Mac Studio: Everything you need to know

The Mac Studio is an entirely new Mac desktop computer. Together with the Studio Display, users can build the customized studio of their dreams. It’s ideal for musicians, producers, 3D artists, app developers, photographers, videographers and other professionals who demand a lot from their computers. Here are all the details we have so far about the Mac Studio.

What is it?

The Mac Studio is a desktop computer, similar in size to the Mac mini with a footprint of 7.7-by-7.7 inches but thicker (3.7 inches high). It’s powered by the M1 Max and the all-new M1 Ultra chip. The performance, connectivity, and new capabilities are unlike previous computers Apple has offered. For example, users can render massive 3D environments and play back 18 streams of ProRes video.

Internals

The thermal design features double-sided blowers, airflow channels, and over 4,000 perforations on the back and bottom to move air and cool the high-performance chips. Yet it remains quiet. You can get either the M1 Max or M1 Ultra inside the new Mac Studio. The Mac Studio with M1 Ultra can play back 18 streams of 8K ProRes 422 video, unlike any other computer on the market. Mac Studio also offers up to 64GB of unified memory on the M1 Max model and up to 128GB unified memory on the M1 Ultra model. The SSD in Mac Studio gives you up to 7.4GB/s of performance and a capacity of up to 8TB, so you can work on huge projects without sacrificing speed or performance.

M1 Max performance

With the M1 Max model, you’ll get:

• Up to 2.5x faster CPU performance than the fastest 27-inch iMac with 10-core processor.
• Up to 50 percent faster CPU performance than Mac Pro with a 16-core Xeon processor.
• Up to 3.4x faster graphics performance than the 27-inch iMac, and over 3x faster than Mac Pro with its most popular graphics card.
• Up to 7.5x faster than the 27-inch iMac, and up to 3.7x faster than 16-core Mac Pro when transcoding video.

M1 Ultra performance

With the all-new M1 Ultra chip, you’ll get:

• Up to 3.8x faster CPU performance than the fastest 27-inch iMac with 10-core processor.
• Up to 90 percent faster CPU performance than Mac Pro with 16-core Xeon processor.
• Up to 60 percent faster CPU performance than 28-core Mac Pro.
• Up to 4.5x faster graphics performance than the 27-inch iMac, and up to 80 percent faster than the fastest Mac graphics card available today.
• Up to 12x faster than the 27-inch iMac, and up to 5.6x faster than 28-core Mac Pro when transcoding video.

Connectivity

The Mac Studio has four Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) ports on the back so you can connect displays and high-performance devices. There’s also a 10Gb Ethernet port, two USB-A ports, an HDMI port, and pro audio jack. Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 are built in. On the front of the Mac Studio, you’ll find two USB-C ports, which support 10Gb/s USB 3 on the M1 Max and 40Gb/s Thunderbolt 4 on the M1 Ultra. There’s also an SD card slot on the front.

The Mac Studio provides excellent display support. You can connect up to four Pro Display XDRs plus a 4K TV. The all-new Studio Display is a perfect complement to the Mac Studio.

Price

The Mac Studio with the M1 Max chip starts at $1,999. The Mac Studio with M1 Ultra chip starts at $3,999.

Release date

You can order the Mac Studio today, and it will begin arriving to customers on Friday, March 18.