M2 Ultra Mac Studio review: Who needs a Mac Pro, anyway?

Pro in all but name

There will always be people who are upset about the appliance-like, non-upgradeable nature of Apple's desktops, especially in the Apple Silicon era, where basically nothing inside the machine can be upgraded after the fact. Upgrading components used to be an easy way to squeeze a few more years out of an aging Mac Pro tower, and in an ideal world, it would still be something that Apple supported and encouraged.

But even the Mac Pro can't really be upgraded in that way anymore, which makes the M2 Ultra version of the Mac Studio the one that most pros should buy. It's expensive—it's hard to spend $4,000 on a consumer desktop PC, even one with a top-tier CPU and GPU in it—but what you get is a powerful-but-tiny Mac that's quieter and more power efficient than any PC you can buy or build.

This review has mainly focused on the M2 Ultra version because that's the one we tested, but if the price is a concern, the M2 Max version remains a great option. If the M2 Ultra version is a Mac Pro replacement, the M2 Max version is more like the old 27-inch iMac—not Apple's best or most powerful desktop but one with more than enough power for most creative work. You should also strongly consider buying this version of the Studio rather than the M2 Pro Mac mini if you want 32GB of memory. The Studio gives you more GPU cores and more ports for the exact same money, at least if you're looking at the $1,999 version of the mini with the fully enabled M2 Pro.

The good

• A small, fast, efficient desktop that's a great showcase for Apple Silicon
• Good port selection
• Ports on the front
• Whisper-quiet
• Mac Pro-tier performance for $3,000 less than an equivalently configured Mac Pro
• $2,000 M2 Max version is faster than the $2,000 version of the Mac mini

The bad

• Steep RAM and storage upgrade prices
• Doubling of hardware resources in M2 Ultra vs. M2 Max doesn't always mean double the performance
• M2 Ultra config, in particular, is still pricey compared to anything other than the Mac Pro

The ugly

• No internal expandability