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00:00All right, I think we're set.
00:11Hey guys, Anton of TechJab, and this is it.
00:14The brand new Mac Studio, and it's essentially a Mac Mini, but on steroids.
00:20It's not very often Apple introduces a whole new product range, and this kind of fills
00:26the gap between a Mac Mini, or maybe an iMac, and a Mac Pro desktop.
00:31And it is simply stunning, it really is.
00:33They've kind of reinvented what a desktop PC can be, or at least what it looks like.
00:38And while I know there's going to be a lot of eye-rolling as tech reviewers drool over
00:42the new Apple products, I get it, I do.
00:44And while this does actually pose a bit of a dilemma, which I'll come back to in a second,
00:48right now, if you want the most powerful Mac you can buy that also happens to be in a pretty
00:53compact box that neatly fits under your monitor, then this is it.
00:59Look at that clearance.
01:00It's almost as if they knew what they were doing over at Apple.
01:03This I should say is also the new Studio Display, which is very nice, but I will be doing a
01:08separate review on that.
01:10But this video is all about the Mac Studio, and you too can have this shiny aluminium
01:15box on your desk for the cool sum of ÂŁ2,000, which is actually the same in dollars, although
01:21if you do want the M1 Ultra version of this, then, well, you can double that.
01:26And design-wise, it looks very much like two Mac minis on top of each other, and it actually
01:31feels incredibly dense.
01:33There's also a genuinely impressive range of ports on this thing, including Thunderbolt
01:374, HDMI, Ethernet, headphone jack, even a couple of USB-A ports, and round the front
01:43we have two more USB-Cs, although on the M1 Ultra version they are also Thunderbolt, as
01:47well as a fast SD card reader, which I found incredibly useful actually, as I've edited
01:52this entire video on this Mac Studio.
01:56The M1 Max version of this weighs 2.7kg, whereas the M1 Ultra, for some reason, actually weighs
02:023.6kg.
02:05In fact, the extra couple of pounds, or 900g, is due to the M1 Ultra model having a larger
02:10copper thermal module, versus the Max's aluminium heatsink.
02:15But surprisingly, whether you go for the Max or the Ultra, they're both rated at the
02:19same 370W, which is actually about half what you'd expect from a modern Windows desktop
02:25PC.
02:26I genuinely don't know the answer to this, but how can an M1 Ultra version of this have
02:30the same Max power draw as an M1 Max version?
02:34I mean, the Ultra is essentially two Max's superglued together, it's a bit more complicated
02:39than that, and we'll come to it in a second.
02:41One theory I have is that perhaps they're underclocking the Ultra a little bit to save
02:46some headroom for the upcoming Mac Pro, which might come out later in the year.
02:51It's absolutely insane the kind of performance we get from this in a form factor this size,
02:56while only drawing a maximum of under 400W.
03:00Even more incredible is the fact that over there, on my desktop PC where I have an RTX
03:06that thing under load actually takes more power, or about the same amount, as this entire
03:11Mac Studio combined.
03:12And that's before the processor and all the extras and the SSD and RAM and all that business.
03:17So this review model sent by Apple has the M1 Ultra, as well as 128GB of unified memory
03:23and 4TB of storage.
03:25Quite a beefy spec, but let's talk about the M1 Ultra for a second, because as I say, this
03:29is essentially two M1 Max's on the same chip, and everything is doubled.
03:34Double the CPU and GPU cores, double the neural engine cores, also support for double
03:39the memory, and also the media engine in the Ultra has twice the power for encoding and
03:44giving you up to 18 8K ProRes video streams simultaneously, if you want.
03:50So if you are thinking about buying one of these, there's a few big questions.
03:53Firstly, what's the difference between the Max and the Ultra?
03:56Of which I cannot tell you because I currently do not have an M1 Max version of this, but
04:00I have bought one myself and it should be coming soon, so I'll be doing a separate
04:04versus video.
04:05The second question is, just how fast is this?
04:08Apple have some crazy claims about being up to three and a half times faster than an iMac
04:13and twice as fast as a top spec Mac Pro in some situations, so I'm going to put this
04:17to the test.
