The Mac Studio (2022) is Overpriced, Overhyped and Underpowered

The "Mac Studio" is what the "Mac Mini" should have been. 

The Mac Mini in the past had been one of Apples most celebrated lines, each year it moved with the times with upgraded processors, however in recent years this has not been so. The Mac mini is no longer was an iMac without the screen but rather a trashy budget offering. The current and past Mac Mini’s really have been portrayed as something you can buy due to its lower cost, it was never something to be considered an alternative to an iMac or MacBook Pro. However, why would it? Prior to the M1 refresh the base model had very little ram and the same processor that came in a used budget laptop. 

The M1 was merely thrown into the Mac Mini as something of an afterthought, the current logic board takes up very little space in the chassis and neither the ram or storage is upgradable. It appears Apple merely gutted the old body and filled it with the heart of an iPad, added a fan and left it at that. 

The Mac Studio changes that, it attempts to be something fresh and new, as it tries to compete with the Mini desktop crowd, such as the now discontinued NUC Canyon. The new model does adopt similar design language as the old G4 Cube, but does so with the modern design language of the current XDR MacBook Pros. Like the XDR MacBook Pros the Mac Studio essentially has the same processors and accompanying GPU’s. However, what is new is that Apple has decided to marry two M1 Max processors together to create the M1 Ultra. As confusing as the naming schemes are, the price is not confusing at all. The entry into the M1 Ultra variant is double the price of the base model. The base M1 Ultra is also not the top of the line model, to get that you need to spend over a thousand dollars on an upgrade to get the faster processor. The ram and especially the storage are excruciatingly expensive to upgrade. Neither is upgradable after the fact, meaning if you find you’re reaching Ram or storage limits and need more, there is no venue for you to upgrade, you are stuck with what you bought. 

Now the display, like the Mac Pro that came with the XDR Cinema Display that led many to question why the stand was a thousand dollars the Studio Display is ‘only’ $2000USD and is suspiciously similar to LG’s cheaper Ultra Fine 5K displays. However, although the panels could be similar the LG does not have the camera nor the audio capabilities the Apple display does. 

Final Thoughts

Overall, the new Mac Studio is quite reasonable but, it’s also grossly overpriced for what it is. In the PC world you can get much more powerful processors, ram and Graphics for the same price. Although Apple may claim other otherwise a PC Desktop with a thread ripper, and 3090 would leave the Mac Studio in the dust. And that truly is the problem, the Mac Studio is what the Mac mini should have been. And the Mac Mini can’t play with the big boys.