Apple Mac Studio Blows Mac Pro Out Of The Water
Apple revealed a pair of Mac devices that might very well bring the company to a new golden age of desktop computing. The Mac Studio andApple’s Studio Displaywill be available for purchase separately, but the company has effectively pushed the pair as a unit. The Mac Studio has the same desktop footprint as a Mac Mini and is more powerful than a Mac Pro,with a price tag that reflects such. The Apple Studio Display is optimized for the power the Mac Studio brings and also delivers a power-to-price ratio that’s just right.
To be fair, it’s not as if Apple’s released a wide variety of monitors in the past. They only really have theApple Pro Display XDRas a premium device and no device in the “mini” category. With the only monitor Apple has in stock costing thousands, the Pro Display XDR can finally give some shelf space to a slightly more affordable piece of hardware. The Mac Studio also fills a major void in Apple’s desktop device collection: a powerful computer that’s not too large, not too small, and priced just right.
Hardware specs for Mac Studio
The Mac Studio desktop machine works with an up to 20-core CPU, up to 64-core GPU, with M1 Max and M1 Ultra chip options. Apple says it offers up to 7.4GB/s storage performance, up to 128GB memory, and up to 800 GB/s memory bandwidth. Above you’ll see the new Apple Studio Display with boththe most recent iteration of the Mac Miniand the Mac Studio nearby. This device looks very much like a taller iteration of the Mac Mini (2020), with a squircle shape from above, and mostly smooth, flat sides, all in a single light metal. The Mac Studio has its own SDXC card slot up front near two USB-C ports and a power indicator light.
Around the back are four more USB-C ports (Thunderbolt 4), 100Gb ethernet, full-sized HDMI port, full-sized headphone jack, two full-sized USB-A ports, a physical power button, a power jack, and a grille for airflow the built-in speakers, featuring Spatial Audio.
Mac Studio performance, plus price and release date
Apple also suggested that a Mac Studio with M1 Max inside delivers “up to 50 percent faster CPU performance than Mac Pro with a 16-core Xeon processor” and “3.4x faster graphics performance than the 27-inch iMac.” Likewise, the company claimed that the Mac Studio with an M1 Ultra processor enables “up to 3.8x faster CPU performance than the fastest 27-inch iMac with 10-core processor.” Apple made clear that this device was an absolute monster, suggesting that the M1 Ultra Mac Studio was “up to 12x faster than the 27-inch iMac, and up to 5.6x faster than 28-core Mac Pro when transcoding video.” We’ll need to test real review units to see how accurate these relatively broad claims are, but one thing seems clear enough already: Mac Studio is no slouch.
The Mac Studio powered by M1 Ultra has a starting price of $3999, with 64GB unified memory and a 1TB SSD. The Mac Studio powered by M1 Max will have a starting price at $1999 USD. There’ll be a whole lot of options available for configurations and pre-orders start March 8. The full release date for Mac Studio is March 18. These dates are the same for the Studio Display, which will retail for $1599 on its own.
