Is Apple's new Mac Studio worth the upgrade? Let's break it down

It’s never a good sign when I start writing an article about a new product announcement and my biggest concern is whether I’ll be able to complete the article with my credit card intact.

My daily driver is a well-equipped Mac Studio, but it’s getting a few years old now, and I’ve noticed it running out of steam for some of my complex 3D models and occasionally when doing video production.

Also: The new iPad Air with M3 is here – with an updated Magic Keyboard to match

I chose not to buy the tiny-but-mighty M4 Mac Mini, despite how adorable it is, because it lacks a front SD card slot, which I use constantly. But as of today, Apple is introducing a new Mac Studio, and this thing has heft in all the right places.

So there’s a real question about whether or not I can keep my credit card safe and sound, give myself a few months for the news to sit in and to save up, or whether sometime in the next hour or two, I’m going to find myself in a bit of debt, once again, to Apple’s overlords.

What’s a Mac Studio?

Put simply, the Mac Studio is the desktop Mac that pros have always wanted. While many people connect their laptops to big monitors when docked, some folks crave machines with gobs of memory, an almost unlimited pile of ports, and hefty power.

For years, the choices were a little challenging to navigate.

The iMac often had the right amount of power and ports, but you had to deal with Apple’s screen, which never seemed big enough. If you chose to add a second screen, you still had that big beast taking up space.

For about a year, I had my then fairly long-in-the-tooth maxed-out iMac sitting face down on a shelf next to my desk so I could use monitors I preferred.

Also: Apple’s new MacBook Air M4 is a multiscreen lover’s dream, and it’s only $999

The Mac Pro was simply ludicrous. After about a decade of a practical tower design, Apple introduced a machine that resembled a trash can. It didn’t tolerate much in the way of add-ons, and it was very expensive. Then Apple introduced a redesigned Intel-based Mac Pro, and it was a study in wildly expensive compromise.

In 2023, Apple used the same form factor, but introduced a barely expandable Mac Pro based on the M2. It was, essentially, a bigger Mac Studio.

The other desktop Mac option in the years before the Mac Studio was (and still is) the Mac Mini. I’ve bought at least ten of these machines because they have excellent price/performance, a good selection of ports, and you can use them in a wide range of applications without them taking up too much space.

But then, in 2022, Apple introduced the Mac Studio. It was the same shape as the pre-M4 Mac Minis, but had the ability to run the fastest processors, mondo-gobs of RAM, and lordy-lordy, did it have ports. It even had (it still makes me weep with happiness) an SD card slot on the front of the machine.

It was glorious.

So, in 2022, I spent $3,799 and bought myself an M1 Max-based Mac Studio with 64GB and 4TB internal storage.

For the past six months, though, it hasn’t been enough. I’ve been waiting. And now, it’s here.

The new 2025 Mac Studio

At WWDC in 2023, Apple did introduce an M2-based Mac Studio, but there wasn’t a big enough jump in power to justify spending the price. At that time, I hadn’t started hitting walls on my M1, and by the time I did, Apple was shipping M3 and M4 devices — but not a Mac Studio based on either chipset.

That brings us to today. Apple is shipping two variants of the new Mac Studio, one based on the M4 Max and one based on the new M3 Ultra. And yeah, there’s an M3 that’s newer than the M4. Someone in Apple’s product marketing needs a good scolding for that.

Beyond the processors, there are other spec jumps in the new Mac Studio, but it looks and feels just like the M1 and M2 generations. So let’s talk about those two processors.

Also: Meet the M3 Ultra: Apple’s most powerful chip yet offers big leaps in performance

Here’s the key point: Apple’s Ultra series chips are essentially two complete chips in a single package. The M3 Ultra is fundamentally two M3 Max chips, grafted together.

That means you need to think about processes and tasks to get your head around which is for you.

Apple is only providing benchmarks in comparison to the M1 Max I have in my Mac Studio. According to them, the new one is 3.5 times faster. But a key point is that, all other things being equal, the M4 Max will be faster than the M3 Max.

That means that processes that run well on one chip will be faster in the M4 Max version of the Mac Studio. But grafting the two older-generation chips together means that the combined processor can address double the RAM, and for certain parallelizable tasks (including AI), the doubled processor will massively speed up workloads.