04:18And thirdly, the big question, should you actually buy it?
04:21Well, to help answer that a little bit, while as I say, I don't have the M1 Max Studio,
04:26I do have this.
04:28It is the MacBook Pro 16 with the M1 Max, and while it is not a like for like comparison
04:33because this has double the memory, 128 gigs versus 64, and also bear in mind that the
04:38Max version of this will probably be faster than the Max version of this because they
04:42don't have to, you know, cram it into a laptop chassis with all those constraints and also
04:48have it run off a battery.
04:49But let's have a bit of fun with this, comparing the fastest MacBook Pro 16 you can buy to
04:54the fastest Max Studio.
04:56And in Cinebench R23, we're looking at a 95% boost in multi-core, that's nearly twice
05:02as fast.
05:03Although, as you can see, single core is actually the same.
05:07So really the only CPU boost here comes down to having more cores.
05:11But then jumping into a bit of blender, the dedicated CPU test of this renders 30% faster
05:16on the Max Studio, whereas it's 83% faster in the GPU test, which is huge.
05:23But what about video editing?
05:24Well, your mileage may vary depending on whether you edit in Premiere, DaVinci or Filecut.
05:29But to test it, I ran the extended Puget Premiere Pro benchmark, which replicates a
05:34project with 4K and 8K footage.
05:37It tests how fast the timeline is, adding effects, rendering, all that good stuff.
05:41Now these results are interesting because the Max Studio overall is 36% faster.
05:46However, when you break it down, actually the effects and the GPU scores are 61 and
05:5251% higher respectively.
05:54So really it's these graphically demanding tasks that are seeing the biggest benefit
05:58with the Ultra.
05:59So this is that Puget test running now, and I actually ran this a few times on both because
06:04I had some weird results, particularly on the MacBook Pro 16.
06:07I actually found for some reason this was scoring roughly the same as this until I then
06:13broke it down.
06:14It was actually the live playback score, which seemed to be much higher on this and therefore
06:19across the average boosted the performance, which I couldn't really understand.
06:22What was this live playback?
06:24Why is this faster than that?
06:26Well, it's the screen.
06:27This is a 120Hz ProMotion screen, whereas this studio display is still sadly 60Hz.
06:34So to remove that variable, I switched this down to 60Hz and then we had the results I
06:38showed you a second ago, which make a lot more sense.
06:41But it kind of raised an interesting point that yes, playback is faster when you have
06:45a smoother 120Hz refresh rate.
06:47And so while again, this is for a separate review video, as nice as this is, there are
06:52benefits to actually editing and working on a Mac screen or on a high refresh external
06:57monitor.
06:58Anyway, I digress.
06:59Let's jump over to Adobe Lightroom and in my test of exporting 500 RAW photos taken
07:05on my Sony A7S III to JPEGs, it took the MacBook Pro 2 minutes and 10 seconds versus just 1
07:11minute 4 on the Mac Studio, which is almost exactly half the time, which considering it's
07:17a CPU intensive task makes sense considering we have twice the number of cores.
07:23And finally, while Macs really aren't meant for gaming, in Shadow of the Tomb Raider maxed
07:27out at full HD, we're looking at a slightly more modest but still impressive 35% boost.
07:33So to the surprise of absolutely no one, yes, the M1 Ultra in here is faster than the M1
07:38Max in here.
07:39The true test will be a Max versus a Max, which as I say, I don't have just yet.
07:44But it is interesting to see just how much of an upgrade we are seeing with that M1 Ultra
07:48and also how well it's utilised.
07:50And remarkably, since most of this space inside is taken up by the cooling system and fans,
07:55it is actually incredibly quiet.
07:57During my test, I heard it maybe once during the end of one of my benchmarks and that was
08:02barely audible, whereas the MacBook Pro 16, which itself is already very quiet, the fans
08:07did get louder at the same point in the test.
08:10So we have performance for days and it stays cool and quiet.
08:14The thing is, everyone has different workflows, so it can be kind of hard to quantify what
08:18this performance actually means for you.
08:21But let me just show you what I'm doing right now.
