Mac Studio: Everything We Know

The Mac Studio is Apple's newest Mac product line, positioned as a cross between a Mac mini and a Mac Pro, as well as a potential replacement for the now-discontinued 27-inch iMac. Designed to look like a taller version of a Mac mini, the Mac Studio is aimed at "studio" professionals, as the name suggests, and it uses Apple's most powerful M-series chips.

Apple says the Mac Studio is meant to provide "outrageous performance, extensive connectivity, and new capabilities" in a super compact form, transforming any space into a "studio."

Priced starting at $1,999, the more affordable entry-level version of the Mac Studio is equipped with an Apple M1 Max chip that features a 10-core CPU, 24-core GPU (upgradeable to 32-core), 16-core Neural Engine, Media Engine, 400GB/s memory bandwidth, and up to 64GB Unified Memory. The more expensive $3,999 model is equipped with an all-new M1 Ultra chip.

The M1 Ultra chip is essentially two M1 Max chips connected together on a single die and able to perform as one chip, which Apple calls UltraFusion architecture. It features a 20-core CPU and a 48-core GPU (upgradeable to 64-core), along with a 32-core Neural Engine, 800GB/s memory bandwidth, up to 128GB Unified Memory, and a Media Engine that's twice as fast.

According to Apple, the M1 Ultra's CPU is up to 3.8x faster than the highest-end Intel Core i9 iMac (which has now been discontinued), and up to 60 percent faster than the 28-core Mac Pro with Intel Xeon W processor. As for the GPU, the M1 Ultra is 4.5x faster than the 27-inch iMac and 80 percent faster than the highest-end Mac Pro with AMD Radeon Pro W6900X graphics.

The M1 Ultra supports playback of up to 18 streams of 8K ProRes 422 video, which Apple says no other personal computer in the world is able to do, plus it offers performance on par with top-of-the-line PC chips and graphics cards at a fraction of the power.

Designed to look like a taller version of the Mac mini, the Mac Studio features a square-shaped 7.7-inch all-aluminum enclosure that's 3.7-inches high. The size is meant to allow it to fit "perfectly" under most displays on the market.

The Mac Studio is designed for quiet operation, with a unique thermal architecture that pulls air in through the airflow channels on the bottom using double-sided blowers and pushes it out through additional perforations on the back of the chassis.

There are four Thunderbolt 4 ports at the back of the Mac Studio, along with a 10Gb Ethernet port, two USB-A ports, an HDMI port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack with support for high-impedance headphones. At the front, the M1 Max Mac Studio has an additional two USB-C ports and an SDXC card slot, while the M1 Ultra has two Thunderbolt 4 ports and the same card slot.

The Mac Studio supports up to four 6K Pro Display XDRs along with one 4K display over HDMI. The M1 Max version comes with a 512GB SSD and the M1 Ultra model comes with a 1TB SSD, but both are configurable with up to 8TB of SSD storage space with read speeds up to 7.4GB/s.

As for wireless connectivity, the Mac Studio has Wi-Fi 6 for the fastest Wi-Fi speeds, and it supports Bluetooth 5.0.

The Mac Studio is designed to be paired with Apple's matching $1,599 Studio Display, a 27-inch 5K resolution display that has a built-in 12-megapixel camera with Center Stage support, as well as high-quality microphone and speaker arrays.

Apple has the Mac Studio available for purchase now, with the machine set to deliver to customers beginning on March 18.