Apple·desktop
Mac Studio M4 Max
Based on 10 credible posts from Hacker News. 2 filtered out as bot-like or off-topic.
Low confidenceFew owner reviews so far, so this score can still move a lot. How we score
Scored September 27, 2026
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Owner reviews
Overall owner mood
Most owners are happy with it: 70% of 10 reviews are positive and 10% negative. The most common complaint is performance (3 owners).
What owners like
Nothing two or more owners agree on yet.
What owners complain about
Performance raised by 3 owners
“I have a brand new the product with 64gb of ram and every site is still slower than it was on a 2011 Mac Book Pro.”
What owners talk about
- Performance1 praise · 3 complain
Built from the reviews themselves — every quote links to the owner who wrote it.
Full text of every credible post we scored. Bot-like and off-topic comments are hidden.
[...] For all my daily use + Codex Desktop and some local AIs in Ollama/LM Studio (which power my Home Assistant Voice Assistants) I have an Mac Studio M4 Max with 48GB of RAM (Which I bought early last year IIRC) It's a complete beast and runs GPT-OSS 20B at over 100 tok/sec. The GUI never slows down, and I run Sequoia still, so it is always smooth and polished. [...] I got mine for $2250 USD because I am eligible for the student discount. I got the base 512GB SSD because I store most stuff on external SSDs/HDDs anyway.
I am in a similar boat to you, but I can’t make the money math work. [...] Mac Studio M4 Max with 128gb at $3,699 (if you can find it) would equate to 10 million tokens a day of mixed input-output for over 5 years to break even. At which point that hardware is outdated compared to the SOTA models that will probably still be cheap on hosted platforms.
I was in the same situation, I used maxed out 15'' M3 Max MacBook Pro docked to Studio Display closed on vertical stand behind the screen. It was fine for office work, but running local LLMs would definitely overheat it. The battery started degrading purely due to heat issues. [...] I decided to get Mac Studio M4 Max, also all maxed out config and the cooling is so much better that I can run local LLMs like Gemma 3/4, gpt-oss 120b all day long without any heat issues or any audible fan noise. [...] It starts overheating and gets really loud.
[...] I just had an unplanned power outage two days ago, and my Dell Precision 7920 (44c/88t, 256Gb RAM) had about 20 minutes of UPS power vs the 148 minutes of my much more powerful Mac Studio M4 Max (16c, 128Gb RAM). [...]
[...] For example, in a heavy GPU workload, powermetrics would report a 65W idle-load delta on the GPU, but at the same time system DC power would rise by 179W, leaving 114W or nearly 2/3 of total system DC power on a Mac Studio M4 Max unexplained. [...] Of which: 133W GPU (my inference) 18W DRAM 28W SoC Fabric (sum of 3 fabric related components) <1W CPU Think of these values as how much system DC power rise was due to GPU activity, DRAM activity, etc. [...]
You can also buy a 64gb mini, save $1k and do more work than what you could do with a single 5090. In Europe I can get a 128gb mac studio m4 max for 300 euros more than a 5090 (for which you still need to buy a power supply, motherboard, cpu , &c.)
I got a personal Mac Studio M4 Max with 128GB RAM for a silent, relatively power-efficient yet powerful home server. [...] I connect remotely only via VPN (my phone enables this automatically via Tasker). [...]
Mac Studio, M4 Max LM Studio + gpt-oss + aider Works quite quickly. [...]
Everything is slower across every single facet of computing. Something is happening. I have a brand new Mac Studio M4 Max with 64gb of ram and every site is still slower than it was on a 2011 Mac Book Pro.
I tested this on my Mac Studio M4 Max running Sequoia 15.7.9. [...] When I click the death ray, it freezes Opera completely, and pins my 40 core GPU at 100% indefinitely. [...] It lags a bit and some UI elements don't appear instantly, but I can summon the force quit menu and simply kill Opera, at which point the OS returns to normal. [...]
The claims, and the evidence
What the brand claims
No published claims on file for this product yet.
What owners report
“[...] For all my daily use + Codex Desktop and some local AIs in Ollama/LM Studio (which power my Home Assistant Voice Assistants) I have an Mac Studio M4 Max with 48GB of RAM (Which I bought early last year IIRC) It's a complete beast and runs GPT-OSS 20B at over 100 tok/sec. The GUI never slows down, and I run Sequoia still, so it is always smooth and polished. [...] I got mine for $2250 USD because I am eligible for the student discount. I got the base 512GB SSD because I store most stuff on external SSDs/HDDs anyway.”
after 1 yearView on Hacker News“I got a personal Mac Studio M4 Max with 128GB RAM for a silent, relatively power-efficient yet powerful home server. [...] I connect remotely only via VPN (my phone enables this automatically via Tasker). [...]”
“I am in a similar boat to you, but I can’t make the money math work. [...] Mac Studio M4 Max with 128gb at $3,699 (if you can find it) would equate to 10 million tokens a day of mixed input-output for over 5 years to break even. At which point that hardware is outdated compared to the SOTA models that will probably still be cheap on hosted platforms.”
after 5 yearsView on Hacker News“Everything is slower across every single facet of computing. Something is happening. I have a brand new Mac Studio M4 Max with 64gb of ram and every site is still slower than it was on a 2011 Mac Book Pro.”
Common Mac Studio M4 Max problems
Issues at least two owners independently report.
- Performance3 mentionsView on Hacker News
“Everything is slower across every single facet of computing. Something is happening. I have a brand new Mac Studio M4 Max with 64gb of ram and every site is still slower than it was on a 2011 Mac Book Pro.”