The price of the Mac Studio M1 Ultra raises questions

Last Tuesday, March 8, Apple presented a new Mac, the Mac Studio. The latter integrates the Apple silicon M1 Max chip as standard. If you want maximum computing power, you can choose, when purchasing, to upgrade from the M1 Max SoC to the M1 Ultra, a new processor also introduced at the last Apple Event.

According to Apple's explanations, the M1 Ultra is actually two M1 Max processors connected together to become one. This makes the Mac Studio equipped with this SoC, the Apple machinethe most powerful to date in the catalog. Etwe saw it, the benchmark figures are already impressive.

Despite everything, we can ask ourselves the following question: why the transition from an M1 Max chip (10-core CPU, 32-core GPU and 16-core Neural Engine) to an M1 Ultra chip (20-core CPU, 64-core GPU and Neural Engine 32 cores) is also expensive:+ 2 530 €?

This is the price, close to €1, for the entire machine with M1 Max chip (10-core CPU, 32-core GPU and 16-core Neural Engine):2 529 €.

In short, for the same price, you can have two M1 Max boxes, each with a 512 GB SSD and its own components, or a single box with an M1 Ultra chip and a 1 TB SSD.

However, as Apple says so well, the M1 Ultra is only the fusion of two M1 Max. So of course, engineering has a cost. In particular, there is the fact that the assembly is designed in such a way that latency is minimal between the two M1 Max of the M1 Ultra, and that the machine only sees a single SoC within it.

All the same, the €2,529 option for the M1 Ultra makes me wonder, as often with Apple and its price lists.

What do you think?

Also read:

• Mac Studio: some details omitted by Apple
• Summary Keynote March 2022: iPhone SE and iPad Air 5G, Mac mini Studio and other new features

And the video summary by Presse-citron:

Editor-in-chief for iPhon.fr. Pierre is like Indiana Jones, looking for the lost iOS trick. Also a long-time Mac user, Apple devices hold no secrets for him. Contact: pierre[a]iphon.fr.