Apple just launched its new Mac Studio alongside the latest MacBook Air. The new Studio comes equipped with either an M4 Max or an M3 Ultra chip, and while it sounds mighty powerful and fully capable of rivaling some of the best Macs, it’s also crazy expensive. If you want to configure it with all the bells and whistles Apple offers, you’ll have to pay over $14,500 — a huge increase over the previous generation.
The new Mac Studio is certainly nothing to turn your nose up at. The M4 Max configuration starts with a 14-core CPU, 32-core GPU, and a 16-core neural engine. You’re also getting 36GB of unified memory and 512GB of SSD storage. This will set you back $1,999, which is the same as the last-gen Mac Studio that came equipped with the M2 Max and the M2 Ultra chips, so we’re all good.
The M3 Ultra version — which, although the naming might be confusing, is indeed more powerful — starts at $3,999. Again, this is the same as the previous generation, although the specs go up significantly. Buying the M3 Ultra Mac Studio gives you a 28-core CPU, a 32-core neural engine, and a 60-core GPU. The base version sports 96GB of unified memory and 1TB of SSD storage, so it’s a solid upgrade compared to the M2 Ultra equivalent.
Price-wise, it’s all downhill from here — or should I say, uphill.
Let’s say you’re after the best of the best. In the case of this particular workstation, that means upgrading to the M3 Ultra chip (with a 32-core CPU, an 80-core GPU, and a 32-core neural engine). Next, you’d pick the 512GB unified memory upgrade, which is only available with the top M3 Ultra and costs $4,000 all on its own. Lastly, 16TB storage, which is also an expensive upgrade — switching from 1TB to 16TB adds $4,600.
These hardware upgrades alone add up to an eye-watering $14,099. That’s Mac Pro levels of pricing, and is a lot more than the previous generation, which maxed out at $8,799. You can make this slightly more expensive (because why not, at this point) by adding pre-installed software — Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro — adding up to a total of $14,598.
While $14,600 is a lot to spend on anything, especially a PC, it’s worth noting that the Mac Studio is aimed at professionals who really need that kind of power for their day-to-day workloads. Still, Apple went all-out on the pricing, and the increase from $8,799 to over $14,000 is definitely significant.