Keep in mind, though, that just adding that chip will add $2,000 to the price of the machine. It’s a big leap for a fairly special-purpose configuration. I’ll come back to price in a minute.

Let’s just finish up with the one other spec that makes this interesting: Thunderbolt 5.

The new Mac Studio has Thunderbolt 5. The 2022 and 2023 models had Thunderbolt 4. Assuming you have devices that can handle it, Thunderbolt 5 is about three times faster than Thunderbolt 4.

So you get four Thunderbolt 5 ports (which also support USB-C), two USB-A ports, an HDMI port, two front-facing USB-C ports, and that front-facing SD card slot.

Oh, yeah, and it supports Apple Intelligence. Yay?

Let’s talk pricing

The base-model M4 Max Mac Studio starts at $1,999. That gets you a 14-core CPU, 32-core GPU, and 16-core Neural Engine (AI processor). It also gets you 36GB RAM, a paltry 512GB SSD storage, and all those ports.

By contrast, the machine based on the M3 Ultra starts at $3,999, but you get a 28-core CPU, 60-core GPU, and 32-core Neural Engine (AI processor). It also gets you 96GB RAM, 1TB SSD storage, and all those ports.

If you want to upgrade the M4 Mac Studio with more memory, you have to spend $300 first to upgrade the M4 Max chip to a 16-core CPU and 40-core GPU. Then you can buy expensive memory and storage.

To match the configuration I bought back in 2022, my price would now be $3,899. The extra hundred bucks over my spend back in 2022 is because what’s now a $300 jump in chip price for a few more cores was a $200 jump back then.

Also: M3 MacBook Air vs. M2 MacBook Air: Which Apple laptop should you buy?

What’s a bit daunting to me is that the machine I’d buy now wouldn’t be spec’d with a mere 64GB RAM. That’s part of what I’m bumping into. If I wanted to move from 64GB to 128GB RAM (the max that the M4 Max supports), my price would be $4,699.

You can see why I’m going to try to hold out a little longer and save my pennies.

But then we get to the Ultra model. This bad boy increases the max out for RAM and SSD. Instead of maxing at 128GB RAM, it can go all the way to 512GB. And instead of maxing out with an 8GB SSD, it can go all the way to 16GB.

Are you sitting down? Because if you want to max out your RAM all the way, you first have to upgrade that M3 Ultra from 28 CPU cores to 32 CPU cores and from 60 GPU cores to 80 GPU cores. Those cores don’t come cheap. That’s a $1,200 upgrade on top of the $2,000 the M3 Ultra costs on top of the base Mac Studio.

Bottom line, if you want the top-of-the-line Mac Studio with all the fixin’s, you’re looking at a bill of $14,099. That’s still a lot less than Mac Pro pricing, and it will definitely get you a powerhouse. But it’s way, way out of my reach. Fortunately, I don’t need that much power. If you do, you know who you are.

For now, my credit card is safe

Readers regularly tell me that they find it helpful when I share my reasoning for buying or not buying something. Obviously, everyone’s needs are different, and I am a bit of an edge case with my gear purchases. But the thinking process I use can be incorporated by almost everyone.

So here’s my thinking.

$5,000-ish is a lot of money. I finished the project that was straining my current Mac Studio, and nothing I’m doing right now is causing it difficulty. Preorders start today, and shipments and store availability will begin next week, on March 12.

Typically, when I’ve ordered Macs from Apple, they arrive within a week or two. So I’m going to wait until I’m working on (or about to work on) another project that will strain my device. Knowing there’s a suitable machine available reduces some of the stress, and as soon as I know I’ll be needing more horsepower, I’ll pony up the bucks.

Are you considering upgrading to the new Mac Studio, or does your current setup still meet your needs?

Do the M4 Max and M3 Ultra options make sense to you, or is Apple’s chip naming convention just confusing? How important are features like Thunderbolt 5 and expanded RAM to your workflow?

And when it comes to pricing, do you think Apple is offering good value for the power, or is it pushing the limits of what professionals will pay? Let us know in the comments below.

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