

It does not come with a monitor, keyboard, or mouse, but creatives who need the Mac Studio’s beefy M1 Max or the blazing-fast $3,999 20-core M1 Ultra version probably prefer to pick a monitor that meets their specific needs.


Meanwhile, the $1,999 Mac Studio packs the power creative professionals need to get work done quickly and efficiently. It will provide the power you need to get all your work done, and it has a great display and audio to enjoy your favorite 4K content. For most people, a $1,299 all-in-one 24-inch iMac is a complete package with tremendous value. With such a large price gap, performance gap, and feature gap, it’s clear that the iMac and the Mac Studio are for different crowds. The M1 iMac is the better choice for most people, but the few who need the extra umph on the Mac Studio will deeply appreciate its M1 Ultra processor. Most people are not going to need the speed that the Mac Studio offers, but if you’re a creative professional, the iMac probably isn’t enough computer for what you need to do. The Mac Studio starts with 32GB of memory and 512GB of storage, with its top configuration maxing out at 128GB of memory and 8TB of storage. The Mac Studio also comes with dedicated video encoding and decoding engines, making it especially suitable for film work.Īs for memory and storage, the iMac starts with 8GB of memory and 256GB of storage, but you can configure it with up to 16GB of memory and 2TB of storage. Even very intense creative tasks, like editing an orchestral film score or processing a lengthy 8K video should go smoothly on that beast. Meanwhile, the top-spec Mac Studio has an M1 Ultra processor, which is basically two M1 Max processors smashed together with a whopping 20 CPU cores and 48 GPU cores.

With more cores, the M1 Max can perform graphics-heavy tasks (like film editing or 3D modelling) way faster than the M1. While the M1 Max’s two extra CPU cores don’t give the Mac Studio that much more processing speed over the M1, the M1 Max’s graphics performance is off the charts.
