bump).

That leaves the $1,999 Mac Studio as the ideal machine for Apple power users. It’ll be enough for video editing work, and it also comes standard with 32GB of RAM (it could use more than 512GB of storage, though). Step up to the $3,999 model with an M2 Ultra chip, and you’ve got a system that can destroy just about any task you put in front of it. The few professional users who need PCIe expansion can now opt for the M2 Ultra-equipped Mac Pro, which starts at an eye-watering $6,999.

All of sudden, the higher-end Mac Studio makes so much more sense. It has the same raw power as the Mac Pro, a ton of ports, and it won’t take up much room on your desk. What seemed like a curiosity last year, now feels like a tremendous value for power users. Funny how that works, isn’t it? (Apple reportedly shelved plans for an even more powerful M2 chip, which could have offered double the power of the M2 Ultra, according to Bloomberg.)

The base Mac Studio is now equipped with an M2 Max chip, featuring a 12-core CPU (with eight performance and four efficiency cores) and a 30-core GPU, as well as 32GB of RAM. Compared to last year’s M1 Max, the new chip has two more efficiency cores and six additional GPU cores. What’s most notable is the additional upgrade options: You can configure the M2 Max chip with a 38-core GPU and 96GB of RAM (previously you were capped at 32GB of memory).

Step up to the M2 Ultra and you effectively get two M2 Max chips: It starts with a 24-core CPU, 60-core GPU and 64GB of memory. If you want to truly push your system (and wallet) to the limit, the M2 Ultra can also be configured with a 76-core GPU and 192GB of RAM. With all that power, who needs a full-sized PC tower?

And really, that’s what I kept asking myself as I tested our review unit, which was equipped with an M2 Ultra and 192GB of RAM. The Mac Studio is so ridiculously overpowered, only the most demanding users would need the Mac Pro’s PCIe expansion. Since the M2 chips feature unified memory integrated alongside the CPU and GPU, there’s no way to add additional RAM down the line, which used to be another reason to get the Mac Pro. At least you can stuff the Mac Studio to the gills with RAM, if you need it.

Much like the M2 Max-powered 14-inch MacBook Pro, Apple’s latest chips deliver noticeable performance increases over the M1 generation in just about every benchmark. But it’s also not significant enough to run out and replace an M1 system. Instead, the new Mac Studio is an even more tempting machine for Mac users still trucking along with Intel processors, even for some Mac Pro owners.

In the Geekbench 5 CPU benchmark, the Mac Studio scored higher than any system we’ve tested this year. But really, that’s not a surprise – even last year’s M1 Ultra Mac Studio scored higher than the Razer Blade 16, which features Intel’s fastest mobile 13th-gen chip. Apple doesn’t always come out ahead: that Blade 16 beat the Mac Studio in the Geekbench 5 Compute benchmark, which you can chalk up to the NVIDIA RTX 4090 under the hood. Still, the Mac Studio’s multithreaded Cinebench R23 score (a test that mostly measures CPU performance) was more than double the Blade 16’s.

The new Mac Studio transcoded a 4K video file to 1080p using Handbrake in 21 seconds, three seconds faster than last year’s M1 Ultra model. That same job took the Razer Blade 16, the fastest PC we’ve seen this year, 26 seconds to complete. Scale that saved time up to a feature length project, or encoding jobs you’ll need to run several times a day, and the Mac Studio seems like a no-brainer upgrade for some creatives.

Years ago, some professionals would buy the Mac Pro for its sheer performance, while the internal expansion possibilities were more of an afterthought. The Mac Studio is a system made for them. And now, thanks to Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4, external storage options are fast enough to deal with the demands of a video production shop.