THE 2022 MAC STUDIO: APPLE'S BEST COMPUTER EVER?

Apple's new Mac Studio may be what you need to upgrade your home office to a professional digital creator space.

- CULLEN THOMAS

Sporting the powerful M1 Max or the new M1 Ultra processing cores and 64 or 128 gigabytes of unified memory, these are systems designed for power-hungry users with demanding workloads.

The Mac Studio is a great professional investment for workspaces with high-computation needs, like researchers and digital artists. The M1 Ultra is a beast of a processor, comparable in raw processing power to the current Mac Pro lineup, for much less money. That said, part of the excitement of the M1 Ultra is what it promises to do in a Mac Pro chassis, with all the extra power, RAM, and discrete graphics processing support that promises to add. But when it comes to power for the price, the Mac Studio is arguably Apple's best computer ever. Read on to find out if the Mac Studio is right for your office.

THE M1 ULTRA: POWER WITH A PRICE

The Mac Studio brings the impressive Apple-made M1 series processors to its high-end desktop computers, and with a real splash: the new M1 Ultra. You don't have to buy the M1 Ultra with your Mac Studio: you can go with last year's M1 Max, and that is likely quite enough power for most, but for the truly demanding, the M1 Ultra is in a new league.

"THE M1 ULTRA'S POWER WILL BE COMPARABLE TO COMPETITORS IN THE HOME-OFFICE DESKTOP SPACE AND HAVE ENOUGH POWER FOR HEAVY PROFESSIONAL USE."

The M1 Ultra is two M1 Max chips married together on the same die, using a new architecture so they act as a single system-on-chip. That means it's got up to 20 central processing unit (CPU) cores, 64 graphics processing unit (GPU) cores, and 32 Neural Engine cores all on the same die. That is above average, to put it mildly. The M1 Ultra's power will be comparable to competitors in the home-office desktop space and have enough power for even heavy professional use.