Some people like laptops for the portability. Others prefer a desktop for the all-out power it’s able to pack. If you’re a MacOS user, that power is exactly what you can get from the new Apple Mac Studio.
Billed as “the ultimate pro desktop,” the mini-PC is being touted to deliver 2.6 times faster scene rendering, 1.4 times faster 8K video rendering, and 16.9 times faster LLM token generation than the original M1 Ultra Mac Studio. Whether you need a machine for video editing, 3D modeling, or some other resource-demanding application, this thing should offer the power you need to churn through your demanding workflows.
The 2025 Apple Mac Studio comes in two configurations: a base model that houses an M4 Max and an upgraded variant with an M3 Ultra. That’s right, they offer it with two different generations of processing power, with the last-gen chip actually being the top-end configuration, which is, admittedly, a little confusing. Why is that? According to Apple, the Ultra chips are specialty processors that effectively mate two chips together using the outfit’s “Ultrafusion” technology, which is why they deliver so much more power (the M3 Ultra is supposedly two times faster than the fastest M4 Max), despite using designs from the last generation.
The M4 Max version has a 16-core CPU, a 40-core GPU, a 16-core neural engine, and up to 128GB of unified memory, with the latter boasting over 546 GBps of bandwidth. It can also get up to 8TB of SSD storage, while supporting up to five displays at the same time (four 6K at 60Hz displays and one 4K at 144Hz). Out front, it gets two USB-C ports and an SDXC card slot, which is an asbolute necessity for a multimedia powerhouse like this one. It’s worth noting that the M4 Max brings Apple’s advanced graphics architecture to the Mac Studio, enabling features like hardware-accelerated mesh rendering and a second-gen ray-tracing engine.
The 2025 Apple Mac Studio M3 Ultra model, on the other hand, can be outfitted with a 32-core CPU, an 80-core GPU, a 32-core neural engine, up to 16TB of SSD storage, and up to 512GB of unified memory, with 819 GBps memory bandwidth. It supports up to eight 8K/60Hz displays simultaneously, although you can also opt for eight 4K/144Hz displays if you prefer the higher framerate. Out front, it gets two Thunderbolt 5 ports and an SDXC card slot.
Both machines comes with a load of other ports in the back, namely four Thunderbolt 5 slots, two USB-A 3.0 ports, an HDMI 2.1 port, a 10GB Ethernet connector, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Other features include a built-in speaker, high-impedance headphones support, native DisplayPort 2.1 output support over USB-C, Wi-Fi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.3. It retains the same compact housing that make the Mac Studio so easy to integrate into workspaces, with the whole thing measuring just 7.7 x 3.7 x 7.7 inches (width x height x depth).
Pricing for the 2025 Apple Mac Studio starts at $1,999 for the lowest spec of the M4 Max and $3,999 for the lowest spec of the M3 Ultra.
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