The M5 Ultra Mac Studio tears through our benchmark tests – The Verge

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The Mac Studio review unit that Apple sent us to test this year is, put simply, kind of outrageous. It has an M5 Ultra chip with a 36-core CPU and 80-core GPU, 256GB of RAM, and 4TB of storage and costs $12,299. This thing is not for your typical content creation workloads. It’s for AI developers and some of the most demanding 3D visual effects houses out there. Frankly, our usual benchmarks aren’t cutting it. The latest version of Apple’s most powerful computer begins shipping today with new chips and prices that extend even further into the stratosphere. The new Mac Studio uses the same design that’s been with us since 2022, replete with ultra-fast ports both front and back, now kitted out with either an M5 Max or M5 Ultra chip, compared to the M4 Max or M3 Ultra of last year’s model.

[Image: My precious! (I’m talking about the SD card slot, of course.) https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/268742_Mac_Studio_AKrales_0051.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] The M5 Max model starts at a relatively modest $2,499 with an 18-core CPU / 32-core GPU, 36GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. We’ve tested an M5 Max already,