Apple introduces new Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

Apple introduces new Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra — the ultimate desktop for on‑device AI and the most extreme pro workflows Apple today announced the new Mac Studio, featuring M5 Max and the all-new M5 Ultra, delivering up to 4.3x faster AI performance and up to 512GB of unified memory in its signature compact desktop design. Specifications Mac Studio with M5 Max features an 18-core CPU, an up-to-40-core GPU with Neural Accelerators built into each core, and up to 128GB of unified memory with 614GB/s of memory bandwidth. Mac Studio with M5 Ultra scales up to a 36-core CPU, an up-to-80-core GPU, and a staggering 512GB of unified memory with 1.2TB/s of memory bandwidth — 50 percent higher than before. Both models feature next-generation SSD storage that is up to 2x faster, Thunderbolt 5 ports with up to 120Gb/s bandwidth, and the Apple-designed N1 chip bringing Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 to Mac Studio for the first time. Features Mac Studio with M5 Ultra achieves up to 4.3x the peak AI compute performance of M3 Ultra and 9.8x more than M1 Ultra, enabling users to run enormous LLMs entirely on device with complete privacy. Neural Accelerators in each GPU core deliver dramatically faster matrix multiplication, with M5 Max offering up to 3.9x faster AI performance than the prior generation. A cluster of four Mac Studio systems connected via Thunderbolt 5 and RDMA delivers up to 3x faster AI inference than a single system. The Media Engine in M5 Ultra supports up to 33 simultaneous streams of 8K ProRes 422 at 30 fps, while third-generation hardware-accelerated ray tracing delivers faster, more realistic lighting and reflections. Mac Studio supports up to eight displays, or up to four Studio Display XDR at full 5K resolution and 120Hz, and now enables genlock over USB-C for precise synchronization with professional camera capture like iPhone 17 Pro. macOS 27 Golden Gate brings Siri AI, Core AI framework, and MLX for building, running, and deploying AI models on Apple silicon. Price and Availability The new Mac Studio is available for pre-order starting today, August 25, 2026, with availability beginning September 22, 2026. It can be ordered through Apple's website and Apple Store locations, alongside Studio Display and Studio Display XDR. Verdict Mac Studio with M5 Max is ideal for musicians, photographers, software engineers, and designers pushing real-time 3D and motion graphics, while Mac Studio with M5 Ultra is engineered for professionals tackling the most extreme workloads — filmmakers color-grading uncompressed 8K footage, VFX artists rendering complex simulations, and data scientists training local AI models on expansive datasets. Anyone who needs frontier-class AI models running entirely on device with massive unified memory and pro connectivity should buy this machine.