The Mac Studio is one of Apple's most powerful custom Apple silicon-based Macs, offering extreme performance and a wide range of ports in a compact, desktop form factor. The Mac Studio was updated in August 2026, so now is a good time to buy the Mac Studio.

The latest version of the Mac Studio uses Apple's M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips and they are Apple's fastest Macs to date. AI performance is up to 4.3x faster than the prior-generation Mac Studio, and graphics performance is up to 1.8x faster.

Up to 512GB RAM is supported, but right now the limit is 256GB because the 512GB option won't be available until October. Pricing starts at $2,499 for the M5 Max model and $5,499 for the M5 Ultra model.

If the Mac Studio is out of your price range but you still want a similar Apple silicon-based desktop Mac, there is the entry-level Mac mini with the M6 chip, which starts at $899, or the more powerful M5 Pro version that starts at $1,699. Apple also sells the iMac, which has a built-in display.

The Mac Studio is aimed at "studio" professionals, as the name suggests, and it uses Apple's most powerful M-series chips, the M5 Max and the M5 Ultra. The Mac Studio offers high-end performance in a less expensive and more compact form than the now-discontinued Mac Pro. Apple refreshed the Mac Studio in August 2026 with new chips, but kept the design and other specs the same.

Priced starting at $2,499, the entry-level version of the Mac Studio is equipped with an Apple M5 Max chip that features an 18-core CPU, up to a 40-core GPU, a 16-core Neural Engine, Media Engine, up to 614GB/s memory bandwidth depending on configuration, and up to 128GB Unified Memory. The more expensive $5,499 model is equipped with the M5 Ultra chip and up to 512GB Unified Memory.

The M5 Ultra chip is two dual-die M5 Max chips connected together to form a quad-die architecture, which Apple says is a first for Apple silicon. The combined dies work as a single unified processor. The M5 Ultra features up to a 36-core CPU with 12 super cores and 24 performance cores, and up to an 80-core GPU, along with a 32-core Neural Engine, 1.2TB/s memory bandwidth, up to 512GB RAM, and a 2x faster SSD.

According to Apple, the M5 Ultra CPU delivers up to 1.25x higher single-thread performance and up to 1.3x higher multithreaded performance than the M3 Ultra chip. The GPU has a Neural Accelerator for each core, offering up to 4.5x the peak GPU compute for AI compared to the M3 Ultra. The GPU also has a new shader core with second-generation Dynamic Caching, hardware-accelerated mesh shading, and third-generation ray tracing. Overall graphics performance is 40 percent faster than the M3 Ultra.

The M5 Ultra has an upgraded Media Engine with hardware-enabled H.264, HEVC, four ProRes encode and decode engines, and hardware-accelerated AV1 decode for video editing.

The Mac Studio features a square-shaped 7.7-inch all-aluminum enclosure that's 3.7 inches high. The size is meant to allow it to fit under most displays on the market, and the design has not changed between generations.

The Mac Studio has quiet operation, with a unique thermal architecture that pulls air in through the airflow channels on the bottom using double-sided blowers and pushes it out through additional perforations on the back and bottom of the chassis.

There are four Thunderbolt 5 ports at the back of the Mac Studio, along with a 10Gb Ethernet port, two USB-A ports, an HDMI port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack with support for high-impedance headphones. At the front, the M5 Max Mac Studio has an additional two USB-C ports and an SDXC card slot, while the M5 Ultra has two Thunderbolt 5 ports and the same card slot.

The Mac Studio with M5 Ultra supports up to eight 6K displays at 60Hz, or four displays with 8K resolution at 60Hz. The M5 Max model supports up to four 6K displays at 60Hz and one at 5K 60Hz, or two displays at 8K 60Hz and one display at 5K 60Hz.

The M5 Max version starts with a 512GB SSD and the M5 Ultra model starts with a 1TB SSD, but the M5 Max version is configurable with up to 8TB of SSD storage space and the M5 Ultra model can support up to 16TB.

As for wireless connectivity, the Mac Studio has an Apple N1 networking chip with Wi-Fi 7 for fast Wi-Fi speeds and the option to connect to 6GHz networks, Bluetooth 6, and Thread networking technology.

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The Mac Studio can be pre-ordered from the Apple website ahead of a launch on September 22. The M5 Max version is priced starting at $2,499, and the M5 Ultra version is priced starting at $5,499.

The M5 Ultra with 512GB RAM won't be available for purchase until late October.

The Mac Studio takes design cues from the Mac mini with an all-aluminum enclosure and unique thermal design. It uses the same "squircle" shape as the Mac mini, with a square-shaped design that has rounded corners.

It is essentially a taller version of the pre-2024 Mac mini, measuring in at 3.7 inches tall and 7.7 inches wide at each side. Apple says that it is sized to fit perfectly under most displays, including the Studio Display that Apple introduced alongside the first Mac Studio release.

The M5 Max version of the Mac Studio weighs 6 pounds, while the M5 Ultra version weighs 8 pounds. The extra weight in the M5 Ultra version is largely due to a difference in thermal needs. The M5 Max version has an aluminum heatsink while the M5 Ultra version has a larger copper thermal module.

To dissipate heat and allow for quiet operation, the Mac Studio has a series of airflow channels at the back and at the bottom. The machine pulls in air from the bottom and pushes it out through the more than 4,000 perforations at the back and bottom of the chassis to cool the internal components.

Ports

There are a total of 12 ports on the front and back of the Mac Studio. The back features four Thunderbolt 5 ports, a 10Gb Ethernet port, two USB-A ports, one HDMI 2.1 port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack that supports high-impedance headphones. There is also a built-in speaker to go along with the headphone jack.

Thunderbolt 5 supports transfer speeds of up to 120Gb/s, with DisplayPort 2.1 also supported.

The front of the M5 Max Mac Studio features an additional two USB-C ports along with an SDXC (UHS-II) card slot, while the front of the M5 Ultra Mac Studio includes two Thunderbolt 5 ports and the SDXC (UHS-II) card slot.

The M5 Max supports four displays up to a native resolution of 6K at 60Hz or 4K at 165Hz, plus a fifth display with up to 5K at 60Hz over HDMI. Alternatively, it supports two displays up to a native resolution of 8K at 60Hz or 5K at 120Hz or 4K at 240Hz, plus a third display with up to 5K at 60Hz over HDMI.

The M5 Ultra supports up to eight displays up to a native resolution of 6K at 60Hz or 4K resolution at up to 165Hz. Alternatively, it supports four displays up to a native resolution of 8K at 60Hz or 5K at 120Hz or 4K at 240Hz.

The Mac Studio supports genlock over USB-C, letting users precisely synchronize a display with a camera like the iPhone 17 Pro with no additional equipment.

The Mac Studio can be purchased with either an M5 Max or M5 Ultra chip. The M5 Max is the same chip that was first introduced in the 2026 MacBook Pro models, while the M5 Ultra is two M5 Max chips working together in tandem to form a single chip. The M5 Ultra is two dual-die M5 Max chips, forming Apple's first Apple silicon chip with quad-die architecture.

The M5 Max chip features an 18-core CPU with six super cores and 12 performance cores. It has up to a 40-core GPU with Neural Accelerators for each GPU core, a 16-core Neural Engine, and up to 614GB/s memory bandwidth, up from 546GB/s.

The GPU is up to 50 percent faster than the previous generation with third-generation hardware-accelerated ray tracing for more realistic lighting in design workflows, and the latest shader core technology for faster parallel processing.

Apple's higher-end M5 Ultra chip features up to a 36-core CPU with 12 super cores and 24 performance cores, for up to 1.3x higher multithreaded performance than the M3 Ultra chip. It has up to an 80-core GPU with Neural Accelerators for each core, a first for the Ultra chip line. The GPU offers 4.3x the peak AI compute performance compared to the M3 Ultra, and 1.8x faster graphics than the prior generation.

Apple says that the M5 Ultra is the fastest Mac chip that it has released to date, with the Mac Studio able to tackle the most intense workloads, including AI tasks.

Both the M5 Max and the M5 Ultra support Dynamic Caching, which allocates the use of local memory in hardware in real time, so only the exact amount of memory needed is used for each task. It boosts the average utilization of the GPU, increasing performance for demanding pro apps and games.

Clusters

Multiple Mac Studio models can be clustered over Thunderbolt 5 and RDMA to create a shared memory pool. A four-system cluster offers up to 3x faster AI inference than running the same task on a single system. The shared memory pool helps load the largest and most demanding frontier-class open-weight models available today.

Media Engine

The Media Engine in the M5 Max and M5 Ultra offers dedicated acceleration for the ProRes video codec, along with video encode/decode engines and hardware accelerated support for H.264, HEVC, ProRes, and ProRes RAW.

The M5 Max has a video decode engine, AV1 decode, two video encode engines, and two ProRes encode and decode engines, while the M5 Ultra has double that.

Unified Memory

The M5 Max Mac Studio supports up to 128GB unified memory when equipped with a 40-core GPU, while the M5 Ultra Mac Studio supports up to 512GB unified memory with the high-end model.

Storage

The M5 Max Mac Studio supports up to an 8TB SSD, while the M5 Ultra Mac Studio supports up to a 16TB SSD.

Connectivity

The Mac Studio models have an Apple-designed N1 networking chip with 802.11be Wi-Fi 7 support, Bluetooth 6, and Thread.

There are two base Mac Studio configurations available from Apple, one with an M5 Max chip and one with an M5 Ultra chip.

• $2,499 - M5 Max chip with 18-core CPU, 32-core GPU, and 16-core Neural Engine. 36GB unified memory, 512GB SSD, and two front USB-C ports.
• $5,499 - M5 Ultra chip with 30-core CPU, 64-core GPU, and 32-core Neural Engine. 96GB unified memory, 1TB SSD, and two front Thunderbolt 5 ports.

Build-to-Order Upgrades

The Mac Studio processor, unified memory, and SSD can be upgraded. The highest-end Mac Studio supports up to 512GB RAM and 16TB storage. The 512GB RAM option won't be available until late October, so the current maximum is 256GB RAM.

Apple plans to release an M7 Ultra Mac Studio with improved cooling in 2028.