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This might be the least visually exciting equipment review I have brought forth in some time. A new computer isn’t always an exciting upgrade but I needed this very badly. I just purchased the new Apple Mac Studio M4 Max to replace an aging MacBook Pro from mid 2020, and the difference in performance for processing my ultra high-resolution images is night and day. In mid 2020, in the heart of the lockdown during the pandemic my Apple MacBook Pro died on me and I needed a new computer right away. I knew at that point that the new Apple M-series chips were about to be announced (and indeed they were announced only two months later) but I couldn’t wait. My backup computer at the time was quite old so I ordered a souped up Intel MacBook Pro that cost around $4,000 USD at the time. And then a year later I ordered a new M1 MacBook Pro, which was considerably cheaper and much faster than the Intel MacBook Pro from the year prior.
The older Intel MacBook Pro has been my desktop computer (that never leaves the office) and the newer M1 MacBook Pro was and still is my on the road computer. As a side note here, I have been using Apple laptops as my main working computers for nearly 20 years now—ever since they stopped making affordable towers that were superior to their laptops. Once Apple stopped upgrading the towers in the late 2000s their laptops seemed like the best option, especially since here in the office I use an external Eizo CG319X monitor with the laptops. The Eizo monitor is far superior to any of Apple’s monitors and far more color accurate as well. For a full review of my Eizo ColorEdge monitor click here.
That 2020 Intel MacBook Pro seemed usable for the most part for a few years but with the introduction of the FUJIFILM GFX100 II—and it’s ability to create 102 MP images at 8 frames per second—the old Intel MacBook started to show its age. I am not exactly sure what changed that slowed the computer down but once I got the GFX100 II it became glacially slow to edit images. Perhaps it was the Mac OS software upgrades that were optimized for the new M1 and M2 chips but it got to the point (around the time I started working with the GFX100 II in July 2023) that I could barely edit images on the older laptop. Hence, I have been hobbling along the last year or so waiting for Apple to update the Mac Studio to the new M4 chip set. When I saw the announcement a few weeks ago I jumped on it.
To say that the new Apple Silicon chips are a massive leap forward is an understatement. When I got my now ancient M1 MacBook Pro it was shockingly fast compared to any other computer I had previously worked with. Even now, that four year old M1 MacBook Pro with relatively pedestrian specs is still a solid, fast computer. I know a huge part of that speed increase is a faster solid state hard drive and better integration of the graphics card all on the same chip, but regardless of how they did it Apple hit a home run with the new Apple Silicon chips.
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The new Apple Mac Studio M4 Max is (as you would expect) ridiculously fast. I don’t know exactly how much faster it is than my older M1 but it doesn’t hesitate with anything I have thrown at it. As shown in Apple’s marketing the new M4 Max is supposedly 2.9X times faster than my old Intel MacBook Pro. It definitely feels much faster than that when processing giant 102 MP images. It can whiz through my Nikon Z9 and FUJIFILM GFX100 II image files in Lightroom like they were lowly 12 MP image files of yore. If I had to guess, I would say it is at least four times faster than my old M1 MacBook Pro but I have not done the actual testing to find out. I probably could have upgraded to the M2 Mac Studio last year but having been caught out in 2020 I didn’t want to sink a bunch of money into a computer knowing any day it was due for an upgrade—especially since they skipped the M3 upgrade with the Mac Studio (until recently). I tend to hold onto my computers for five to six years before I upgrade. Hence, it pays off to wait a bit.
One of the major issues with the older Intel Apple computers was heat management throttling the computers performance. My old Intel MacBook Pro basically had the fan running all the time unless it was asleep. The new Mac Studio is so quiet that the first few days I worked with it I thought it was turned off. The fan rarely if ever comes on and even then I can’t even hear it unless I put my ear right next to the computer.
