Mac Studio 1 Year Later: Still Worth It?
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- čas přidán 3. 06. 2024
- With the introduction of M2 Pro and M2 Max, it's easy to question the value of the Mac Studio since it was never updated with an M2 chip. So, is the Mac Studio still worth buying today?
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M1 Mac Mini review: • Why the M1 Mac Mini is...
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0:00 - Why I Got My Mac Studio
0:57 - Mac Studio Pros
3:28 - Mac Studio Cons
6:20 - Is The Mac Studio Outdated?
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I have this exact machine, including the 1tb upgrade. My previous 20 years long top-spec parade of iMacs and even a Trashcan Pro were essential to my every-day all-day heavy graphics creation were always compromised and ultimately, disappointing in one way or another. The Studio has been solid workhorse from day one and would have been worth it (for me) at twice the price. A few minor quibbles, most mentioned here, about the I/O, I can attest to but I solved most of those by mounting mine rear end out, facing me (just behind the monitors) at eye level. Since I set up my workstation for working and not showing off for a magazine style award, it works for me. Other minor concerns are OS related and not hardware issues. Once you buy a handful of Thunderbolt to USB-C adapters for your older HDs, you're fine.- - Great vid, thanks!
Design wise I think the power on the back has always been the standard but having the headphone jack on the front makes way more sense to me
True, power button on the back _has_ been standard, but since they put the status light on the front, I think they could have easily made that double as a power button. The headphone jack on the front would be nice too.
Well done sir. Your video covers points that most other reviewers have not touched on.
I have an iMac and it’s annoying to hear Apple gush over how thin they’ve made them. Who cares? It just sits there. I don’t drag it around with me.
Totally agree! I hope we see Apple continue to go for function over form with future Macs.
For what it’s worth I move mine quite a lot - travelling and using it as a portable studio. For me the size was a selling point. But also - companies will gush over every little feature, they gotta sell them products 😎
Yeah, and if you did drag it around with you, it would preferable for it to be built robust, with a bezel that protected the screen from incidental bumps.
Most of us would prefer a sturdy 27” iMac with the performance of a Mac Studio Max (at the very least).
So the next generation of iMac will need to be a 27” m3 max with a built in secondary slot for a user fitted industry standard m.2 PCIe NVMe drive, and a base minimum ram of 16GB.
Same too the base m3 studio needs to be an unbinned m3 Max, with a secondary m.2 slot, and 32GB of ram as standard, priced 20% lower than the m3 27” iMac.
Great video as usual Christian! :)
Thanks Chris!
I have the M2 pro Mac mini. 32 gigs and 1tb, and I love it. No issues, no noise, and it doesn't take up a lot of space, vs the Studio. Just FYI. Enjoyed your video.
I too have had my Studio Max (base model) for one year now and have no complaints. I haven't had your same problems with software but I don't run the same programs.
Great video. I get what you are saying about the power button, although I rarely have to turn mine off, so it really doesn't bother me much. Totally feeling you on the little annoying bugs though, but for me, coming from a 2017 intel iMac, I LOVE THE FACT THAT REBOOTS ARE DARN NEAR INSTANTANEOUS! This Mac Studio is easily the best computer I have ever owned. I'm looking forward to at least six to seven years (or more) of ownership. I'm so glad I went for a 2TB hard drive with every thing else being standard M1 Max and 32GB Ram.
Have a M2 mini pro 12 cores, 32G, 1TB, its a beast , no fan noise that I can hear, zero issues , but if a mac studio M3 ever comes out I will upgrade
Good points made an well said. 👍
Thank you!
Great video, love the comparison between the studio and the M2. Very similar to what we found as well, there is much less difference between overall system performance of the M1 Max and the M2 Pro than Apple lead us all to believe. In sustained, heavy workloads, even less.
What monitors do you use? Thanks for the video!
I have an M1 Mac Studio base model. Incredible computer! It is so fast, quiet and reliable. I don't have any of the OS issues that you are having. Occasionally, the Finder calls home to mother, but not on a regular basis.
Great video, cheers! I work with Macs for over 25 years now and I’m in the market for a Mac Studio or Mac Mini M2 Pro, to replace my 2010 Mac Pro (which is still going just fine). For me, the power button on the back was never a problem, because I never switch my Macs off. Macs can do a lot of system maintenance during standby and it’s great when everything is just there when it wakes up.
Same here. Should I go for a new Mac Mini Pro or a used Mac Studio M1
Great video!!
Thanks Lyle!
can you put a line on that surround sound system please as been looking for the same one.
Absolutely SOLID video! I’ve been curious what creatives think of the MacStudio a year later.
Graphic design is my line of work - and, I am definitely in the market for both the Studio Displays and the MacStudio.
