M2 Max - Still good?

Jase

Jase

Jase

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I'm looking to get a Mac Studio, they seem to be out of stock everywhere and long wait times with apple.

I can get one with the M2 max but that chip is a few years old now so I wondering how good that is?

Will be used for Photo and Video editing (with 4K footage).
 
For sure yeah. I’d say memory is more a concern, the more the better, 32 minimum all the way to high as you can get.

Honestly, they slap these ridiculous “4x” faster blah blah but when encoding your finished vid you end up saving little time of significance. Does going from 6 minutes to 5 change your life? No not really.

As for “real time” editing in native 4K; no point when you have shadow files baked into software these days.
 
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Ali195 said:
For sure yeah. I’d say memory is more a concern, the more the better, 32 minimum all the way to high as you can get.

Honestly, they slap these ridiculous “4x” faster blah blah but when encoding your finished vid you end up saving little time of significance. Does going from 6 minutes to 5 change your life? No not really.

As for “real time” editing in native 4K; no point when you have shadow files baked into software these days.
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dave28 said:
Yes it is still excellent even in mid 2026, Apple chips are very strong and they should be for the price
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Thanks :) Sounds like it may be worth it then. It has 32GB RAM but only a 1TB SSD. What would be a good external SSD to get with it?

My other consideration was a MacBook Pro M5 48GB but that is twice the price but has advantange of being portable.
 
Bummer. I have a MacBook Pro 16 M2 Max. Yet to see a reason to replace it with M4/5 and I do 4K outputs with a mix of 4K, 8K source files. And then photo editing is totally fine as well, overkill in that regard but whenever.

Maybe once the battery dies off I’ll replace it but so far 91%.
 
There will be another M2 Max for you!

Ali195 had it spot on, the leap between M generations sounds good but in real world performance it's not that big, buying something with a healthy amount of ram and not decimating your wallet is the best idea
 
Ali195 said:
Bummer. I have a MacBook Pro 16 M2 Max. Yet to see a reason to replace it with M4/5 and I do 4K outputs with a mix of 4K, 8K source files. And then photo editing is totally fine as well, overkill in that regard but whenever.

Maybe once the battery dies off I’ll replace it but so far 91%.
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pingwing said:
There will be another M2 Max for you!

Ali195 had it spot on, the leap between M generations sounds good but in real world performance it's not that big, buying something with a healthy amount of ram and not decimating your wallet is the best idea
Click to expand...

Think I'm going to go with the M5 Pro Laptop, it costs a fair bit I'm going to sell my Strix 4080 laptop that isn't used anymore and that will help with the difference.
 
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