// WIRED US/UK — HARDWARE & GADGET

Apple Mac Studio (M5 Ultra) Review: Unlimited Power

Published: 10/01/2026, 10:00 AM

The Mac Studio has a new calling in life. For awhile, it seemed like overkill for just about anyone, regardless of profession. But these days, computers with over 64 GB of RAM and tons of GPU performance have an entire playground of on-device AI tools to exclusively explore. With a Mac Studio, you can have a full-on agentic AI framework, generate high-end video all on-device, or run the latest foundation-level large language models (LLMs). The Mac Studio is relatively unique among the available options—at least, for now. But beware: If you're tired of hearing about AI, turn away now. Apple has always catered to a high-performance crowd, and with the surge of interest in local AI, its systems are uniquely set up to excel in that area. But first, the box itself. It's about as tall as a coffee mug, but it's a 7-inch-square footprint. I bet most people have never seen a Mac Studio in person, and if you get the chance, you might be surprised by how large it actually is. The Mac Studio remains the only Mac to keep USB-A ports around. That alone's worth the souped-up $11,000 model, right? (That's a joke). Here, you get two, along with four, Thunderbolt 5 ports, Ethernet, HDMI, and a headphone jack. You can connect up to four 5K external displays at 120 Hz using the Thunderbolt and HDMI ports, if that's your jam. Interestingly, as compared to the Mac Mini, the Studio swaps the front-facing headphone jack with a full SD card slot. Photographers and videographers will appreciate that. I do wish the Mac Studio came in more than one color, such as Space Black. Still, the Mac Studio comes in two distinct versions. The M5 Max model starts at $2,499, which comes with 36 GB of memory and 512 GB of storage. This is the reasonable configuration, designed for content creators, game developers, and media professionals. One way to think about it: It delivers the same performance as the MacBook Pro with M5 Max, but for substantially less money. There's a $1,250 difference in price even when similarly configured. The other benefit is that Apple offers more expandability in storage and memory options on the Mac Studio than on a MacBook Pro. But that's not the model I tested. The configuration I was sent for review is that aforementioned $11,000 model, with the M5 Ultra processor and unified memory maxed out to 256 GB. That's definitely the most expensive computer I've ever had on my desk, but it's not even the priciest Mac Studio configuration you can get. The M5 Ultra is the most singularly powerful chip Apple has ever made (yet), and its first quad-die chip. It's absolutely massive. Over its high-speed interconnect, it essentially stitches together two M5 Max chips, for a total of 36 CPU cores. Think of this as the equivalent of Apple's $3,299 Studio Display XDR in terms of use case. It's extremely targeted. Regardless of the configuration, the Mac Studio's true power comes from its obscene number of GPU cores and unified memory. You can configure it with anywhere from 36 GB to 256 GB of memory (a 512 GB model is coming in October), and up to 80 GPU cores. Let's be real—only AI enthusiasts and AI developers need more than 64 GB of memory. If that's you, there's reason to be excited about this version of the Mac Studio. While you've always been able to configure it with up to 256 GB of unified memory, the M5 Ultra adds unprecedented GPU performance to the mix. It has twice as many GPU cores as the M5 Max, the same amount as the previous M3 Ultra. Don't think of the M5 Ultra as providing the same uplift as upgrading from the M5 Pro to the M5 Max, which is a more modest upgrade that focuses primarily on GPU performance. But two generations of GPU improvements in the Ultra chips have made each core more powerful, in both gaming and AI. Notably, each GPU core now includes a Neural Accelerator, a feature of the entire “M5” family of chips that further enhances AI workload performance. The astounding part about the Ultra is that, in some cases, i