Review: Mac Studio with M2 Ultra for creative work

in our recent videos we've tried out the latest and most powerful iPad Pro and MacBook Pro on a range of creative projects so it's only fitting that next we open up a brand new Mac Studio to see who would benefit most from Next Level power on a space-saving scale the model we have here contains the M2 Ultra processor with 24 core CPU and 60 core GPU 64 gigs of unified memory and a one terabyte SSD other configurations include Ram up to a staggering 192 gig CPU up to 76 core and the next chip down the M2 Max the thing to bear in mind is that this isn't an upgradable machine so it's important to choose specs that not only suit your current work but accommodate the sort of things you might get into over the next few years apart from Power the most striking thing about the Mac Studio is the form factor it occupies the same tiny Square footprint as the Mac Mini and stands roughly twice as tall the strength of its design doesn't end with how neatly it fits into any workspace it has an impressive array of ports for its size too meaning it can connect to most common peripherals without extra hubs or adapters the front has two Thunderbolt 4 ports and an SD reader and on the back four more Thunderbolts 10 gigabyte ethernet two USB a ports 8K HDMI 2.1 output and of course a 35mm headphone socket the big grill is for venting out air that's taken in through the base for cooling which you can feel very slightly but never here that's achieved using an extra copper heatsink that makes the M2 Ultra nearly a kilogram heavier than the max worth knowing if you're drawn to the portability of Mac Studio over Mac Pro with no display camera or mic and requiring a keyboard and mouse to even get it started Mac Studio is very much not a standalone solution but the benefit to its Simplicity is that it allows complete customization of the workspace to suit your individual workflow onto how it actually performs Iran cinebench's R23 benchmarking test so you can compare the numbers to your current setup every device has its own strengths but on paper the power of the M2 Ultra is way out ahead of any computer I've ever used like in our previous videos I've got a few test files and projects to try out so let's see how the Mac Studio handles across a range of creative tasks my go-to test in illustrator is Vector grain textures these are simple enough to apply but you soon get a sense of how well a device can cope when you add a lot of them as expected the M2 Ultra handled more than ever and seeing how well it performed with intricate shapes grains and gradients it feels to me like the limits have been lifted right off Vector illustration another useful test is how smoothly traditional media can be replicated in Photoshop for me that's using a Wacom intuos Pro and a selection of detailed texture brushes on a high resolution canvas with dozens of layers these are all factors that can result in lag meaning a less intuitive experience but here even with settings far higher than I usually use the file is as responsive as you need for this sort of work the screen footage is a great indicator of how smoothly a new system handles video the Mac Studio Breeze through 4 and 16 4K clips on Full preview quality like it was nothing in fact thanks to its double dedicated Hardware encoders it should be possible to play back as many as 22 8K Clips at once which is very impressive if a little hard to picture the real world application just out of Interest I used media encoder to create proxies for my 16 4K Clips which took just 43 seconds so my initial impression here is that even if you don't need the full power of the M2 Ultra to undertake more intensive work having these basic background tasks run faster and smoother is always a good thing my After Effects test project is loaded with tools and effects that pose a processing challenge including 3D cameras lights and extrudes blurs glows and Grains fractal noise particle world and high-res raster textures I'm used to these compositions struggling to varying degrees on different systems which is the whole point but on the Mac Studio I actually found myself adding to it and reaching new levels of complexity with the M2 Ultra absolutely churning through previews and keeping up in real time easily on Lower quality settings I really enjoy all the extra power here because I can see it's enabling much more interesting work than I've dared to attend before and even when it is above and beyond what I need for day-to-day animation work like with video editing the speed at which it renders is game changing this whole project takes two to four hours to export on other setups I've tested recently but here it was done in under 15 minutes I had to double check everything was working properly it's such an unbelievable upgrade that will Mount up to a huge time saving full disclosure I've not experienced at 3D design in the slightest but because it felt like my After Effects project was pretty easy for the Mac Studio I thought it was the perfect time to open blender and have a go while learning the basics I heard a lot about the struggle of lowering render times which obviously increased with the size and complexity of the scene so I downloaded an extremely intricate sample scene with nearly 200 000 objects and millions of faces and vertices if you're a 3D artist you'll have a much better frame of reference for this sort of thing but I was amazed to find that it handles smoothly and exported to PNG in under 8 minutes and there's a lot more that can be done in 3D animation being the obvious Next Step so if like me you've always been intrigued by this sort of work it's reassuring to go in knowing that you won't be held back and frustrated by technical shortcomings I loved using the Mac Studio with M2 Ultra it aced all my tests and proved its place at the top end of the Mac lineup along with Mac Pro it isn't just that it opens up new creative possibilities for more demanding workflows but the sheer speed it brings to exports previews and file saving of demanding projects makes it hard to face going back choosing Mac Studio could come down to its shape and size it's less portable than a Macbook but more than a Mac Pro so if you need a powerful desktop that can slot in anywhere this could be the solution with a wide range of specs available it's important to choose the right configuration so if you have a Mac Studio size space in your setup get in touch and we'll run through the options foreign [Music]

Channel: WeAreJigsaw24

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Id: eBIApaqbfy8

Length: 6min 21sec (381 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 09 2023