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I realize this review might sound like an advertisement for Apple, but they do build some pretty amazing computers. I hate spending money on computers, but in this digital age they are a necessity. Buying a new computer is all about time management for me. If a new computer can help me get work done in a shorter time then that time savings can be used for other things, like tracking down the next assignment. In terms of processing images, with the FUJIFILM GFX100 II those 102 MP images can balloon to 1.5 GB or larger once I have worked them up in Photoshop so having a faster computer can massively chop down the time it takes to save those image files much less work them up. In Lightroom, a slow computer also acts as a barrier when trying to adjust these huge image files. Specifically, when trying to adjust white balance or any of the sliders where I need to see the adjustment in the image immediately in real time to know where I need to set that slider, with my older Intel machine the computer would essentially lock up and not show me the changes smoothly as I was moving the slider. That is a key issue in working up images. Hence, the new faster desktop machine was pretty critical for my use case.
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On top of working up these ultra high-resolution images the new cameras also present an issue that hasn’t really been that bad in the past. That issue is the frame rates. At twenty frames per second (fps) with my Nikon Z9 and eight fps with the GFX100 II, I am generating more images than I ever have and filling up hard drives as never before. It isn’t that I need to crank the frame rates up to maximum all the time, but when the action is happening so quickly (as with many of my recent Red Bull assignments) having the faster frame rates is the difference between getting the exact moment you are after or missing it completely. This effectively means that on some assignments I don’t come back with just a few thousand images but tens of thousands of images. On the Red bull Endless Skydive assignment last fall, I created over 135,000 images—mostly from remotely mounted GoPros running non-stop at 2 fps. On another Red Bull assignment in early 2025, I created 82,000 images. That large number of images creates another issue in terms of computing power. To go through that many images you first have to build the previews in Lightroom and then the computer needs to have the ability to go through them quickly as you go from one image to the next. Cutting down the time to build those previews could save hours. On the back end, exporting hundreds or even thousands of large image files also takes a lot of time and a faster computer here again saves a lot of time. That is one of the big reasons I needed to upgrade.
Having used laptops as my desktop computers for the last fifteen years it is very nice to have a dedicated desktop machine again with a plethora of ports built in. I have a lot of hard drives attached to my desktop computer—around 200 terabytes of RAID enclosures to be exact. I still use a CalDigit hub with the Mac Studio but it is great to have some extra Thunderbolt and USB-C ports on the computer itself. My Eizo CG319X monitor uses a DisplayPort connection for the best possible performance and no Apple computer has one of those built-in so I have to use the dock to connect my monitor.
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The Mac Studio computers sit in the goldilocks zone of performance, size and price. I opted not to go for the higher-end M3 Ultra variant as the base price was twice as much for very little in performance gains (at least for my photo centric needs). The M4 Max starts out at $1,999 USD but with a few upgrades that can balloon quickly. I opted to go for the faster M4 Max chip with 16 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores. I also opted for 64 GB of RAM and bumped the memory up to 1 TB on the computer itself. These upgrades were mostly for future proofing the computer as they cannot be made later on given that everything is incorporated onto the chip itself. Even with all of the upgrades, the Mac Studio M4 Max was $1,300 cheaper than my now ancient and glacially slow Intel MacBook Pro that I purchased in 2020. And on top of that it is one of the fastest computers Apple has ever offered.
I am hoping that I can get more than five years out of this computer. My cameras are all such high-resolution monsters (either 47 MP or 102 MP) that I don’t really see the need for more resolution or a new camera any time soon. With my crazy intense assignments the only computer related items I will have to buy in the next few years are larger hard drives since I seem to create a terabyte or two of images on every assignment now. Luckily hard drives are getting larger and larger every few years. Amazingly, you can now buy 24 TB 3.5-inch SATA drives and there are rumors of 32 TB drives coming out later this year.
For photographers looking to upgrade, I can highly recommend the new M4 Max Mac Studio. It is more than powerful enough for just about any project I can imagine. For those that need more power for video post-processing the M4 Max is likely all you would need as well. If you work with 8K footage and just want a slightly faster computer then the M3 Ultra might be the better option but the price difference (once upgraded) is significant. Kudos to Apple for making a wicked-fast computer that fits the needs of so many creatives these days. Here’s hoping I can spend less time staring at my computer as well.
Check out the Apple Mac Studio options on the Apple website.
