Apple’s new Mac Studio has spawned a whole new category of desktop computers for the company, offering some incredibly powerful capabilities that can tackle even the most demanding photographers and filmmakers. can also throw at them, all at prices that start significantly below the Mac Pro Series, making it an impressive value. In this review, we will take a look at the new computer and its capacity.
Mac Studio Overview
Footprint
Mac Studio is small – really small when you consider how much computing power is contained inside. Its length and width (7.7 inches each side) is the same as the Mac mini, while its height (3.7 inches) is roughly the same as two and a half Mac minis stacked on top of each other. All in all, it’s quite compact and feels like home on your desk, next to your monitor, on a shelf or anywhere you want to put it.
Connection
Connectivity is aplenty on Mac Studio. On the back you’ll find four Thunderbolt 4 ports, 10 Gb Ethernet, two USB-A ports, and one HDMI port. Even better, though, is the front panel with two Thunderbolt 4 ports (USB-C on the M1 Max model) and an SDXC UHS-II reader. This is a pretty welcome addition, as it means there’s no need to reach behind the computer to offload images from a memory card or to connect peripherals. The two front ports also deliver up to 15 W of power, as do the rear Thunderbolt 4 ports. And, of course, you can easily extend that connection with a Thunderbolt hub.
Between the four Thunderbolt 4 ports and the HDMI port, the Mac Studio can support up to five external displays, including four 6K displays and one 4K display, combined for a total of nearly 90 million pixels. Inside, you’ll find Wi-Fi 6 with speeds up to 1.2 GB/s, along with Bluetooth 5.
internal
This is where things get really interesting. Apple’s M1 Silicon has impressed many, and Mac Studio takes it to the next level with the new Max and Ultra chips.
M1 Max
The M1 Max, first seen in the MacBook Pro, is built on a 5nm process and has 57 billion transistors. It has a 10-core CPU with eight high-performance cores and two high-performance cores and offers 2.5x the performance of the fastest 27-inch iMac. With that, users can choose from a 24- or 32-core GPU that delivers up to 10 teraflops of performance, an impressive 3.4 times faster than the Radeon Pro 5700 XT in the same iMac.
The M1 Max configuration comes with 32 GB or 64 GB of unified memory providing up to 400 GB/s of bandwidth (six times faster than the M1). The M1 Max also features a 16-core Neural Engine that delivers up to 11 trillion operations per second. Its SSD operates at up to 7.4 GB/s, and its media engine adds ProRes acceleration, allowing Mac Studio to outpace even the 28-core Mac Pro with Afterburner for 4K playback. and 8K ProRes.
M1 Ultra
For advertisers who want the best, the M1 Ultra offers a class-leading level of performance. Essentially, Apple puts the two M1 Max chips together using a process called UltraFusion, which allows the two chips to act as one with respect to software. This results in a 20-core CPU with 16 high-performance cores and 4 high-performance cores, providing performance up to 3.8 times faster than the fastest 27-inch iMac and 1.6 times the performance of the Mac Pro with Xeon 28 core processor. With that, users can choose from a 48- or 64-core GPU that delivers up to 21 teraflops of performance, 4.5 times faster than the Radeon Pro 5700 XT in the aforementioned iMac, and 1.8 times the performance of a flagship GPU. in Mac Pro, Radeon Pro W6900X.
The M1 Ultra configuration comes with up to 128 GB of unified memory with up to 800 GB/s of bandwidth. It also has a 32-core Neural Engine that delivers up to 22 trillion operations per second. Finally, its media engine allows it to stream up to 18 simultaneous 8K ProRes streams while leaving the CPU and GPU free for other tasks. Impressive tool.
Use energy
One of the most exciting aspects of Apple’s transition to Silicon is the dramatic increase in laptop battery life. That power efficiency translates to the desktop side, with the M1 Max offering the same performance as an equivalent 10-core PC chip while consuming 65% less power. Likewise, the M1 Ultra offers the same performance as an equivalent 16-core PC chip while using 100 W less power and can deliver 90% more efficiency in the same power. The same efficiency gains are seen on the GPU side of things.
While you’re obviously not going to worry about battery life here, that power efficiency has two benefits. With the average cost of electricity in the US at 10.42 cents per kilowatt hour, over the course of a year, up to $50-100 in energy savings can be achieved depending on usage. Second, it means the computer remains significantly cooler and is noticeably quieter as a result. That’s especially important for people like me, who do a lot of audio work and need their space to be as quiet as possible, even under demanding computing conditions. Even with heavy use, I never noticed any noise from Mac Studio.
Environmental impact
Mac Studio uses 100% recycled rare earth elements in all magnets. The AC plug and power cord plug use 100% recycled copper and zinc. The housing is made of 80% recycled aluminum and the logic board uses 100% recycled tin. Finally, the packaging uses 90% or more fiber packaging, with all virgin wood fibers coming from responsibly managed forests. Apple is currently carbon neutral for its global operations and plans to have a climate-zero impact across all businesses by 2030.
Valuation
Mac Studio starts at $1,999 for M1 Max version with a 10-core CPU, a 24-core GPU, and a 16-core Neural Engine, plus 32GB of unified memory and a 512GB SSD. The Version M1 Ultra starting at $3,999 for a 20-core CPU, a 48-core GPU, and a 32-core Neural Engine, along with 64GB of unified memory and a 1TB SSD.
