Product10 publishers3 min readPublished
Apple charges $4,000 to move the Mac Studio from 96GB to 256GB of unified memory
Apple's M5 Ultra Mac Studio starts at $5,499 and reached $12,299 as tested, and the reviewer running local agents on it every day says the most expensive Anthropic subscription would still have cost less for years.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- Apple's M5 Ultra Mac Studio starts at $5,499 with a 30-core CPU, 64-core GPU, 96GB of unified memory and 1TB of storage, and PCMag's upgraded 256GB, 4TB review unit came to $12,299.
- Engadget put its 256GB, 2TB configuration at $11,299 against $7,499 for the equivalent M3 Ultra machine, a jump of more than 50 percent it attributes largely to RAM prices and Apple's markups.
- CNET says 256GB of memory requires at least the base Ultra chip, while the 512GB option requires the top-end chip and is not available until the end of October.
Compiled by The Product DeskSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- decision For a team whose model needs more than 128GB resident, capacity decides it: on CNET's survey of compact machines, the Ultra is the only one that holds the weights, so the 80-core GPU comes along with the memory.
- cost At $25 a gigabyte for the 96GB-to-256GB step, a buyer who guesses the model size wrong spends $4,000 on memory that sits empty.
- constraint Memory cannot be added later, so the largest model the box will run in 2029 is fixed by what someone ticks on the order form now.
- contradiction Engadget says the performance gap over the M5 Max cannot justify the Ultra's price for anyone short of a hardcore power user, while CNET calls the same price normal for a workstation because the alternatives stop at 128GB, and which view is right depends entirely on model size.
Memory is the decision that cannot be changed later. On the Ultra, Apple sells 96GB of unified memory or 256GB with nothing in between, and none of it can be added afterwards, according to CNET's review [9]. The buyer is committing at checkout to the largest model the machine will ever hold.
The prices push upward. CNET puts the entry Ultra at $2,400 more than a Max, which does not add up from the $2,499 base configuration; it adds up from the rung above, where $600 buys a bigger chip and 48GB of memory [10][6]. $2,499 plus $600 plus $2,400 is $5,499 [34]. CNET also points out that a Max with 128GB and 1TB costs $100 less than the base Ultra [10].
Moving that entry Ultra to 256GB costs $4,000 [3]. For the 160GB you add, that is $25 per gigabyte [33]. Storage is simple at $500 per terabyte [4], and it accounts for the gap between the two published test units: PCMag's 4TB machine at $12,299 and Engadget's 2TB machine at $11,299 are the same computer, $1,000 and two terabytes apart [1][17][35].
For anyone generating tokens locally, the relevant number is bandwidth. CNET's review puts the M5 Ultra at 1.2TB per second against 614GB per second on the M5 Max, roughly double [11][37]. The reviews do not agree on how the chip gets there: PCMag calls it a quad-die part using a new form of UltraFusion, while Engadget describes it as two M5 Max chips joined together [5][24].
MacStories spent four days with a 256GB unit and made a local model its default assistant [26]. "This computer makes it possible to run personal assistants powered by local models with great performance and no additional cloud costs," the reviewer wrote [27]. Qwen3.8-Flash-Next now backs Open Minis for iOS and Hermes Agent on that machine [29], and MacStories reports the agents stay fast at larger context windows and hold up through long multi-turn loops [30]. An earlier project ran agents on DeepSeek V4 Flash plus olmOCR around the clock for 99 days across 310 documents [31].
The same review is blunt about payback. "You need expensive hardware to run these models, and by the time you've repaid your investment, you could have used the most expensive Anthropic subscription for several years, still saved money, and got better performance in return," the reviewer wrote [28]. The comparison comes with no dollar figure, and none of the four reviews prices rented GPU hours [38].
Engadget's top M5 Max with 2TB storage is $5,899 against $11,299 for its Ultra unit, 1.92 times the price [22][17][36], for multi-core CPU and GPU speeds about 20 to 30 percent higher [21]. Engadget's verdict is that the gap cannot justify the extra cash unless you are a hardcore power user [23]. CNET disagrees, arguing the price is not out of line by workstation standards because the compact alternatives it names, including DGX Stations and the upcoming RTX Spark systems, stop at 128GB [14][13].
Two numbers decide this, and both are knowable before you order. The first is the memory your largest model needs resident. The second is whether that work is allowed to leave your network. Under 128GB with data that can go out, the $5,400 between Engadget's Max and Ultra configurations buys idle headroom [39]. Over 128GB, CNET's list says these compact boxes do not hold it [13]. Over 256GB, the 512GB option requires the top-end chip and does not ship until the end of October [15].
What to watch
- Apple has not published the price of the 512GB memory configuration, which goes on sale at the end of October.