Apple Mac Studio (M5 Ultra) Review: Unlimited Power

The Mac Studio can run frontier-level AI language models locally. It’s only a preview of what’s to come. All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors.

However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Frontier-level AI models right on your desk. Unprecedented AI and gaming performance on Mac.

Very small for this amount of power. Supports up to four 5K monitors. Still can't compete with Nvidia in GPU.

There are cheaper AI boxes out there. The Mac Studio has a new calling in life. For awhile, it seemed like overkill for just about anyone, regardless of profession.

But these days, computers with over 64 GB of RAM and tons of GPU performance have an entire playground of on-device AI tools to exclusively explore. With a Mac Studio, you can have a full-on agentic AI framework, generate high-end video all on-device, or run the latest foundation-level large language models (LLMs). The Mac Studio is relatively unique among the available options—at least, for now.

But beware: If you're tired of hearing about AI, turn away now. Apple has always catered to a high-performance crowd, and with the surge of interest in local AI, its systems are uniquely set up to excel in that area. But first, the box itself.