New Apple Mac Studio goes straight to M5 Max and M5 Ultra with significant performance gains

Apple Mac Studio 2026 model, with M5 Max or M5 Ultra processing (on a gold background) — (Image credit: Apple)

Quick Summary

Apple has announced a new Mac Studio sporting either the M5 Max or M5 Ultra chips.

Designed for heavy computing, the models start at £2,499 / $2,499.

Apple has opted to skip a generation with its new Mac Studio and go straight to M5 chips. While we had an M4 Max version last year, there was no M4 Ultra – so now we have a considerable upgrade.

The new Mac Studio is available with the M5 Max chip inside, or the M5 Ultra, with the latter capable of more than 10x the AI processing performance of an M1 Max model. It's almost 8x faster than the 2025 flagship version, too.

The mini Mac also features up to 512GB of unified memory, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and Thunderbolt 5 connectivity.

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It is a true powerhouse that has been designed for professional use – including content creation, development, engineering and AI training. Gaming is even a consideration, with Apple claiming that it can run Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing one and a half times more effectively than its predecessor.

The M5 Max chipset features an 18-core CPU, up to 40-core GPU, up to 128GB of unified memory, up to 613GB/s memory bandwidth and a 16-core Neural Engine.

The M5 Ultra, on the other hand, really takes things up a notch. You get up to 36-cores on the CPU, 80-cores on the GPU, 512GB of unified memory, 1.2TB/s bandwidth, and a 32-core Neural Engine.

Naturally, the prices reflect the specs. The Mac Studio M5 Max starts at £2,499 / $2,499, while the Mac Studio M5 Ultra model begins at £5,499 / $5,499.

If you're feeling particularly flush and want the very best, you can expect to pay up to £18,299 / $18,299.

Pre-orders are open on Apple.com now with deliveries starting on 22 September 2026.

Apple has also announced a new Mac mini if you don't need quite so much power. It starts at £899 and runs on the new M6 chip. An M5 Pro variant is also available.

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Rik is T3’s news editor, which means he looks after the news team and the up-to-the-minute coverage of all the hottest gadgets and products you’ll definitely want to read about. And, with more than 35 years of experience in tech and entertainment journalism, including editing and writing for numerous websites, magazines, and newspapers, he’s always got an eye on the next big thing.

Rik also has extensive knowledge of AV, TV streaming and smart home kit, plus just about everything to do with games since the late 80s. Prior to T3, he spent 13 years at Pocket-lint heading up its news team, and was a TV producer and presenter on such shows as Channel 4's GamesMaster, plus Sky's Games World, Game Over, and Virtual World of Sport.