we have been testing and using three mac
studios for over a week now and they are
incredible machines but with that said
they are not without fault so in this
video we're gonna cover the top
downsides and issues that we have with
this machine both things that we
discovered in our testing and things
that you guys shared with us so let's go
ahead and jump right into it this video
is focused on giving you guys all the
downsides so you guys can make an
informed decision on if this machine is
for you and of course we're actually
working on a triple comparison between
three different price points to help you
guys choose the right one for you and
talk about all of the benefits in a
different video so make sure you guys
are subscribed down below and with that
you can help us reach our goal of 1
million subscribers now the first one
that i have to talk about is something
that's just gotten a little out of hand
and that is the ssds that are built into
this device now this started out with
our full teardown the day that we got
the machines where we found that no the
ssds are not soldered onto the
motherboard it is actually
detachable you can take the stick out
and not only that there are actually two
slots one of which wasn't used this got
me saying that maybe and potentially in
the future you'd be able to upgrade your
storage where online apple says it's not
user upgradable so i thought just like
the mac pros you'd be able to buy those
ssds from apple take it to apple and
have them replace it for you because
they definitely don't want you opening
this thing up there are a ton of screws
the power supply is exposed you should
not do that now of course this got crazy
blown up in the media that the ssds
could be upgraded and then when we found
out that well it's locked down there was
a lot of disappointment now we've talked
about this in the past that these are
actually not full ssds these are storage
modules which pretty much get linked
together
in order to create your ssd so one that
is a downside you cannot upgrade it and
we know that there is enough room inside
of here apple could have added m.2 slots
to allow you to upgrade that or even
just come out now and said hey guys this
is getting blown out of
proportion we will allow you to upgrade
it but you'll have to buy it from us and
have us install it or say hey that will
never happen make sure you purchase the
right amount that you need either way in
a desktop machine it would be nice to
have some upgradeability but at this
point you just need to buy an external
ssd we recommend the new sabrine we made
a whole video about it it's extremely
fast over thunderbolt or usb type c so
if you want to check that out want to
find the best solution how do you make
this yourself and save some money too go
ahead and check out that video after
this one the second one is the fact that
the performance is limited even on the
24 core base model
which does not heat up at all it is
insane now with the macbook pros that
came out we saw that there were some
thermal throttling and limitations due
to these powerful chips being in small
laptops that are battery powered and
have to be cooled down and we saw that
the chip actually slows down to three
gigahertz instead of 3.2 running at full
blast like the m1s do but we figured
that is because of cooling and things
like that and with this machine having
this amazing cooler they would actually
allow you to use the full performance
and no we found that no matter what we
did
this two thousand dollar model actually
ran slightly slower in certain tests
than a macbook pro on battery power it
still had the same limitations running
at three gigahertz at full blast and in
some cases where uh the system would
throttle down for example the graphics
wouldn't run at full 1300 it'd run at
about 1250 or so
we still had that same slowdown in this
machine even though the gpu was running
at like 61 degrees celsius full blast
and the cpu at 71 that's after an
extended test that's maxing everything
out it pretty much shows that this chip
is limited exactly like the macbooks are
there's a profile set for power usage
and different things like that that's
not limited by thermal performance or
fan noise or battery anything else
that's just how apple programmed it so
they could have gave us more performance
in the system
higher frequencies no limitations but
they didn't so either they want the
performance to be the same across from
the laptops or the desktops or they're
just keeping it capped so that when the
m2 comes out that will have a much
bigger boost both in terms of different
architecture and improvements and core
counts and actually being able to clock
up higher in frequency which they
definitely plan for as far as wattage
and thermals now the third one is the m1
ultra on stage they showed off this
beautiful huge new chip and said that
because of their interconnect with the
crazy high bandwidth the system sees
this as one chip instead of two
different graphics modules like sli for
example with nvidia and so you get the
full performance without any bottlenecks
well with our testing we see that we're
not getting proper scaling and even
worse if you're buying an m1 ultra and
you're spending the extra to get the
full 64 cores that they showed off on
stage which is a thousand bucks that
actually has about 33 percent more
graphics cores compared to the 48 core
model so you think you get extra
performance especially in benchmarks
right well in gfx bench metal which is
very well optimized we are only seeing a
16
increase in performance instead of 33
more cores
and in 3d marks wildlife which is also
optimized we're seeing a difference of
20 and that is just gpu limited so the
scaling is not perfect now to prove this
in our craziest test the highest wattage
we saw used was 87 watts and on stage
apple showed up a graph saying it's
capable of
105 watts and then with that if we take
these same graphics course and we look
at the m1 that only has eight that
actually runs at 15 watts so when you
scale all the way up to 64 you should be
getting
120 watts total to get the peak
performance but we are only seeing 87
which is why the performance is also not
scaling very well so there's definitely
something going on and we know that
thermal limitations aren't there it's
running super cool insanely cool like i
said 61 degrees celsius when we were