08:23So this is what I'm looking at.
08:24I have my Premiere Pro edit, my project, and this is actually 4K, 10-bit, 422, H.264 footage,
08:32which doesn't play back nicely on anything really except a top-spec MacBook Pro or indeed
08:37this Mac Studio.
08:39I'm also blender-ing, as you can see here, I've got my little ripple water going.
08:44At the same time, nine more streams of that same 4K, 10-bit video.
08:50Now you can see that is not playing back smoothly.
08:52I have apparently found the limit of what this machine can do, but if this was ProRes,
08:57it would be a totally different story.
08:59If we jump over to the activity monitor, you can see that we really are maxing out that
09:03RAM, 119 gigs of the 128 being used.
09:07So if you do want to pay more for RAM, it is certainly utilized.
09:12Let's do one more little test, and this is Octane X, and I've got some of the default
09:17projects here.
09:18So let's jump over to the hallway render target, and it is chugging away rendering nicely,
09:25as you can see.
09:26Let's see how long it takes.
09:28This is the Mac Studio, 11 seconds to fully render that frame, all right?
09:34So let's see how long this takes, 18 seconds versus 11.
09:42The Mac Studio wins.
09:44But let's back up for a second.
09:45How have Apple done this?
09:47Well, firstly, I think Apple's design and engineering teams need to meet up with their
09:51marketing teams, because we had the M1, then the M1 Pro, then the M1 Max, and now obviously
09:57we have the M1 Ultra, because Ultra is higher than Max.
10:00I don't know what comes next, maybe the M1 SuperDuper Deluxe Legendary Edition or something,
10:06I don't know.
10:07All M1s are based on Apple's own silicon, which uses a 5nm architecture, and so the
10:13transition from Intel is almost complete.
10:16Only the 27-inch iMac and the Mac Pro still use the old tech.
10:20But then we thought, oh, well, we're going to see a new M2 chip, perhaps, to replace
10:25the MacBook Air and the iMac, the 27-inch, which is very old now and not worth buying.
10:30But no, instead we have the M1 Ultra, which is, as I say, essentially two Maxes in one.
10:35But crucially, thanks to the crazy high bandwidth, and also the fact that software and apps only
10:40see this as one chip, not two Maxes, there are no optimizations or app updates required
10:46to fully take advantage of it.
10:48Which is a massive deal, because as you guys know, if you're a PC gamer or you just have
10:52a desktop PC, there's been issues with SLI, graphics cards, and also in some cases those
10:58Intel Xeon workstations where you had two CPU chips in the same PC.
11:03There were so many issues and driver problems, and you did not get twice the performance,
11:08sticking two GPUs in there.
11:10I don't even think the R6 3000 series support SLI anymore, but in the past, if you whacked
11:15in another 2080 with your 2080, you might get 15%, 20%, 25% boost.
11:20It is a genuine technological revolution, not only the M1 architecture, but the fact
11:25that they can combine them into one SoC, and there are no problems.
11:29And it scales almost perfectly.
11:31You may still have bottlenecks elsewhere, and not all apps are fully optimized to take
11:35advantage of this kind of performance, but across the board, whether you're rendering
11:39in Octane or Blender, editing in Premiere or Final Cut, and yes, even gaming, the Ultra
11:44in here is a significant step up, and right now it represents the best performance you
11:49can get on a Mac.
11:50But that is until we see a new Mac Pro desktop, which I suspect we will see at WWDC, not that
11:57far away, and I would be a bit concerned about dropping between ÂŁ2,000 and ÂŁ8,000
12:02on this if you need that kind of performance for your workflow, and then in just a couple
12:06of months, a Mac Pro desktop comes out, which no doubt will be more powerful because of
12:09the, well, thermal headroom, and it's not constrained to this tiny little box, and also
12:14it's going to be a lot more flexible and upgradable, yes, more expensive, but if you're buying
12:18this for the performance, and you're not that bothered about it being a small rectangular
12:22box you can fit in a backpack, then it might be worth waiting for the Mac Pro.
12:26Having said that, part of the charm of the Mac Studio is this size.
