Are you satisfied with your purchase of the Mac Studio?

[Landing]

I’m curious to know your experience with your Mac Studio after using it for some time. What features do you miss on it, and what changes would you make to improve it?

- I wish I had bought it with a bit more RAM.
- Wi-Fi 7 would be great.
- A headphone jack on the front would be nice. It's not really well placed
- A color LED with different status indicators (orange when in sleep mode, etc.) would be great.
- A smaller footprint. (It’s still excellent as it is.)

 

[S.B.G]

So far it's doing everything I wanted it to do. The only thing I'd change is to make it less expensive.

 

[JSRinUK]

The only thing making me look ahead a couple of years is more RAM and higher memory bandwidth.

My 128GB M4 Max Studio is a fantastic machine, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’d like more and faster RAM. At the same or cheaper price, of course.

But this is sufficient to last me a few years for now.

 

[Landing]

So far it's doing everything I wanted it to do. The only thing I'd change is to make it less expensive.

I mean, it is not so bad right now. The problem is the price of the RAM or SDD from Apple. It's almost extortion

 

[edubfromktown]

100% satisfied with M1 Max 32/512.

Never had any coil whine/excessive noise issues (it has been attached to a 1500 VA UPS from the beginning).

The fan is inaudible under normal usage and rarely kicks up RPM's except for when I'm running high demand processing tasks. The internal storage is ripping fast and I get ~50% of that throughput using dual external RAID-0 striped Kingston 3000 NVMe v2's that are older/faster with on-board cache than the majority of less expensive NVMe offerings these days.

 

[Varmann]

Very satisfied. M4 max 64GB/4TB. But nothing is ever “fast enough”.

If you swear to cable connections, then the number of ports are limiting. In addition, I have almost filled OWCs biggest dock.

I upgraded from a 2018 Mac mini 8GB (botched an upgrade to 64GB, ruined last screw head)

 

[EdwardC]

Bought a M4 Max base for $1,699.00 from Micro Center to replace a M2 Pro Mini. 2D CAD and typical office use. Dead quiet and a joy to use. Love it! (Have not installed Tahoe).

 

[maflynn]

I’m curious to know your experience with your Mac Studio after using it for some time. What features do you miss on it, and what changes would you make to improve it?

Overall, I'm extremely happy, I've said this multiple times in numerous threads - the M4 Max Studio is by far the best computer I've owned.

As for changes/upgrades - the only thing I wished that we had, was user replaceable storage. Technically we do, but its not sanctioned by apple, nor do they sell the upgrade kits.

 

[BrianBaughn]

My M1 Max Mac Studio has been good. Lost Ethernet via a power surge (lightning).

Adding the amount and quality of extra storage I need was/is kind of a pain, though.

 

[JaredJenkinsDesign]

I had the M1 Max Mac Studio and currently have the M3 Ultra Mac Studio. My experience with both has been very positive. I agree on the SSD and RAM comments as I wish it had more or we could upgrade them.

 

[Varmann]

Just today my M4 surprised me positively.
I sat web browsing, playing a bit Baldurs gate 3, while simultaneously making a 30 min music video-mix to a halloween party in Imovie. When playing the result in VLC a second time the sound got distorted. I tried QT, sounded fine. Then I remembered, I had sat the machine to convert a lot of video files in Handbrake, before I started doing other things. I had not felt any slowdown for four hours while having such a heavy load in the background.

 

[johnny dollar]

I'd like to see a digital audio output myself. I remember back when some iMacs had them.

 

[rb2112]

I’m curious to know your experience with your Mac Studio after using it for some time. What features do you miss on it, and what changes would you make to improve it?

M4 Max 36GB (base). I miss not getting more RAM as earlier, I was not running local LLMs and did not know I was going to....

 

[CoMoMacUser]

December will be three years for my M1 Max. No complaints. I work from home, so it's my office machine. Only recently have I started to see the spinning beach ball, such as when closing Edge. This started after upgrading to Tahoe, so maybe it's more demanding than Sequoia.

 

[AlaskaMoose]

Other than the high price of the Studio I purchased, I am pleased with myself and not with the Studio, for buying what I wanted. To me the Mac Studio is just a tool that serves my needs. I am also as much or more pleased with my decision to pair the Studio to a BenQ 5k monitor. A display of deep rich colors, with a very smooth lift/lower, tilt, and rotate options, all on a simple and practical stand. It takes about one minute to open the box, and then assemble and mount the stand to the back of the monitor.

 

[jz0309]

I’m curious to know your experience with your Mac Studio after using it for some time. What features do you miss on it, and what changes would you make to improve it?

- I wish I had bought it with a bit more RAM.
- Wi-Fi 7 would be great.
- A headphone jack on the front would be nice. It's not really well placed
- A color LED with different status indicators (orange when in sleep mode, etc.) would be great.
- A smaller footprint. (It’s still excellent as it is.)

My M1Max 64GB/4TB is going still very strong going on 3 years, I got those specs in anticipation of my then and current needs and am very happy I got it that way, don't feel any slowdown with LR/PS.
Is it expensive, sure, is/was it worth it to me? Yes.
I got it from B&H so was able to save some.