just hitting it super hard for an
extended amount of time and the fan was
at idle which is insane so the scaling
isn't working out as well as apple kind
of talked about now with that with that
we also are making that triple
comparison to actually show you the
increase in performance for real world
tasks not just benchmarks and how much
more performance you can expect if
you're spending the extra for them on
ultra or especially the extra thousand
bucks for the full unlocked one so if
you guys want to see that make sure your
notifications are enabled now the next
one we have to talk about is software
and this is a huge disappointment for me
software sees that the same chip that
they had before just more cores
but we are not getting the great best
performance overall we are doing our
benchmark tests right now and what we
see is that final cut it hasn't been
updated for four months now and all the
tests that apple showed on stage as far
as final cut and the performance of it
it was using pre-release software
whereas right now they have not given us
those they gave it to the reviewers that
apple sent the machines to but not to
the public so right now this system is
still locked down it's been over a week
and we don't have the software that can
fully utilize it so some software is
being updated but one of what i want to
let you guys know of is that just
because you're buying the best high set
hardware doesn't mean that you're
actually going to be able to use all of
that performance for example affinity uh
for photos that is insanely fast but
it's also not taking advantage of the
extra hardware the scores are very
similar to the 48 core so make sure that
you know that if you're buying a mac
studio and you're buying the m1 ultra
especially the highest n1
don't expect to get good scaling and
don't expect your software to be able to
make use of that performance just yet
keep that in mind now the other things i
want to talk about are a little bit more
simple but they are downsides for
example we have this hdmi port on the
back we got all these ports but this
hdmi is still in hdmi 2.0
now i understand that on a mac mini or
maybe a cheaper macbook it's not a huge
deal you have a lot of different
connections and stuff like that or you
might upgrade it it's more for the basic
user but if somebody's spending 5 600 or
up to 8 grand on one of these machines
they're gonna have it for a long time
and apple they're not updating the hdmi
they could
uh and with that their bluetooth is
older some of the other chips are older
and that's a bummer if you're gonna buy
a system and have it for you know three
four five some people even keep these
for 10 years if you're buying a high-end
system with spending a lot of money it'd
be nice to have the latest connections
that have been out for years now to make
it more future-proof and the next one is
the amount of ram that is paired with
these chips now on one hand it kind of
makes sense because it's all built into
a package but on the other hand when you
are upgrading to that m1 ultra and
you're going from 2 grand you're jumping
all the way up to 4 grand which is crazy
and a lot of that cost is not only the
chip but also because you have to
upgrade your ram as well the minimum is
64 gigabytes now sure i guess it kind of
makes sense to have more ram if you want
more performance but we also have done a
ton of testing and we show that 32 gigs
of ram performs identical to 64 in
almost all the cases even when you're
running parallels and you're running
windows you're running games and
benchmarks in windows and mac at the
same time you're just throwing
everything you can with tons of tabs
insanity with your system the difference
is almost not there because the unified
memory architect architecture is just so
insanely efficient and fast and the ssds
are fast so having to spend the extra
money just to go for the ultra makes it
such a big jump that makes it kind of
tough now i wish that you could still
get 32 gigs with the m1 ultra make it a
lot more affordable now we know that
apple they're good at making you spend
money the ram upgrades are expensive if
it's built into the motherboard it's
expensive but now they have another step
up on how to get you to spend more money
because you don't have the option
anymore to have a lower amount of ram if
your program doesn't need it but more
graphics performance on the other hand
if you do need more graphics performance
so that is a bummer and that leads me
into the price tag of these things now
for two grand you're getting a great
deal at the base price point the m1 max
the 24 core you have enough ram ssd it's
a killer deal but it's such a big jump
from the mac mini whereas for a lot of
people they cannot justify it so it
would be nice to have something in
between maybe with the m1 pro at the
middle price tag now we know that
apple's working on something like this
they are gonna address that need we're
not sure exactly when hopefully soon but
that will probably have the m2 chip
which is going to have faster single
core performance and better efficiency
and maybe maybe better scalability as
well so if you're having a hard time
spending that 2 grand
or even more so if you want to do
upgrades i would say just hold off a bit
wait on buying one of these mac studios
and see what apple offers some there
right there in between and then of
course as far as the price once again
like i mentioned you're locked into
those extra upgrades with high prices to
go up to the higher end models and
overall the system gets very expensive
once you add in the keyboard the mouse
and the display so there you guys go
those are our top issues with the mac
studio some of these are major issues it
could be a big issue for you some of
them don't matter as much people have
their own opinions but we're putting it
out there overall this machine is really
nice especially if you can afford it and
you can use the performance and your
software can use the performance we're
glad apple's getting back into desktops
so you go ahead and make sure you guys
click that circle above if you guys want
to see that triple comparison showing
you the difference in performance in the
real world with a bunch of applications
and our full review check out one of
those great videos right over there this
has been max maxtec and i'll see you in
the next video
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