Mac Studio M4 Max review one month later: Costly computing power, worth every cent
Switching to an M4 Max Mac Studio was the most expensive Apple purchase I've ever made, but one month in, it is definitely the best.
M4 Mac Studio sitting silently on my desk
You're not going to get specifications and timings with tape measures, because I've never been swayed by a Geekbench score. What I look for, and what I've got with my Mac Studio, is an appreciable difference in my work.
In case you can read a spec sheet better than I can, though, let me tell you that I'm now using an M4 Max Mac Studio with 48GB RAM and 2TB SSD. It's replaced my office M1 Mac mini, which had 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD.
I'm not surprised that it has replaced that Mac mini, since that was specifically why I bought it. But I am surprised that it has also gone a long way to replacing my M1 Max 14-inch MacBook Pro -- and also significantly changed the way I work overall.
For some years now, if I needed to do a lot of work or it was something like video editing, I would do it on the MacBook Pro. I left more routine work, like admin and finances, to whenever I was next at my office Mac mini.
An M1 Mac mini (top) and the M4 Max Mac Studio that has replaced it (bottom)
Since swapping out that machine for the Mac Studio, though, everything has changed. I'm not going to say that my MacBook Pro is now underused, but only because it would be upsetting.
It has become the second Mac, as well as of course the one I take away if I can't just rely on my iPad Pro. The Mac Studio is now my alpha Mac, and that is, perhaps obviously, because of its speed.
Mac Studio M4 Max review: changing workflows
I had intended to quite gently move over to the Mac Studio. It's always a pain when you change Macs because, even with Apple's migration tools, there are still logins you've forgotten, preferences you don't even realize you've ever changed, and so on.
This time I got plenty of that and it was surely three weeks in before everything was absolutely right again, but on day one, I had to make the move anyway.
I was on deadline for the AppleInsider podcast, which is edited in Logic Pro. As brilliant as that app is, it's also temperamental.
Sometimes there are just days when I've had to cajole it into even starting up, and I cannot fathom why, but at least I've got it down to a few minutes restarting and opening blank projects.
Not that day. That day it was eventually possible to open Logic Pro but the smallest edit was making my MacBook Pro beachball. It's definitely a storage issue as I have a peculiar iCloud problem where it keeps redownloading a particular file and then duplicating it, over and over.
Close up on some of the Mac Studio ports. All of mine are now filled.
Even killing that file didn't help and so I turned to my shiny new Mac Studio. The difference was a slap: Logic Pro boomed through the project and I really quickly made up the entire hour I'd lost trying to get this going on the MacBook Pro.
I've fixed Logic Pro on my MacBook Pro, but of course I edit everything audio on the Mac Studio now. And not just audio, all video has switched over to my new Mac.
The speed plus the fact that the Mac Studio stays on my desk means that I've actually changed my whole system of making videos. Previously I was hand to mouth, shooting a video and editing it on the MacBook Pro wherever I was, usually just in time for when it was due to go out.
Now instead I tend to batch everything together, recording a few at time and spending my weekends editing them all in Final Cut Pro on the Mac Studio.
The speed of the Mac Studio is somehow responsible for me taking longer to shoot and produce videos. The result is better for it.
Mac Studio M4 Max review: unexpected changes
And then there is this, which will not sound like it's anything to do with the Mac Studio, but it entirely is. I produce magazines for a couple of charities in the UK and by very unfortunate fluke, the deadlines for both their latest issues happened to fall in the same week.
Consequently, that was a lot of mornings, evenings and weekends trying to race through everything I had to do. If I'd been on my old Mac mini, I am certain that I would have done the lot on my MacBook Pro just because it was faster.
As it was, I of course did it all on the Mac Studio and on that, Affinity Publisher felt so fast and responsive that I was skipping between the projects constantly. And then there was this part: my Mac Studio has given me a Stream Deck renaissance.
Not only am I now using my 32-button Stream Deck XL more than ever, I also got out my previous 15-key Stream Deck and used it extensively. Typically you put an Elgato Stream Deck behind your keyboard and that's where my XL is, but the smaller one now lives by my left hand.
So it's Stream Deck, keyboard, trackpad. And the speed of the Stream Deck plus the speed of the Mac Studio meant that certain tasks I was doing a few hundred times on those magazines were flying. Think of it, tap the button, done.
I know I just said I worked mornings, evenings and so on, but that was for a specific couple of weeks and overall -- weirdly -- my work/live balance has improved because of this Mac Studio. That seems insane to say, but having the speed, working through changing how I get things done, it has freed up some time that I'm now using to do that relaxing thing you read about.
Mac Studio M4 Max review: design
I also used to have a hub plugged into the back of the Mac mini and already I don't remember why, since everything I have now just goes straight into the Mac Studio. It used to be a pain having a lot of cables snaking around the desk, and I still do have that to an extent, but I don't even remember where I've put that hub.
The back is messy with cables, but there are so many ports on the Mac Studio that it's replaced the dock I was using
The M4 Max Mac Studio has two 10 gigabit USB-C ports on the front and I've found I'm using them a great deal. I'll plug in an external drive to transfer video footage for editing, for instance, and I'll also connect the receiver for a wireless mic.
Aside from those Stream Decks, some microphones and headphones, I've yet to consistently use any other accessories. I plan to add an external drive because while Apple made me pay an arm and a leg for the 2TB storage I bought, it isn't enough.
