Apple did not disappoint when it comes to the performance of the Mac Studio, which is basically
a suped-up Mac Mini for creators. But after six months, do i think it was worth the purchase?
Was the upgrade to the M1 Ultra chip worth it? And who do i think should pick up a Mac Studio?
Let me start with that chip question first. The main reason I upgraded from my 2019 27 inch iMac
to the Mac Studio was one, to be on Apple’s M1 architecture. Because more and more macOS features
are now only available on Apple Silicon Macs. Second, I wanted to boost in rendering speeds and
export speeds for Final Cut Pro X, which is what I use to edit all of our videos on the channel.
Upgrading from the M1 Max to the M1 Ultra costs $1,400 US dollars, and while my rendering and
export speeds were more than cut in half compared to what they were on my iMac,
benchmarks from many outlets have showed that the difference in rendering speeds, depending
on the program you’re using, doesn’t always get you double the performance with the M1 Ultra.
This appears to be the case in Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere, based on the benchmarks I’ve seen,
though its been harder to find comparison benchmarks of these two chips after many
programs have been further optimized for the M1 Ultra like Final Cut Pro. In general
the single-core performance is relatively similar but the multi-core performance is
where M1 Ultra really shines. But for my use case, where I'm just doing YouTube videos,
I'm doing photo editing using Photoshop a lot and then just everyday computer tasks, based
on what I've seen of other people's experiences with the M1 Max Mac Studios, I honestly should
have just saved the $1,400 and gone with the M1 Max Mac Studio and then put that $1,400 towards
a Studio Display which pairs nicely with the Mac Studio and at a minimum costs $1,600 US dollars.
We just did a review of that display and I'll leave a link here in this
video to that review and in the description below in case you'd like to check that out.
So why, exactly did I splurge on the M1 Ultra? Well, it was March,
ship times were already slipping and I wanted to make sure I got a powerful Mac. So I kind
of panicked and bought a more expensive configuration then I actually needed.
But now it's been six months since the Mac Studio came out which means you don't have to make the
same mistakes I did because you're watching a 6 Months Later Review. And if you like the fact that
we only review products after six months, make sure you hit that subscribe button so you see
more six months later reviews on Apple and other tech products. It really helps out the channel.
One other thing that’s really confusing when configuring the Mac Studio is RAM
and GPU cores. How much RAM you really need with an Apple Silicon machine isn’t
necessarily comparable to Intel or AMD machines where the old adage the more RAM you give it,
the more headroom you have and the better your performance will be.
From what I've seen, that still technically applies to Apple silicon but because MacOS is so
well optimized for Apple silicon to use as little RAM as possible. 32 GB of RAM is going to go way
farther for you with an Apple silicon chip then an Intel-based Mac that you may be accustomed to.
However, the RAM is not upgradable like it was in my 27” iMac. So, whatever you pick,
you're going to be stuck with it. I think a lot of people for that reason will automatically go
with the 64 GB option, its $400 US dollars more and more importantly, it’s the middle option,
where consumers are typically always drawn towards when presented with a selection of choices.
But do you really need 64 GB of RAM in a Mac Studio? Actually, just based off a snapshot of
my typical workflow, where I've got Final Cut Pro X and some Adobe products open, some music
playing in the background and safari and chrome up. I'm actually using more than 32 GB of RAM
according to activity monitor. So, depending on how many things you like to keep open at one time,
it might actually be worth it to just go with the 64 GB option like i did, and let me know if you
have any advice on configuring Macs or if you have a Mac Studio, what configuration did you go with?
Leave a comment below. I'm curious to see your thoughts and it helps a lot of people out when
making a purchasing decision on such an expensive tech product like the Mac Studio. So what do
I really like about the Mac Studio? After six months of using one, first, the SD card reader.
It's my favorite thing with this machine outside of its sheer performance. With my old iMac, I was
constantly having to get up from my desk or even if I was standing, I’d have to like peer my head
around to the back of the iMac so I could slot the SD card in correctly and when you're doing
that and you have a lot of SD cards and you're doing this every single week, it gets tedious very
quickly. By moving the card reader to the front, it’s just so much easier to use now for people
like me who live off of these SD cards. Plus I’ve found this SD card reader to be much, much
faster at copying files than my old iMac, which has significantly sped up my editing workflow.
I also love the design that Apple went with for the Mac Studio.
It’s the perfect balance of a functional product that still has some sex in it with it’s elegrant
all alumnium design which pairs very nice with a Studio Display.It’s honestly a bit refreshing to
see Apple give users exactly the product they’ve been asking for. Not only do you get an SD card
reader and Thunderbolt 4 ports at the front if you have the M1 Ultra machine, otherwise
they’re USB-C ports which is honestly fine by me. You get 4 Thunderbolt 4/USB-C ports in the rear,
2 USB-A ports, which I still use for my legacy external hard drives for Computer Backups and
long-term video storage, 1 HDMI port, a 3.5 mm jack, and one 10Gb Ethernet jack.