It would be great if both pieces of tech receive a refresh this year - but, if not, I can wait.
Curious what your thoughts are on the latest MacMini - I’ll certainly watch that video. Thanks for sharing! 🇺🇸
Thanks Bryan! I may try out the new Mac Mini to compare it.
Last March, I was waiting for the Mac mini Pro upgrade instead Apple launched the Mac Studio - I took me all of less than 5 minutes to order it as soon as it showed up in the Apple Web Store and traded in my Mac mini. I have been a happy camper ever since and even now with the Mac mini M2 Pro - who cares? I got the Mac Studio - a real beast of a machine for my video studio running Davinic Resolve Studio. It just blows through anything I can throw at it. As far as I am concern the Mac mini Pro was a year late and I would not even think of trading. The future is whatever Apple does, but with a Mac Studio - it will run for a long time doing what I need it to. I cannot chase specs or upgrades. This Beast has not slowed down yet and no signs it will to the point I need more. The rest is Nit Picks - in the end, they scored big wit the Mac Studio.
Love my Mac Studio M1. Professional Recording Studio.
How do you feel about the m1 studio now that the Mac Studio m2 is out now? And the base model is that good.
The power button in the back has never bothered me. I have owned iMacs and Mac minis. Since I don't power my computers off all the time, the power button on the back is a non-issue. I just bought an M2 Pro Mac mini. So far I love it. The last Mac mini I owned was a late-2012 model that I later upgraded with 16GB of RAM and I added and SSD using a dual drive kit. It was a great computer. The Mac Studio was a possible choice for me but I decided on the Mac mini partly because it will fit under my display stand. The Mac Studio would not have.
I was on the fence between the Mac Studio & the Mac Mini Pro. I went with the M2 Pro Mini as even bumping up the RAM to 32GB places it $100 under the Studio... it has the 2.1 HDMI port... which does a higher refresh rate than the 2.0 port on the Mac Studio and the CPU is faster. you cant go wrong with either though.... these are workhorse machines that are good for 5-10 years easily
How is the Mac running? I've been looking at reviews and saw this interesting comment. 😁
I got a used base Mac Studio with apple keyboard and mouse for $1500. Deal of the decade right there.
Funny that you talk about instability. I’ve found OSX to be extremely solid. More annoying is some of the window behaviour if you are using Microsoft office.
I haven’t turned my Mac off all year. I think it draws 5 watts in standby mode.
I run the exact same Studio for most of the same apps, Logic, FCP, Adobe CC, and so on, I get none of the macOS issues you cite. I have to suspect it is something you install.
I’ve also got a 27 inch iMac which is due an upgrade but im struggling with the mental hurdle of how much these things are plus you then need a monitor so the cheapest entry point is 3.5k! Versus my iMac which cost 2.2k in 2014 and was a mid priced machine. I’m half tempted to get a laptop for now and then add a monitor at a later date. My biggest gripe for these machines though is how much storage costs. I’d like a 2TB machine for my current needs but realistically 4TB to future proof me for the next 5 years.
The cheapest way to get a decent solution is to use your iMac as a target display with either M1 based MacBook or Mac Studio.
It's so silly to use the word "Outdated" because it hasn't been updated for one fucking year. Man... the pace is is so awful nowadays.
See I was going to buy the Mac Studio but I’m now thinking of just getting a m2 pro Mac mini
My M1 Ultra Studio is a beast. No complains. Fast and quiet.
You definitely don’t want to buy the Mac mini M2 pro to replace your Studio. I bought the m2pro to replace my aging 2015 Imac. Processing raw pictures on my Imac would take minutes to render changes. I thought the M2 pro would be instant rendering after making a minor change like increasing exposure. Nope, it still takes around 10-15 seconds per change. While this doesn’t sound like a lot of time, if your processing 25, 50, 100 pictures it all adds up quickly. I’m now wondering if I should have waited for an updated studio, and if I buy one how much of a loss I’ll take on the m2 pro.
I wouldn't take rumours as gospel when it comes to product strategy. M2 Max is providing way better real app performance than the specs/general benchmarks (check our the Blenderbench scores for compute scaling) so the M2 Ultra would be a beast.
I kept getting beach balls in Adobe Acrobat so I had to sell it and got a Windows machine. I haven't looked back.
Apple used to have a power switch on the keyboard.
I never turn off my mac mini so the power button in the back is not a big deal.
The ram upgrade prices are ludicrous.
As always with Apple 🙄
What do you feel about the vertical orientation of the USB-C ports? I hate it. When connect a hub or drive in to the front it's not in the natural orientation of the cable. Meaning you have to twist/rotate the cable for a drive to sit flat which does not work well with smaller, lightweight SSD drives. It also is a pain because the cables stick so far out before they'll have flex. I had to get some 90 degree adapters so the front ports go up instead of straight out! Good review.
