Mac Studio review roundup: Still the fastest on the block
The initial reviews for the updated Mac Studio have arrived, with reviewers heaping praise on the M4 Max and M3 Ultra powerhouse.
Mac Studio
Apple launched its refresh of the Mac Studio on March 5, upgrading the latest iteration with its standard spec-bump update process. While it retains its appearance of a Mac mini on steroids, the new model gained some internal improvements.
This included replacing the M2 generation with M3 and M4 chips. Specifically the M4 Max in the lower-tier version and the M3 Ultra in the upper-tier variant. Aside from power, Apple also brought in Thunderbolt 5 support, supporting up to 120Gbps of bandwidth.
There are also considerably expanded memory and storage options, with configurations now going up to 16TB of storage and up to 512GB of unified memory.
Here's what the initial reviews for the third-gen Mac Studio say about Apple's latest update.
The Verge
In a first look for The Verge, Chris Welch insists the M3 Ultra's performance is "never going to be on the radar of most tech enthusiasts -- let alone your average consumer." While most people should be steered towards the M4 Mac mini or the M4 Pro version, the Mac Studio is for those "who already have an idea of just how it'll make their lives easier and more productive."
There are objective benefits to going for the M4 Max model, including single-core performance versus the Ultra, as well as cost savings. Both still deliver "breakneck performance while running shockingly quiet," even if the Ultra model is "overkill for many."
"It's for visual effects artists and animators. It's for professionals doing ambitious audio and video production work. Are you regularly crunching big medical datasets?" the piece concludes.
Gizmodo
Describing it as a "hefty little powerhouse," Sherri L Smith for Gizmodo insists the Mac Studio is "solidly in the realm of creative professionals and the AI coder wunderkinder."
The base model prices are "prohibitive for the average consumer," the piece starts, "and it only gets more painful as you look to expand the memory and storage. But, if your wallet can stomach it, the Apple Mac Studio is the new king of desktops for creative professionals and those with heavy-duty workloads."
A literal heavyweight Mac, the design is praised with its silver anodized aluminum exterior and rounded edges. The "mullet" port layout has the "party" at the back, and the power button placement is seen as sensible compared to the base-mounted Mac mini version.
"While I would have loved to get my hands on both iterations of the Studio, I have to say that the M4 Max will suffice for a lot of creative professionals," it is admitted. "I threw everything I had at the littlest tank, and it just laughed at my effort."
The review concludes with the Mac Studio being "in a class of its own" for performance, with the biggest obstacle for consumers being price.
TechRadar
"Aimed at a more niche market than a thin and light laptop," TechRadar's Matt Hanson describes the Mac Studio as "powerful, professional-grade computers that offer a level of performance that was once only found in Mac Pro," while still in a "stylish and compact body."
While it doesn't have the modular or upgradable elements of a desktop PC, some configurations won't need an upgrade "for a long, long time." The M3 Ultra was a surprise, and its highest performance in the Apple Silicon lineup makes things "a bit confusing," but praise is given to Apple for being transparent on the naming at least.
The true benefit of the new Mac Studio is "how it has the potential to speed up creative workflows. By helping you create, code, compile and more so much more quickly, it means projects can be completed more quickly. This could in turn reduce costs for large-scale businesses, and it also allows professionals to take on more clients."
The publication scores the Mac Studio at 4.5 stars out of 5. It "won't be for everyone," but it is "an incredibly impressive bit of kit that offers unrivalled results, especially when it comes to intensive graphical tasks."
Tom's Hardware
Brandon Hill of Tom's Hardware gives the Mac Studio the same score of 4.5 out of 5. Noting the identical design to the previous generation, the 2025 releases are easily equipped to handle workloads of creative professionals.
Benchmark results showed the M3 Ultra doing extremely well across tests, befitting its hefty expense and pricey upgrades.
"The Mac Studio is a fascinating product. For less than the cost of just a Xeon or Threadripper workstation processor, you can get a fully-functioning macOS machine with some serious horsepower under the hood," the review summarises.
While there are gripes about a lack of upgradability and the cost of increased memory and SSDs, the review concludes by declaring "the Mac Studio remains a compelling choice in a compact package."
PetaPixel
Trying out the M3 Ultra version, Jeremy Gray for PetaPixel says it's odd that the flagship "is a cross-generational machine," but that the M3 Max is still "the king of the Apple castle in terms of pure power."
The looks of the Mac Studio mirror the previous generations, but it is insisted that "this familiarity is not a bad thing, as the Mac Studio does not lack style." The switch to Thunderbolt 5 is a "welcome one," with that speed demonstrated to be useful in transfer tests.
The Mac Studio with M3 Ultra "is the best machine we've tested in Premier Pro," with the M4 Max version in second place. It's a similar story in DaVinci Resolve, with the M3 Ultra the first to break test milestones by a wide margin. By contrast, Photoshop doesn't seemingly benefit from the massive power uptick.
"It is challenging to recommend the Mac Studio with M3 Ultra to all but the most hardcore video editors," the report reasons. "The results show that the Mac Studio with M4 Max is almost as good as the M3 Ultra machine in Lightroom, Premiere Pro, and DaVinci Resolve. The difference between the two is not so significant that making the leap to M3 Ultra is an obviously smart move."
Ultimately, the M3 Ultra model isconsidered the best choice for video editors, but a tough sell for photographers.
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Comments
You might want to pay more attention to GB5 multicore -- it's nearly 50% faster.
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/23395021?baseline=23393292
It depends on the nature of your workloads, of course, but the GB6 multicore is more limited in the extent to which it can take advantage or more cores -- ie, Amdahl's Law hits it pretty hard. GB5 is more indicative of how 'embarrassingly parallel' workloads benefit from more cores.
For the same price as the base M3 Ultra Studio (ie, $4000), you can get two $2000 M2 Pro Mac minis with the 14 core CPU, 20 core GPU, 48 GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD (so, a total of 28 cores CPU, 40 cores GPU, 96 GB RAM, and 1 TB SSD).
The Studio has the advantage of an extra 20 GPU cores but the disadvantage of being M3 rather than M4.
My workloads want CPU more than GPU, so dual minis might actually make more sense for me.
I’m very glad that Apple produces the Ultra but the Max chip is the one for me. It actually exceeds my present use case requirements but the Pro chips bump up along my limits, so Max it is. With the MBPros and Mac Studios now sporting Thunderbolt 5, my hardware requirements for an upgrade are met. But since the point of said upgrade rests on monitors that don’t really exist yet, I will wait for their release before I truly struggle with “desktop or laptop?!” once again… I am optimistic that this will occur with the M5 generation APUs.
@Blastdoor I, also, am intrigued by your use case where, I assume, you wire two Mac minis together (Ethernet? Thunderbolt?) and also as to why, for the exact same price, having the exact same number of CPU cores make the mini more interesting than the Studio to you. Straight up that they are the faster M4 cores? I know that in AI neither Ethernet nor Thunderbolt has sufficient bandwidth to make two minis as efficient/competent as one Studio but I’d love to learn more!
Apple’s cores are good for this kind of work and surprisingly cost competitive. Plus I just like Macs.
It has 6 TB5 ports and an HDMI port. How is the 8th 6K monitor driven? TB5 daisy chaining?