Next Mac Studio with M5 Ultra chip set to be Apple's most powerful yet — here's when it may arrive

Thinking of buying a Mac Studio? You may want to hold off, as the M5 Ultra is rumored to make its debut on what will be Apple's most powerful Mac desktop yet.

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is skipping the M4 Ultra and going straight to an M5 Ultra chip to power its upcoming Mac Studio. Considering the impressive M5 chip benchmarks and how the M-series Ultra processors link two Max CPUs using UltraFusion architecture to double performance, this will be the Cupertino tech giant's highest-performing chip to date.

Currently, the latest Mac Studio comes with mismatched M4 Max and M3 Ultra chip options. Apple made a point that not every generation will get an Ultra chip variant (as per Ars Technica), with the last being the M3 Ultra, which features a 32-core CPU, an 80-core GPU, 512GB of unified memory, and a 32-core Neural Engine.

Gurman claims the M5 Ultra will arrive in 2026, following the launch of the M3 Ultra in March earlier this year. This was announced for the latest Mac Studio, and as per the report, Apple is looking to follow suit with its next Mac Studio. However, it's unclear when the M5 Ultra will officially make its debut.

As for the Mac Studio itself, it isn't expected to see major design changes, as the chip will be the focus for the update. What we do know is that it won't come cheap, seeing as the M3 Max Mac Studio is priced from $3,999.

M5 Pro and M5 Max come first

With Apple's latest silicon arriving on the M5 MacBook Pro and M5 iPad Pro, we now look towards the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips to arrive — expected to be sometime in early 2026. If this is the case, the M5 Ultra will likely launch after these silicon are released.

In the past, Apple launched its M1 Ultra and M3 Ultra in March, with the M2 Ultra chip being announced in June. This gives us a good idea of when the M5 Ultra will be released, as the Ultra variants typically launch after the Pro and Max chips. If this is the case, it may be sometime during the first half of 2026.

Hopefully, the M5 Ultra will arrive sooner rather than later in the year, seeing as a redesigned MacBook Pro with a touchscreen OLED panel is set to kick off the M6-series chips.

Interestingly, the tech giant is will reportedly debut a new Studio Display is gearing up to arrive by 2026, which could coincide with the launch of the M5 Ultra Mac Studio. In any case, time will tell when we'll see Apple's most powerful chip arrive.

That's not all that's rumored to be in the works, as Apple is reportedly planning to reveal a budget-friendly MacBook with an iPhone processor sometime in the first half of 2026. So, expect an array of Mac models coming next year.

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