Mac Studio Review – A boost in power, gives it more power than you can use

I used to think I was someone who needed a pro level desktop setup, I do hours of Video editing and production each week, audio production as well as my daily tasks, so the Mac Studio is perfect for me right? Well, sure, but I think I’m barely touching the sides of what this thing can really do.

On my desk in the EFTM Studio for well over a year now has been a Mac Studio – the one with the M2 Ultra chip and oh boy, 24 Core CPU, 76 Core GPU this thing was humming – figuratively, not literally because I never heard it make a sound.

I’m exporting hour long videos in just minutes and frankly felt the price was unquestionably justifiable based on that efficiency.

Enter last week’s newly announced Mac Studio with M3 Ultra. Leaving aside the strange generational mis-step of the M3 Ultra not being an M4 Ultra, we’re now talking up to 32 Core CPU and 80 Core GPU and if you need it, 512GB of unified memory.

The entry price of the Mac Studio which goes on sale today is $3,499 – the unit I’m testing, an eye watering $18,549. 8TB of storage, 512GB of memory and the full 80 Core GPU.

And I don’t know what to do with it.

Seems I need to perhaps move to the Apple Final-Cut editing workflow because in my testing using Adobe Premiere, the render and export time for a 1.5 hour video was about 12% better on this M3 Ultra than on the M2 Ultra.

Even the new Thunderbolt 5 ports – six of them – are impossible to imagine. Up to 12GB/s speeds for data transfer, My NAS and Thunderbolt portable drive are limited in what they can do, let alone the cable between them – so I need to explore and invest in some new stuff there to take full advantage.

If you love stats, I went from a 131,364 GPU Score on Geekbench up to 144,541, and a jump from 2736/21,559 CPU score to 3011/27,290.

For those that work in more intense workflows like computer graphics, animation even video graphics this device will be your rolls royce. Personally, I feel like I’ve been handed a Ferrari for my simple run to the shops, even though I thought it was a complex task, in fact it’s a walk in the park for even an older generation.

Mac Studio re-affirms Apple’s dominance of the professional market, graphic designers, video editors, film studios – this is the device to have.

What’s most staggering to me is that with this stunning performance we’re yet to see Game publishers bring their titles to the Mac. Yes, I know there are some “AAA” games on Mac and Coming, but why wouldn’t Call of Duty, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Horizon, Spider Man, epic titles that would play so well with this power – because no gamer will spend this money? Insanity, they are spending huge on PC rigs that don’t hold a candle to this perfromance.

Put simply, while Apple does demonstrate games on these devices to show features like ray-tracing and image generation, the real power of this device is in the 3D modelling, Effects and Animation space, that’s their core market.

No average home needs a $3,499 computer that doesn’t even come with a keyboard or mouse, let alone a display – Apple’s Mac Mini is made for that situation and costs far less.

But, it’s undeniable what Apple has produced here with the Mac Studio and M3 Ultra chip. Will there be an M4 Ultra? I doubt it. I think we might skip a generation before we see that hit the Mac Studio lineup.

If your business budget allows it, my first pick for a new comptuer would be Mac Studio.