Apple's latest Mac Studio M5 Ultra has arrived - with massive performance, and a massive price tag to go with it. Is it worth it? Well... that all depends. I studied 10 Mac Studio articles in-depth to find the real-world performance gains, and whether the M5 Ultra can ever justify its full cost.

The top-spec Mac Studio is "a small powerhouse PC with strong performance," said Tom's Hardware, with Computerworld calling the machine "a genuine step up," and Tom's Guide dubbing it "the best kind of overkill."

So far, so good. This is machine built for exactly that sort of demanding workload - the kind most people will never, ever need. Think "ultra-powerful video editing workstation," as BGR said.

Or, as Ars Technica noted, local AI that's actually "a lot of fun." MacStories went as far as to call it "a dream machine for local AI agents."

Graphics is a mixed bag, where the Nvidia 5090 GPU "still has an edge over the M5 Ultra," though Apple's machine "outperformed the RTX 5070-based Acer desktop," in benchmarks.

But then comes the bill. And it's a shocker. The M5 Ultra Mac Studio doesn't come cheap.

"Extremely expensive," "god-tier price," "well outside the range of what most people want to spend on a desktop computer," are all common refrains across the reviews.

But, "though incredibly powerful, the leap in performance over the M5 Max-powered Studio can't justify that extra cash, unless you're a hardcore power user," Engadget notes.

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