12:30You can take it home and to the office, you can drop it on someone else's desk and just
12:34plug it in, you can put it in a backpack, although I think Apple maybe needs to offer
12:38a little square sling bag for this, or travel case, although they'd probably charge $500
12:43for it.
12:44So let's talk about money, because I think the entry level, the base model of this is
12:48actually not bad value.
12:50For two grand, you get an M1 Max with 512 storage and 32 gigs of unified memory, which
12:55is a lot of money, but a similarly specced MacBook Pro 14, for example, would set you
13:00back $2,800, although of course with that you do get a nice screen, keyboard, touchpad,
13:05you know, it's a laptop.
13:06But if you need M1 Max level of performance, I think that base model is ideal, although
13:11maybe up the storage to 1TB as nothing in here is upgradable.
13:15You can add an extra 8 GPU cores for 200 quid if you like, but the jump up to the M1 Ultra
13:21is not just this whopping ÂŁ1,400 it says here, but it also insists that you have 64
13:26gigs of memory and 1TB of storage.
13:29So the minimum an M1 Ultra Max Studio will cost is four grand.
13:34One thing I actually didn't realise until I've been using this for a while is that it
13:38has built in speakers.
13:40I've obviously been using this studio display most of the time, but you can see if I go
13:45to the sound settings, we have the Mac Studio speakers, which come out the back.
13:55They're terrible, but they're useful for just basic use or for when you're first setting
13:59it up or if you haven't got anything else.
14:01Ideally, you'd want to use a proper setup like this display.
14:14So should you buy it?
14:15Well, no.
14:1699% of people, no.
14:18That is what the Mac Mini is for with the M1 chip, which is still very capable and for
14:22about 700 quid.
14:24That is for most people.
14:25But then as it says on the tin, this is the Mac Studio and it's meant for professionals,
14:30designers, renderers.
14:33Most professionals and businesses will be paying for this on their company credit card
14:36and then having the tax write off as it's a business asset.
14:39But on the flip side, as I say, I am a bit worried about how this will compare with the
14:44Mac Pro.
14:45But I think it might be worth waiting and seeing.
14:47Don't forget though that you are literally just buying this box, which also comes with
14:51a power cable, nothing else.
14:53So you will need a monitor.
14:54It doesn't have to be this one, but maybe this one.
14:57And of course, keyboards and trackpads.
14:58Apple actually sent over their new black and silver keyboard, which is the Touch ID model
15:04and also the very nice matte black surface touchpad and of course the magic mouse, which
15:10still has that ridiculous underneath, underneath, underneath lightning charger.
15:15No actual design changes, just a fancy new color.
15:18So let's wrap up.
15:19And we have a lovely design, all the ports you'd need, incredible performance, especially
15:24with the Ultra, but even the Max is beyond pretty much everything else out there.
15:28It also uses significantly less power than an equivalent Windows desktop with a high
15:32end GPU.
15:34Plus it stays cool and quiet.
15:35And actually I don't think the base model is terrible value for money.
15:39Downsides?
15:40Well, it can get very expensive, especially with the Ultra.
15:43There's also no upgradability at all.
15:45Still, I've got to say, I am blown away by this.
15:48Coming from the old Intel and AMD powered Macs of the past with their jet engine fans
15:54and overheating and throttling issues, where it always made sense to go for a Windows desktop
15:59PC where you can obviously upgrade it and buy the components yourself.
16:03These days with the component shortages, how expensive GPUs are, and also just the optimizations
16:09of the software, the hardware, their own architecture, all in this form factor.
16:14It's just a kind of beautiful harmony.
16:16And I would recommend it if you are on the lookout for a, well, studio high performance
16:21compact Mac.
16:22But what do you reckon?
16:23Would you be tempted to buy one of these or not?
16:26Let me know what you make of it in the comments below.
16:28And if you did enjoy this video, a like and a subscribe would be very much appreciated.
16:32And stay tuned for my full review of this and also my upcoming comparisons between this
16:37and the Mac's version, and also this and my desktop gaming PC.
16:41Thank you so much for watching guys, and I'll catch you next time right here on The Tech
16:45Chat.