At $11,299, the Mac Studio with M5 Ultra delivers exceptional performance for creative and AI professionals but only justifies its massive price premium for select power users. The M5 Ultra combines two M5 Max chips, offering up to a 36-core CPU, 80-core GPU, 32-core neural engine, and 512GB unified memory. In testing, it achieved a Geekbench 7 multi-core score of 52,185, surpassing the previous M3 Ultra's 39,145 and rivaling AMD's 64-core Ryzen Threadripper Pro. GPU performance and sustained disk speeds were also class-leading.

The compact 3.7-inch aluminum design remains unchanged, featuring Thunderbolt 5 ports (120 Gbps), HDMI 2.1, 10Gb Ethernet, and USB-A. However, the M5 Ultra's starting price jumped to $5,500 from $4,000 — a 50% increase driven by soaring RAM costs and Apple's markups. The M5 Max model at $5,899 (top config) offers half the price but less than half the performance.

Steve Dent concludes the extra $3,800 over the previous generation only makes sense for hardcore users who need maximum unified memory and GPU cores for AI training or heavy creative workloads.