You have to really need it in order to justify the cost of an M5 Ultra Mac Studio, but there are reasons why you could use up all eight display options, and they may not be obvious. Sometimes you wonder if Apple adds something just because it can. So the new M5 Max version of the Mac Studio, for instance, is being promoted as being able to run up to five displays, while the M5 Ultra Mac Studio can handle eight. There's more to it than that, there are specific limits on the types of displays, but it's true that there are five or eight available. And it's true that few Mac users need more than one or at the absolute most two.

Yet you can be certain that there are Mac users even now who have maxed out how many displays they have. And you can bet money that there will be users who buy the new Mac Studio models expressly for the extra displays. It's not, though, that many people want to plug their Mac into a bank of eight monitors, looking like they're running a shopping mall's security system. There's more you can do than use ordinary monitors, but even before then, multiple standard displays can be useful.

Video editors, for instance, will typically be using editing software that just works better when you can lay out all of their tools and options. Instead of having to open and close panes, it's better to have everything you need at hand. Then it's also better to have a totally separate display for whatever you are editing. Final Cut Pro, and all of the other non-linear editing apps, include a small window that shows your final footage but it's not enough. Especially if you are editing a production that is going to be shown in a movie theater, a postcard-sized preview window is not going to cut it.

If you're doing color grading, all professional video editing apps include a scopes view. Engineers need precision displays and large ones. Surgeons can want one display for themselves and others for their team. Complex graphics work is better with a drawing tablet, which is a display too. So quite quickly you can have a need for one large editing display, one large preview monitor, and a drawing tablet.