There is an SD card slot on the front of the Mac Studio and I've simply never used it, nor really have any plans to.
So apart from when I use the front USB-C ports to offload video from a little external drive, or I connect a wireless mic receiver, the Mac Studio just sits there at the edge of my desk.
I would like it if the Mac Studio's headphone jack were on the front as well, the way it is on the M4 Mac mini. When I'm editing or podcasting, I prefer over-ear headphones and I have to rotate the Mac Studio to get to the jack plug for them.
That's also why, after a month, I don't think I've settled on exactly where on my desk the Mac Studio will stay. As well as with the headphones, I am quite often rotating it to plug in or remove USB-C and USB-A cables, and having it where I can move it easily limits what I put on that side of the desk.
I could do without the headphones in general use, and actually I realize now that I do. The speaker in the Mac Studio isn't brilliant, but it's more than adequate for most general things I do on the Mac.
There is a rule in my house that if you find a flat, empty surface, you put something on it. But I can't do that with the Mac Studio, it's too nice and too expensive. It just feels wrong, just as it feels wrong to tell you that I sometimes pat it.
AppleInsider's Mike Wuerthele puts an old Superdrive on top of his. Some people have no taste.
Mac Studio M4 Max review: day to day use
My Mac Studio sits there on my desk remarkably quietly. I understand that there are fans inside the Mac Studio but I'm practically taking this on trust, because I've never heard them, even when I'm hammering on it with a video edit and Logic at the same time.
And, not even on a weekend day when I was ten hours into publishing two magazines and editing a series of Final Cut Pro videos simultaneously.
I realize that I'm not a heavy Mac user, at least not compared to scientists or even other video editors who work on feature films or multiple streams of 8K footage at once.
Even back in 2022 with the first Mac Studio, the AppleInsider concluded that there was more performance here than most users would need. Similarly, with the 2023 update, that Mac Studio edition was clearly the heir apparent for the "Pro" market, but you see those quote marks around the word.
Each Mac Studio is capable of extraordinarily heavy lifting for the absolute most demanding work, and it remains startlingly superior to the Mac Pro.
But rather than looking at this as how much a user like me needs performance, look at it as how much that performance benefits even someone like me. There is no question that for the giant majority of Mac users, the Mac Studio storms through everything.
There is a question, though, over whether that matters enough to you. The Mac Studio, and really any Mac at all, spends most of the time waiting on us, but there are jobs where it's the other way around.
If your work on any other Mac is taking a long time, and especially if that means you're losing income because you can't get through the work quick enough, then the Mac Studio is worth the money. Whether or not that's because you're an 8K video editing scientist modelling AI.
This is really why I hesitated over spending all of this cash on the Mac Studio when I believed I was getting along fine enough with my M1 Mac mini.
But I am now so extraordinarily glad that I bought it. Things I didn't even appreciate were slowing me down are now simply gone, and I think less about the Mac, more about the work.
Using both of the front USB-C ports with (left) an external drive and (right) a wireless microphone receiver
For example, while I was writing this, one of the charities emailed me with a tiny, tiny but urgent change that was needed in their magazine. Before I had finished reading the sentence, Affinity Publisher was open, I was making their change, and I vow that the whole job took under a minute.
That's one minute including time to register what they wanted, figure out the solution, implement it, export the PDF again and send it back to them.
You can obviously say that was fast, but to me, it's not the speed per se that's the point. The point is that my mind got to stay on the problem, I got to stay entirely focused on the task and the Mac Studio simply gave me what I needed, as and when I needed it.
Mac Studio M4 Max review: Pros
- Literal speed of the machine
- Speed of how it means no distractions or delays
- Silence
- Enough ports to replace my old hub
- Front-facing USB-C ports
Mac Studio M4 Max review: Cons
- Headphone jack is inconveniently placed on the back
- SSD and RAM upgrade pricing is borderline abusive
That headphone position is a genuine Con, but really just barely. For me and what I do, the Mac Studio is transformative and unquestionably the best Mac I've ever used.
Consequently, for me, it's an easy 5 out of 5 rating, but I have to be conscious of the fact that it is an extremely expensive Mac. I felt the pain of handing over more than three grand, even if now it's behind me.
Plus as fast as I find this M4 Max Mac Studio, there is the M3 Ultra edition. That's even more expensive, but for certain users, it's going to be the better buy.
That's the only reason this Mac Studio has to have 4.5 out of 5. Though note that I now join another AppleInsider user in knowing that the Mac Studio is the one to get, if you possibly can.
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Read on AppleInsider
Comments
http://www.amazon.com/Headphone-Extension-Nanxudyj-Smartphones-Tablets/dp/B08MDQ4QL1/?th=1
If things go well (ugh, politics, etc impact on pricing/availability) I’ll be in the market for an M5 Mac Studio, keeping my M1 generation MBPro for when a laptop is of benefit. I am looking forward to the desktop becoming my primary habitat for computing tasks, as it was for much of my life.
PS: I had to LOL on the "that relaxing thing you read about" part. I can definitely relate to that!
At work I see motion designers do in 15 min. what took 2 hours on Intel Mac Pro. I'm impressed!
I added a USB-A dock for a number of small accessories I use off and on. I got a Mac Studio display which has fairly nice speakers.
This setup may seem expensive but that is only because every other computer has become so much less expensive. In the year 2000 I got a Power Mac and LCD display for about $6,000. According to inflation calculator that would be ~$11,000 today.