Apple Mac Studio (M5 Max or M5 Ultra)

• Apple introduced the new Mac Studio in a press release on 25 August 2026, alongside the new Mac mini; pre-orders opened that day and availability begins 22 September 2026^[1][3][4]. Macworld adds that 512GB unified memory configurations will not arrive until "late October"^[4]
• U.S. pricing is from $2,499 for the M5 Max ($2,299 education) and from $5,499 for the M5 Ultra ($5,099 education), or on Apple Upgrade lease from $48.99 and $110.10 a month over 36 months^[1]. Macworld gives the same prices in sterling (£2,499 and £5,499) and identifies the base configurations as 36GB/512GB and 96GB/1TB^[4]
• Macworld notes that Apple had already raised the Mac Studio starting price by $500 in June 2026, from $1,999 to $2,499, and that the M3 Ultra rose $1,300 from $3,999 to $5,299 on component costs, especially RAM; the M5 Ultra is $200 above that and $1,500 above the previous Ultra at launch^[4]
• Macworld warns that chip and component shortages may constrain the high-memory models^[4]
• Johny Srouji calls it "our most powerful Mac ever"^[1]. MacRumors lists the machine on its product calendar as "Pre-Order Now, Launches Sep 22" with "M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips with up to 512GB of memory", and reports that this pair of desktops is likely the last announced under Tim Cook, who hands over to John Ternus as CEO on September 1^[3]

Notable features

• Silver desktop 7.7 inches (19.7 cm) square and 3.7 inches (9.5 cm) tall, weighing 6.0 pounds (2.7 kg) with M5 Max or 8.0 pounds (3.6 kg) with M5 Ultra; four Thunderbolt 5 ports (up to 120Gb/s), two USB-A, HDMI 2.1 and 10Gb Ethernet, plus an SDXC slot and two USB-C (M5 Max) or two Thunderbolt 5 (M5 Ultra) ports on the front^[2]
• The M5 Max has an 18-core CPU, up to a 40-core GPU with Neural Accelerators and up to 128GB of unified memory; the M5 Ultra goes to a 36-core CPU, an 80-core GPU and up to 512GB of unified memory^[1][3][4]
• The base M5 Max has an 18-core CPU (6 super cores and 12 performance cores), a 32-core GPU and 460GB/s memory bandwidth (614GB/s with the 40-core GPU); the base M5 Ultra has a 30-core CPU, a 64-core GPU and a 32-core Neural Engine at 1.2TB/s; storage goes to 8TB (M5 Max) or 16TB (M5 Ultra), with up to five or eight external displays respectively^[2]
• Apple claims up to 4.3x faster AI performance, 2x faster storage, 1.8x faster graphics and 1.3x faster CPU, with Thunderbolt 5 clustering of multiple Mac Studio systems giving up to 3x faster distributed AI inference, and Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 for the first time^[1][4]
• Macworld adds further detail: the model replaces the M4 Max / M3 Ultra machine of March 2025, the M5 Ultra handles up to 33 streams of 8K ProRes 422, storage uses PCIe Gen 6-based SSDs, an N1 chip provides the Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, and there is USB-C genlock and support for up to eight displays^[4]