{"id":1194225,"date":"2026-02-17T17:07:41","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T17:07:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/8FtBKEBsf3aDieoDab83a8"},"modified":"2026-02-17T17:07:41","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T17:07:41","slug":"apple-mac-studio-m4-max-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/apple-mac-studio-m4-max-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple Mac Studio M4 Max review"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The feeling when you take a piece of new hardware out of the box is unsurpassed in the field of human experience. Whether it’s a motherboard or a USB SSD or a goddamn printer, unboxing is great fun. People even make videos about it.<\/p>\n

And however you feel about Apple, you have to admit that the Cupertino phone company does good packaging. The box for the Mac Studio even comes with a carrying handle, and when it opens up the sides fall away to reveal the slab of sharply milled aluminium inside in an act of theatre to rival the moment a magician unveils his lovely assistant from within a wooden box.<\/p>\n

At the time of writing, new Macs are packing variants of Apple\u2019s M4 CPU, an ARM-based design that\u2019s as far removed from the weak chip that powers your Android phone as a Siberian tiger is from a house cat. The basic M4 in the MacBook Air comes packing 10 cores and easily beats the Intel Core Ultra 7 265V despite being passively cooled, and what we\u2019ve got here is an order of magnitude better.<\/p>\n

There isn\u2019t just any M4 in the Mac Studio we’ve got our hands on, this is an M4 Max and, to use a technical term, it\u2019s a bit powerful. The machine tested here is also \u00a33,799<\/a>\/$3,699<\/a>, around the same price as a Razer Blade 16 with an RTX 5080<\/a> and an OLED screen, but we\u2019ll gloss over that.<\/p>\n

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Studio M4 Max specs<\/div>\n
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CPU: <\/strong>Apple M4 Max (16-core)
NPU: <\/strong>16\u2011core Neural Engine
Graphics: <\/strong>Integrated, 40 cores
Memory:<\/strong> 128 GB
Storage: <\/strong>1 TB SSD
Ports:<\/strong> 4x Thunderbolt 5, 2x USB 3 Type-A (5Gbps), 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x 10 Gbps Ethernet, 3.5 mm headphone jack; 2x USB-C (10Gbps, front), 1x SDXC reader (front)
Wireless connectivity: <\/strong>Wi\u2011Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3
Dimensions: <\/strong>9.5 x 19.7 x 19.7 cm
Weight: <\/strong>2.74 kg
Price: <\/strong>$3,699<\/a> | \u00a33,799<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

For your money you get a 16\u2011core CPU, and importantly a 40\u2011core GPU. The M4 version of Apple\u2019s graphics chip supports ray-tracing, and in synthetic benchmarks it comes out somewhere around the RTX 4070 level, though direct comparisons between the different GPUs are tricky. It certainly beats the AMD Radeon 8050S in the Asus ROG Flow Z13<\/a>, which is considered one of the better integrated GPU solutions at the moment. Our Studio also has 128 GB of RAM, which is probably overkill for gaming but makes sense when you consider the kind of tasks Mac power-users are likely to set their machines, and it offers a bit of future-proofing too, as the Studio can\u2019t be easily upgraded once you\u2019ve ordered it.<\/p>\n

It does all this in the kind of SFF case that makes the Fractal Terra look positively ginormous\u2014there are smaller mini PCs from the likes of Minisforum<\/a>, but not many with this kind of power\u2014and it pulls about 100 W all-in. There’s a fan in the case, but it\u2019s not required a lot of the time, and you\u2019ll never know it\u2019s there unless you\u2019re making it work exceptionally hard. Also, being a modern desktop Mac, you get loads of Thunderbolt 5, an HDMI 2.1, 10 Gbps Ethernet, some 10 Gbps Type-C ports and 5 Gbps Type-A ports, and even an SDXC reader. It can output to five monitors at once, and is well equipped for life on a desk. Wi-Fi is version 6E, which is surprising as you\u2019d expect Apple to have the latest, but it\u2019s good enough.<\/p>\n

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Mac gaming has come a long way in the past few years, but things aren\u2019t perfect yet. When I installed Steam onto the Studio, I was interested to see how much of the PC Gamer benchmark suite (TM) would be supported, and\u2026 it\u2019s not much. While a native version of CyberPunk 2077<\/a> with ray-tracing should be released later this year, crucially it\u2019s not out just yet, and the benchmarkable games tend to be older ones from the days of Kaby Lake.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of games with a native Mac version on Steam, and there are versions of Assassin\u2019s Creed Shadows and Mirage on the Mac App Store, for just two examples. Combined with an M-series Mac\u2019s ability to run iOS apps this means a lot more games are available, though these are often mobile ports meant for the iPad.<\/p>\n

Still, from Steam alone it\u2019s possible to have a very good time on a Mac. There’s Metro Exodus, Frostpunk 2, Civ VII, Stardew Valley, WH40K Rogue Trader, XCOM 2, Alien Isolation, a few COD games and lots more, though it\u2019s still a much slimmer selection than that faced by Windows gamers.<\/p>\n