Use
So how powerful is the new Mac Studio for real-world use? Oh my God. Let’s dive in.
My Configuration
For my tests, I’m using the M1 Ultra model with a 27-inch Apple Studio Monitor. My model is equipped with a 64 core GPU and 128 GB of unified memory. For comparison, I compared the Mac Studio to my current computer, a 2018 Mac mini, the last one from Intel Mac. My model was mostly maxed out at the time, with a 3.2 GHz 6-core i7 processor, 64 GB of 2,667 MHZ DDR4 RAM, a 1 TB SSD, and an 8 GB Radeon RX 580 in the eGPU box. It runs very smoothly, although high-resolution video projects, large Photoshop edits, and audio projects with lots of virtual tools and plug-ins will start to slow it down.
Watch the video again
To start, I played some 8K (8,192 x 5,456) ProRes 444 footage. To give an idea of the quality, we’re talking more than 4 GB for six seconds of video. My Mac mini tried bravely, but still crashes, drops lots of frames, and maxes out CPU usage.
Then I played back an 8K file on Mac Studio and it ran like butter. So I added another one. And another. And then another. Before I knew it, I had dozens of 8K ProRes 444 files playing back simultaneously. All of them played back as smoothly as possible, with no stuttering or frame drops. The CPU meter barely budged, at 5% usage. The fans didn’t even rise to the point of being audible. That is completely absurd.
Edit video
Followed by some raw 8K RED footage in Final Cut Pro, no proxy. The file is 8,192 x 4,320 at 24p and weighs about 1.65 GB for 10 seconds of footage. I added some effects and adjustments, including contrast, color grading, vibrancy, basic tone adjustment, random bokeh and a similar filter, just to push the effect envelope. capacity. One of the coolest features of Final Cut Pro is that you can just hover over an effect and move it from left to right and it will play your clip with the added effect so you know roughly what it is. will look like before you add it to the workspace.
Final Cut Pro played the clip with all the adjustments and effects added without dropping a single frame, and the CPU meter has never topped 4% in doing so. Just for fun, I added two more 8K raw clips and one 8K ProRes clip on top of the original and composited them all. Final Cut Pro continues to play them without proxy and without any hiccups. Showing a 10-second clip in 8K takes about seven seconds.
Lightroom and Photoshop
Next is working in Lightroom (with Apple’s original silicon version). Lightroom usually works smoothly on my Intel Mac, but I often have that two-second glitch while it shows a preview when I zoom in or while I wait for it to think while using the Healing tool. While those delays rarely last longer than a second or two, they are disruptive enough to disrupt your workflow, as I’m sure our readers know well. The good news is that they don’t exist on Mac Studio at all. Lightroom absolutely flew through any mission I threw at it. It’s a real quality of life improvement, as it allows you to “be in the zone,” so to speak, knowing the computer will update any creative idea you want to try.
For a more quantitative assessment, I assigned Lightroom two tasks, importing and rendering 1:1 previews for 117 raw photos and full-size JPEG export for 235 raw and edited TIFF files, each with sizes from 35 to 45 megapixels.
The export test went on for 17 minutes and 48 seconds on my Intel Mac and usually gives it pause for any other task. On Mac Studio, the same test took just 3 minutes 39 seconds, almost 5 times faster. Also, despite maximum CPU usage, the fan isn’t making any noise, the case doesn’t feel warm at all, and the computer is still usable for other tasks during export.
During the import test, I imported 117 102-megapixel raw files and asked Lightroom to show a 1:1 preview of all of them. In total, this took 3 minutes and 38 seconds on Mac Studio. On my Intel Mac mini, the same task took 14 minutes and 41 seconds, making Mac Studio slightly faster. Again, though, I couldn’t get the machine to make the slightest bit of noise and it remained cool to the touch.
I’ve seen a similar performance boost in Photoshop. Filters that usually take a few seconds to show up on my Mac mini gave immediate results on Mac Studio. The quality of life improvement is similar to what I mentioned about Lightroom: I don’t have to wait for the computer to catch up with my creative thinking anymore. It has been with me no matter how much I ask.
Conclude
What I like
- Amazing power
- Small footprints
- Powerful connectivity options
- Efficient use of energy
- So many possibilities for the price
- Very cool and quiet operation: I have yet to get my Mac Studio to make fan noise
- Impressive attention to environmental impact
Epilogue
You may have noticed that there’s no section on what I don’t like, and that’s because there isn’t much to say. In the past, for desktop users who wanted a lot of power but wanted to use their monitor, there wasn’t much of a middle ground between the Mac mini and Mac Pro lines. Apple not only filled that void, but raised the entire platform to many levels with its silicon. The regular M1 Macs offer impressive performance that will satisfy the needs of many creatives, while the M1 Pro, M1 Max, and M1 Ultra models offer frankly absurd levels of performance that often surpass iMacs top-tier and even Mac Pro and do so for a fraction of the price.
All that power is about more than simply getting things done faster and more efficiently. It brings significant improvements to the quality of life. Being able to work right away on a large set of images or videos instead of waiting for previews and proxies to render makes one’s workflow significantly more efficient and uninterrupted. There’s a lot of value to be had there. And such a high level of capability keeps Mac Studio future-proof for years to come and makes it an impressive value for such a powerful professional computer, especially with an entry point of $1,999 . You can buy yours this.
