Apple fans, start typing your angry comments now… M2 Ultra Mac Studio Review

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Apple’s Mac Studio got an upgrade with M2 Ultra. But all is not what it seems over at Apple’s marketing department… Is it truly a worthy successor to M1 Ultra?

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MUSIC CREDIT
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Intro: Laszlo - Supernova

Outro: Approaching Nirvana - Sugar High

CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
2:00 Initial impressions and specs
3:35 GPU Benchmarks vs Apple's claims
5:36 It gets worse when we bench against an RTX 4090
7:12 CPU benchmarks vs a Core i9-13900K
8:56 There are still some weird performance bugs
10:20 Apple maybe told the truth here?
11:13 Power efficiency is king
12:39 Thermal testing - Silence trumps performance for Apple
14:20 Expansion
15:25 Value & Conclusion

[LinusTechTips]

Corrections:
3:01 - The M1 Ultra CPU has 16p/4e cores, not 16p/8e.
7:32 - The i9 13900K has 8 performance cores and 16 efficiency cores, not 16 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores.
7:16 - The numbers shown for the MacBook Pro 16 M2 Max are incorrect and are actually the numbers for the i9 13900k, as shown on the following graph at 7:23, where the numbers are accurate.
10:17 - There was a misunderstanding; Blackmagic Design hadn't replicated our results.

[Luzgar]

No apple, you cannot use a random number generator for the graphs, even if it is very convenient.
And yes, you need to label your axis, even if it doesn't look as good.

[taruninja]

This is why we NEED independent reviewers to look at products and test them against the claims of the manufacturer (even if they make it impossible with vague wording so they can't be called liars) and why I was so excited to hear about LTT starting up the Lab.

[Bluth]

Labs starting to pay off big time with all the additional tests and research into product marketing vs. reality

[varunrajamane]

The fact that LTT Labs can now test performance at different ambient temperatures is great. Living in a relatively hot part of India (35 degC - 40 degC ambient ) with no air conditioning, I remember not being able to play high performance games in the summer due to excessive stutter. The same games used to work great during the monsoon and winter months.

[Joeysmith_]

I can't believe apple is making the rtx 40 series look like a great value

[Snidde]

Always appreciate some solid data analysis and visualization that tells a story quickly but allows a deeper look. You have some quality folks there.

[jajssblue]

Can you imagine how much Apple would charge if they had a 4090 class GPU? It'd make Nvidia blush!

[elToroBandido]

Thanks for including higher ambient temperatures! You guys take so much flak for the Labs so, as someone who lives on a hotter climate, this makes the Labs an awesome addition to LTT. I'm very glad that you are putting your money towards better testing methodology :)

[doctorgears]

It's honestly refreshing to see a shout out to the engineers. There's a lot of skilled people that work at Apple and they do not set the prices, nor do they decide how things will be marketed. A lot of the time they're given requirements that may not even come from a technical individual, and they just have to make it work.

[Barryhick]

Only Apple could make the Rtx 4090 seem affordable

[VideoPine]

Noise reduction is an important part of colorgrading in resolve. I'm a professional colorist. NR is very hardware intensive so it's a good way to test your gpu, render speeds are also important.

To be able to play back large files on multiple tracks with noise reduction enabled at full project fps is a good thing.

Having said that, RTX 3090 4090 are also capable of playing large files with noise reduction at a much lower price compared to the new apple chips, so that's definitely something to think about. And with a proper pc workstation you have the ability to upgrade your gpu later if you need to without buying a completely new machine.

[jacobmallis]

These are one of the kind of videos that make LTT so great. I cant imagine anyone else being able to make such an extensive video like this that is also entertaining and easy to understand.

[lw]

Loving the hard data to back up the debunking of performance claims.
It's great to see more channels doing these kinds of involved and necessary tests.

[psyaviah]

We are really starting to see the benefits for LTT Labs for all of us in the computing industry. It's awesome having LTT as one of the channels pushing itself further to get better quality comparisons and backing it up with tests. Great to see, because we needed that to settle debates and call companies out. When it's good, it's being said. When it's bad, well, the numbers speak for themselves.

[ShadowProductions]

As a photographer and 3D generalist, I had been saving for a year and a half to purchase the Mac Studio with top-notch specs, including 2 TBs with the M2 Ultra chip. However, it turned out to be ridiculously expensive. Little did I know, I could build my own custom PC. With the same budget, I managed to get a fully loaded RTX 4090, an i9 13900K, a whopping 192GB of RAM, and 4TBs of storage. Plus, the added advantage of being able to upgrade my computer in a few years. I am absolutely thrilled with my choice!

[boxer]

Linus is always so polite when roasting a whole company

[justinhook]

As an Apple user, I hope you don't back down. They lie constantly and get away with it. Very frustrating as a customer to buy their products and find huge gotchas all the time.

[CloudySpecs]

some amazing content out of the labs with this one. Love to see the extra info it contributes.

[raunakborker]

"Apple fans, start ..." I thought Apple chips were fanless