To be fair, Macs sleep better than windows. The only time I've turned a Mac off in the last 10 or so years is when I install a software update or I need to do some sort of upgrade. Most people are in a similar situation, which is why the power button is where it is.
The debate about M1&2's performance when it comes to video editing has been moot for a while. Video Editing is a piece of cake for modern hardware and when you factor in the silence it's a no brainer for video editors. I wish they can catch up in the GPU department because for 3D people like myself it makes no sense paying so much money for such poor performance.
Random freezes.....beach balls.....re-starts ??? You should have sent the Studio back for a REPLACEMENT as soon as you experienced these issues. Going back to the Mid-90s, I have had MANY MANY Macs from entry-level iBooks to Intel Mac Pros to now an M1 M1 Mini and have NEVER experienced the issues you claim to have....AND....I wouldn't have tolerated them. Apple has an incredibly easy return/replacement policies for NEW purchases. You need to see if you are still in your return Window...or if you can add AppleCare....cuz it seems you just have the worst luck with Macs.
I have been using macs for 16 years. Apart from beachballing, I haven't experienced anything like that. Send your shit back as long as you can ;)
I have had a couple macs. The first mac I bought was a 20" imac 8 or 9 years ago. Took me 5 hours before I succeeded in it no longer booting up, and had to reinstall. Only thing I did was connect it to my Active Directory and Mac OS (leopard I believe it was then) did not like it one bit. I bought a 27" later on, but never really found it a good machine. It was not really faster than my windows pc's and the compatibility with hardware was bad... Sold both imacs and since I had a few apps for apple, bought a 13" macbook pro, which I still have (but is slow as hell...). End of last year, I bought a Mac studio M1 Max. Took me again 2 days and had to reinstall it twice... First time, applications diddn't work well and had to reinstall with monterey. Had issues with thunderbolt audio interface (Motu 828ES), so decided to reinstall again, this time with Ventura and only install applications that said it worked with Ventura. It is still working and I bought a mac mini M2 additionally. THe Studio is NOT silent, the mini is. On the studio the fans were quite noisy, until I installed an application to slow them to 1100 rpm instead of the 1300 they normally run on. And the guy that decided to place the power button in the back should be fired...
I HATE fan noise. My older Macbook Pro -- which is now _histoire_ - ran on the crude intel i7 processor (what a joke)... and having it on my desk was like sitting next to a loud heat vent. Stupid intel. My new Mac Mini M2 pro is a GodSent ! Quiet, refined, sophisticated... and boy is it fast ! ! Well done Apple !
Sorry that the Apple Mac Studio does not fulfill your GQ style. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Do not own a Mac Studio just plain old Intel Mac Mini of the same style. I love the clean KISS look.
6:36. This comment didn't age very well. (Written two months after video release, on my M2 Ultra Studio.)
Ha! Dont need to watch the M1 Mac mini video as the thumbnail tells me all I need to know! 😱
I'm still confident that Apple will upgrade the Mac Studio to an M2 or even M3. I will buy one once they become available.
Per initial reports, the M3 (not M3 Max) is faster than the M2 _Max_ which is twice as fast as the M1 Max. That's whats coming next year.
The M1 ultra does not have those problems. I just ordered the Mac Studio m2 ultra 192🤣
"macs are macs they all have quirks" ? , thats not what people say about the macs in general forums..
As i've told the Apple Business Team when they ask about my Mac Studio: it's boring and fast and does what i need it to do ;0
would be nice to have a removeable parts of the motherboard, will really bing tech enthusiasts together
The only reason I didn't go with this Mac is because it lacks HDMI 2.1.
Wait for M3. The M2 is a stop gap. The smaller nanometer chipset will give more power and efficiencies. It's going to blow away the M1 and even M2 in some areas.
'youre using it wrong' is the go to fanboi excuse for problems
Who switches off a mac? are you sure you're a mac user
I've been running Macs for over 10 years now, and I would never say "Macs are Macs, they all have their own quirks." Compared to PCs all of the Macs I've had have run like clockwork pretty much 99.99% of the time. The ROI from producing on Macs is insane.
I am a video editor with FCPX. not pro by any means and my timelines are not that huge at all. But I have a chance to get a brand new Studio M1 Max with 32 gigs of ram cheaper than the M2 Pro with 32 gigs of ram and wondering which I should get for mainly video editing? I do not really care about the new wifi in the m2 and only use 1 monitor and maybe will get another... I can get the Studio for like 600.000 cheaper than the M2 Pro... I currently have an M1 Air and it works pretty great accept when I add a lot of color grades and plug ins...