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Apple just pulled the sheet off its latest Mac Studio, and the spec sheet reads like someone fed a wish list into a particle accelerator. The compact desktop workstation now ships with M5 Max and M5 Ultra processors, delivering what Apple describes as generational leaps in CPU, GPU, and AI performance over previous silicon.
Pre-orders are live now. Shipping begins September 22, 2026, with a starting price of $2,499.
What’s under the hood
The M5 Max configuration tops out at an 18-core CPU and 40-core GPU, paired with up to 128GB of unified memory. Memory bandwidth clocks in at 614GB/s.
Apple says the M5 Max delivers up to 2.5 times faster CPU performance and 4.9 times faster GPU performance compared to the M1 Max.
The M5 Ultra is essentially two M5 Max chips fused together through Apple’s UltraFusion architecture. It brings a 36-core CPU, 80-core GPU, and up to 512GB of unified memory with 1.2TB/s of bandwidth. The M5 Ultra delivers up to 2.4 times faster CPU and 4.7 times faster GPU performance compared to the M1 Ultra. The 512GB memory option is expected to become available in late October.
Display and media capabilities
The M5 Max configuration supports up to five external displays simultaneously. It can also handle 19 simultaneous 8K ProRes 422 video streams at 30 frames per second.
The M5 Ultra pushes those numbers further: eight displays and 33 concurrent 8K ProRes streams.
The bigger picture
Apple’s M5-series processors first appeared in MacBook Pro models back in March 2026. Supply chain difficulties, particularly around high-bandwidth memory components, reportedly contributed to the timeline stretching into late September rather than arriving at a mid-2026 window that some analysts had anticipated.
The previous Mac Studio refresh landed in March 2025, introducing M4 Max and M3 Ultra configurations.
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