Review: Mac Studio (M4 Max, 2025)

In her review of the 2023 edition of the Apple Mac Studio, Brenda Stolyar called the pint-sized powerhouse “the Goldilocks Mac”—suggesting its combination of performance and price was just about perfect for power users, at least those that don’t need the hemorrhage-level bleeding-edge performance of the Mac Pro tower.

Today Apple aims to maintain that verdict, upgrading the device to keep up with the times and again releasing the Studio in two versions, one of which should be ideal for any creative.

The 2025 Mac Studio can be configured either with the new M4 Max CPU or with the M3 Ultra. It may sound counterintuitive, but the M3 Ultra version is actually the more premium of the two SKUs, and by a significant margin; the Ultra design family has been described as merging two Max CPUs that the computer addresses as a single chip ...