I expect it to last at least another 2-3 years if not more

 

[xraydoc]

I'm extremely happy with my Studio. Best Mac I've ever had, and I've been using Macs since the original in 1984. Silent, fast and does everything I need it to (including 3+ display support).

 

[CoMoMacUser]

I got it from B&H so was able to save some.

Same here. Their prices are very competitive across the whole Apple lineup.

 

[Killerbob]

I got my Mac Pro in ‘19, and switched to a M1 Max Mac Studio in ‘22 - 64GB RAM, 2TB SSD, and since then I have used my Mac Pro perhaps 100 times, and I really should just get rid of it. The Mac Studio is a better setup that anything I have ever had. It is fast enough for my needs (I am a photographer), storage is fast, connectivity is OK (I augmented with a CalDigit Thunderbolt dock and a Sonnet PCIe housing), and using it with 2 TB IPS monitors has made my workflow work.

Of course I look with envy at the M4 offerings, but in reality I don’t really need it. The M1 Max with 64GB RAM is plenty for me.

 

[Kim Larni]

I got the M1 Max Studio in 2022 and was and is very happy with the base model.
This year I got the M4 Max Studio and I'm even more happier, it's also the base model.

Maybe a bigger internal SSD might have been good, but I have few external SSD and HD disks, so not a big deal.

When the Mac Studio was announced I knew that it will be my new Mac. Felt like in the old good days with the Powermac G5. The Studio is something that was missing in Apple's product line, something between the Mini and MacPro.

The lack of the front audio port can be easily solved by this adapter:

 

[MacsRgr8]

Got the M1 Max Mac Studio 64 GB 32 Core CPU when it came out and was very impressed with it. Still have it, just not my main Mac anymore.
Now have the M4 Max Mac Studio 128 GB 40 Core GPU as my main Mac, and even more impressed.

Nice and small footprint, silent, enough ports, great performance, and love the idea of having what we used to dream about..: an "xMac" (IIRC).

Things to wish for..? (applies to both Mac Studios):

• It gets very expensive when configuring higher specs... and you do want to do that IMO as you cannot upgrade later, see:
• Wish there was some way to upgrade GPU, RAM, SSD
• The GPU... it's good... but not excellent.

 

[wdhpgx]

My m1 max replaced a mac pro 3,1. Runs great, quiet, low power. Very happy with the M processor. What I miss most is upgradeable storage and internal drive bays (and multitude of ports) -- the number of usb drives, hubs, cables, power cords, and usb bus resets that take volumes offline I'm not a fan of.

 

[Varmann]

My m1 max replaced a mac pro 3,1. Runs great, quiet, low power. Very happy with the M processor. What I miss most is upgradeable storage and internal drive bays (and multitude of ports) -- the number of usb drives, hubs, cables, power cords, and usb bus resets that take volumes offline I'm not a fan of.

Very similar upgrade route as I: 12 years Mac Pro 3.1 (32 GB ram) - 5 years Intel mini 2018 (only 8 GB ram, as told above) - Studio M4 max (64 GB).

The Mac Pro is my biggest upgrade step so far, it blew my "highend" home built pc straight out of the water.
The Mac mini was a great disappointment, the low ram made it only in some areas better than the Macpro
The Studio was everything I hoped for, a well worthy replacement for the MacPro. Things started to fly again.

 

[bluesteel]

I got the M4 Max Mac Studio three months ago. I have noticed its fast, efficient, quiet, and runs really cool.

I'm glad we get thunderbolt 5, HDMI 2.1, and 10Gb ethernet. That being said, WiFi 7 and BT 6 would have been nice for future-proofing reasons, but I am getting super fast speeds with WiFi 6E. I have an Xfinity 1200 Mbps connection, and the Mac Studio easily gives me WiFi speeds over 1000 Mbps. I could do without the SD Card slot on the front, and I would have appreciated a built-in mic on the front for Dictation and Siri since none of my monitors have mics.

A color LED with different status indicators (orange when in sleep mode, etc.) would be great.

I agree.


I actually wanted to get an M4 Pro Mac mini instead, but since I need to drive four and sometimes five external 32" 4k monitors, I decided on the Mac Studio which can drive more displays than the mini. Since I went with 64GB RAM, I was forced to go with the 16/40 Core (which is overkill for my needs). My workload is RAM hungry. Would've been nice if they had a 72GB or 80GB RAM option. I would have went with 128GB, but the extra $800 was just too much considering I don't need that much RAM. I also went with the 1TB SSD. I would have went with 2TB (+ $400) or 4TB (+ $1000), but I didn't feel the cost was worth it. I bought some ultra fast external storage for much cheaper instead.

Overall, I'm happy. My only real complaint is the expensive RAM and SSD storage upgrade pricing and the lack of a built-in mic.

 

[Daydog]

Overall, I'm happy. My only real complaint is the expensive RAM and SSD storage upgrade pricing and the lack of a built-in mic.

I bluesteel yes the mic option would of been good thing if only for Siri. I use iPhone continuity at moment for mic...