Is it worth it to buy the new Mac Studio with an M3 Ultra or M4 Max? Apple’s latest desktop Macs are the most powerful ever — and that’s not hyperbole. And updates to the Mac Studio don’t come by too often.
If you have an old pro Mac with an Intel chip, it’s a no-brainer. It’s definitely time to move on — no matter which model you have. However, if you’re already on a Mac Studio, you may not need to update quite yet.
Is it worthwhile to upgrade? We have a guide below with helpful charts and a video to help you decide.
Is the 2025 Mac Studio with M3 Ultra or M4 Max worth it?
Image: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
Time to upgrade from an Intel Mac
No matter which Mac you have — be it a Mac mini, an iMac or even a Mac Pro — any model with an Intel chip is ready to retire.
Upgrading from a 2013 Mac Pro to a Mac Studio should be relatively seamless. Both are compact, headless machines that require an external display.
If you bought a 2019 Mac Pro purely for its high performance (rather than its PCI card slots) you’ll enjoy the upgrade to the Mac Studio. You’ll get a significantly smaller machine.
Coming from an iMac Pro, you’ll need to buy an external display — like the Apple Studio Display, or the Asus ProArt 5K — but the Mac Studio will bring you to a world of difference in capability.
Consider upgrading from an M1 Mac Studio
If you have an M1 Mac Studio, the M3 Ultra and M4 Max models will provide a sizable boost in performance. According to Apple, the M4 Max is up to 2.1× faster compiling in Xcode and 1.6× snappier at image processing in Adobe Photoshop compared to the M1 Max. The M3 Ultra is up to 2.6× faster at rendering scenes in Maxon Redshift compared to M1 Ultra.
The new Studio also supports much higher specs. Both models come with Thunderbolt 5 ports for the latest-generation high-speed peripherals and high-resolution displays. The M3 Ultra version can even be configured with a whopping 16 TB of internal storage and 512 GB of unified memory.
Don’t upgrade from an M2 Mac Studio
If you already have an M2 Mac Studio, you don’t have to worry about upgrading yet. The improvements aren’t enough to justify the high cost of Apple’s most powerful desktop Mac. The next revision of the Mac Studio will certainly be a more worthy upgrade.
More upgrade guides
If you have a lot of old tech, check out our other upgrade guides for the latest Apple products:
