The first reviews of the new M5 Max and M5 Ultra Mac Studio are out, and if they quibble about the pricing, there's no questioning that these are the most powerful Macs ever.

Apple announced the two new editions of the Mac Studio at the end of August, but with a long wait before pre-orders would start. Now in the week that the early buyers will get their devices, the first real-world reviews of both the M5 Max and M5 Ultra Mac Studio versions are starting to appear.

The Verge: tearing through benchmarks

The Mac Studio review unit sent to The Verge is a $12,299 configuration with a 36-core CPU and 80-core GPU with 256GB of RAM and 4TB of storage. It proved faster and more powerful than anything the publication has tested previously, making the benchmark tools seem insufficient.

The M5 Ultra model is around 30% faster than a similarly-configured M3 Ultra in both single-core and multicore tests. Even GPU render testing in Cinebench scored 63% higher.

There just wasn't enough time to truly attempt to push the Mac Studio with M5 Ultra. It is such a high-end machine that only the most intensive workloads will challenge it.

Blender is faster, Premiere 4K video exports render a 1.7GB file in 40 seconds, and storage speeds are "off the proverbial charts. AI testing will come later, but finding the M5 Ultra Mac Studio's limits will need some time and testing.

Engadget: power at a huge premium

Engadget had a similar test unit, just with a 2TB SSD instead of a 4TB one, and noted that the retail price is $11,299. Compared to the similar M3 Ultra Mac Studio, "that's a massive price jump of over 50 percent."

Then "the extra performance over the M5 Max model is only worth it for select buyers," it continued. Despite the "unpleasant twist" of the higher prices, though, the review does say that "it's capable of incredible performance."

Comparing the M5 Ultra to the M3 Ultra, the reviewer says the the new model tends to be 20% to 30% faster across CPU, GPU, and neural engine benchmark scores. Even so, the recommendation is to go for the M5 Max version.

"If every second of compute time counts more than the $10k-plus price, though," it concludes, "you can't do better than one (or more) M5 Ultra models loaded up with RAM."

Launching alongside the Mac mini

Most YouTubers have taken to doing reviews of both the Mac Studio and the new Mac mini. That means they tend to compare the two models rather than necessarily dive into the details of either.

One of the first to publish was ZY Cheng who concludes that "both Macs are actually incredibly powerful in their own regard."

"But as to which one is worth investing in, the best analogy I can think of at the moment is power tools," he says. Showing a regular cordless drill, he describes that as being like the Mac mini, where the Mac Studio is an industrial construction-crew's kind of drill.

Price and performance

Most of the reviews did lead with the price of the new Mac Studio, and Apple had already raised prices ahead of the launch. Some models cost even more than their predecessors, though, to the extent that you could pay up to $18,299 for a maxed-out model.

Except there is one more variant yet to come, and it's one that Apple isn't even taking pre-orders for yet. At some point in late October 2026, Apple will add the ability to order a Mac Studio with 512GB of RAM.