The new Mac Studio is not for the faint of heart or the light wallet. It ships with Apple’s M5 Ultra chip, featuring a 36-core CPU and an 80-core GPU, along with 256GB of RAM and 4TB of storage. The unit tested by The Verge costs $12,299 and is aimed squarely at AI developers and high-end 3D visual effects houses. The reviewer notes that standard benchmarks do not fully capture the machine’s capabilities.

The device retains the same design introduced in 2022, but the internal hardware has been pushed to extreme limits. Apple has extended its pricing strategy into the stratosphere, positioning this machine as a specialist tool for the most demanding professional tasks rather than a general-purpose computer.