This computer basically has like,
all the ports I'd want and it's also pretty portable for its size.
The Mac Studio is also dead silent, which i love, I don't think I’ve ever heard the fan turn on with
this machine, that's how quiet the fan is. Next, let’s talk about some downsides I’ve run into with
the Mac Studio and the first one is gaming. You could spec out a Mac Studio, well above
$4,000 dollars and still not get a great gaming experience compared to a Windows PC that costs
much less. MacOS has no support for Vulcan or OpenGL. Applications must support Metal natively.
Now, some major games are actually optimized for the Macand at WWDC this year Apple announced their
new version of Metal 3 and that Hello Games popular game No Mans Sky which will be coming
to iPadOS and MacOS later in 2022. So it's not like you can't play any games on a Mac.
In fact, the gaming experience on Macs seems to be getting better every year. So, what does this all
mean in 2022? In general, I would not purchase a Mac Studio or any Mac for that matter. For
gaming, even with the caveat being that some games do have native Mac support,
although whether or not their native Mac support is as good as their native windows support…
Some games are still going to run better on Windows even when you can run them natively on
MacOS. My favorite game Cities Skylines still runs terribly on the Mac Studio, so much so,
I went out and bought a dedicated gaming PC just for that game and it runs 10x better on the PC.
The next downside I've encountered with the max studio is actually dust. I lifted this thing up
off my desk and I noticed that there was just this ring of dust around the fan intake. Now
some of this might be due to me creating a lot more dust in my room from when I was filming
our BlueAir Dust Magnet review and trying to get shots of that device sucking dust out of the air.
But I still think its likely the majority of the dust I saw was just from normal use based off how
the intake grill is still accumulated dust after I cleaned it from the BlueAir Dust Magnet shoot.
Another downside I encountered with the Mac Studio is actually with the new keyboard Apple released
with it. Because a number pad is included, I found it actually can screw up your ergonomics a
bit because your hand has to move further to go to your mouse and back to your normal key positions
which is a bummer, I wish they had released a mini size of the magic keyboard, as well.
The last downside I’ve encountered with the Mac Studio is Bluetooth connectivity. If you purchase
the Apple Magic Trackpad, wireless keyboard and Magic Mouse and want to use your AirPods Max with
the machine all at the same time, I've noticed, i'll get audio cutouts, when wearing the AirPods
Max in this scenario. And that's likely due to the Mac Studio struggling to handle all of these
simultaneous bluetooth connections all at once. Also, it's extremely dumb, that Apple's current
Mac accessories still use the lightning port considering Macs have used USB-C for some time.
Next, lets talk Recommendations. In general, I think you’d go with the Mac Studio over a
Mac Mini if you need more graphics and CPU power to run more intensive tasks
like video and photo editing or you just like the design better and all the ports you get.
Now, if you're considering either a Mac Studio or a MacBook Pro, both are technically portable but
the MacBook Pro, that obviously can be used on the go. But the Mac Studio has better thermals
and a more powerful chip compared to the MacBook Pro. So that's something to consider as well.
And again, for most people, I think you're going to be fine getting a Mac Studio configured with
the M1 Max chip, especially if you plan to replace your computer every three to five years. If you
want to keep it longer than that or you need more power for specific use cases or applications,
that's where i look and getting the M1 Ultra, and when it comes to GPU core upgrades,
i don't think you should do the upgrade for either the M1 Max and especially not the M1
Ultra. From what i've seen from a lot of outlets that have tested all the different configurations,
for the Mac Studio, the difference in performance between machines that have
more GPU cores seems extremely marginal when you can consider the upgrade cost.
And that's why i didn't upgrade the GPU cores on my Mac studio.
And in terms of on-device storage, I’d recommend getting as much as your budget will allow for,
especially if you want your device to last past 5
years but want to do things like edit off the machine for example.
In general, I think a good rule of thumb is to double the storage amount on the computer
that you're replacing for the new computer that you're purchasing. So if you're old
computer was 1 TB, get 2 TB for the new computer. That's what i did with mine.
I configured it with 2 TB of storage and then I have two 4 TB SSD drives to edit off of, for
my editing workflows. If you want to learn more or purchase a Mac Studio or accessories for it,
like the studio display, magic mouse, magic keyboard, and magic trackpad,
I've left links in the description and here in this video. So make sure you check those out
if you'd like to learn more. Hit that thumbs up button if you like this video, found it helpful,
it really helps us out, and subscribe to the channel to see more six months later reviews.
And if you want to see more of our videos on Apple products,
check out the playlist to the right. For 6 Months Later, I’m Josh Teder, thanks for watching.