Apple’s update to the Mac Studio line has shaken up the premium end of its product catalog. Here’s the best desktop Mac you should buy for your budget in early 2025.
The March 2025 update of the Mac Studio has made some changes to the landscape of desktop Mac models. At least, it did so on the premium end of the scale, with the more budget-friendly side kept as it is.
The change now means that, if you have more budget available for a desktop Mac, you’re going to get even more performance out of your purchase.
Apple covers a wide array of price points with its entire product catalog, stretching from the budget-focused end to the more premium. However, with so many models and configurable elements, it can become a tough decision to choose which model to ultimately purchase.
This guide will aim to tell you where you should, and shouldn’t, be putting your money in the early stages of 2025.
Overall desktop Mac range
Apple has a total of four Mac models available for consumers to purchase. The collection consists of the Mac mini, the 24-inch iMac, the Mac Studio, and the Mac Pro.
Each has a number of elements that could be configured, including different tiers of chip, memory, storage, and even whether you want Gigabit Ethernet or 10-Gig Ethernet.
Apple’s overall desktop Mac price range, as of March 2025
The better way of considering the four product families is to break them down to seven. In this case, the Mac mini is split into M4 and M4 Pro variants, the 24-inch iMac in 2-port and 4-port versions, the Mac Studio in its M2 Max and M2 Ultra versions, and the Mac Pro.
The overall price range for desktop Macs starts from $599 for the cheapest configuration of Mac mini to $14,099 for the highest Mac Studio, if you take into account the main configurable upgrades. We are counting things like Nano-texture or Ethernet options here, but we’re leaving out add-on software and peripheral changes.
To make it easier to consider, we will break this down into two price ranges: sub-$2,000 purchases for budget-focused users, and $2,000 or more for more premium options.
Storage and memory upgrades
A big thing to consider when pricing out your ideal Mac is that you cannot upgrade the specifications of most of Apple’s Macs after you’ve bought them. With the exception of elements of the Mac Pro, you cannot simply open up a Mac and add more memory or storage.
That means you have to think about how much memory and storage you want before you purchase.
Storage pricing of Apple’s desktop Mac range, based on base configurations, as of March 2025
Since Apple’s upgrades can cost a lot of money, you may want to think about other ways to get upgrade benefits without paying a premium. While you can’t change the chip nor memory, you can add more storage capacity, if you use an external drive.
Apple’s storage upgrades are painful to consider, especially at the higher end. For example, it costs $200 to go from 512GB to 1TB of SSD storage on an M4 Pro Mac mini, but going from 512GB to 8TB is an eye-watering $2,400 upsell.
Shifting from the 8TB SSD in the Mac Studio to the 16TB version is a $2,400 upgrade on its own.
The exception is the Mac Pro, since you can use SATA connections and PCIe expansion to add more internal storage, and other components.
Upgrading the memory to a higher level doesn’t cost quite as much as upgrading storage, but could end up being more beneficial. Since Apple’s Unified Memory system means the CPU, GPU, and other chip elements share the same pool of fast memory, you’re effectively increasing both the CPU and GPU’s memory at the same time.
However, even this can be nosebleed-inducing at the premium end. The new M3 Ultra Mac Studio can be configured with up to 512GB of memory, which costs $4,000 more than the initial 96GB configuration, or $2,400 more than the 256GB option just below it.
Upgrading the chip is usually a good idea too, since you end up with more CPU and GPU cores and therefore more performance.
The bottom line is that you should upgrade the memory as a priority, then the Apple Silicon chip, then storage. And even then, don’t go too nuts on storage unless it’s absolutely essential.
Under $2,000 – Mac mini and 24-inch iMac
One of the best products in Apple’s Mac desktop range for new users is the Mac mini, which is also the cheapest. Updated to the M4 chip, it is priced at just $599 for the base configuration (check M4 Mac mini sale prices).
The M4 Mac mini is also your only choice for anything below $1,299, which is when the 2-port version of the M4 24-inch iMac makes an appearance. It uses the same chip as the M4 Mac mini, but you do get a 24-inch display.
At $1,299, you’re also looking at a few upgrades to the Mac mini, such as 24GB of memory and 1TB of storage or 32GB of memory and 512GB of storage, as well as 10-gig Ethernet.
In effect, you’re paying $700 extra on the iMac to get the display versus a pile of upgrades for the Mac mini. This could be worth it if you really need an all-in-one and you don’t already have a monitor for the Mac mini, but the Mac mini is probably the better option.
Apple’s desktop Mac price ranges under $2,000
At just $100 more at $1,399, the M4 Pro version of the Mac mini comes into play, along with its Thunderbolt 5 connectivity. The query then becomes whether you need the performance benefit from the M4 Pro itself with no upgrades or if you want an M4 Mac mini with the top memory option and 1TB of storage.
The iMac is still an option here, but again, it’s only really an option if you really need the display. At $1,499, the other iMac is an option with four rear Thunderbolt ports, not two, or you could get one upgrade for the two-port model instead.
As the price increases, your choice becomes a more upgraded M4 Mac mini, a lesser-upgraded M4 Pro for performance, or either of the iMac models with similarly lagged upgrades.
When we reach the top configuration of the Mac mini with M4 at $1,899, we’re also surprisingly looking at the two-port iMac. It’s only a $30 gigabit Ethernet option away from its own maximum configuration, due to being somewhat limited in memory to 24GB instead of 32GB, and at 1TB of storage instead of 2TB.
For the same money, the M4 Pro Mac mini could get a 48GB memory or a chip upgrade as well as 10-gig Ethernet, or you could put 512GB of storage and 24GB of memory in the four-port iMac.
Again, your best play is one of the Mac minis.
Reaching $1,999, the highest point in the lower range, you’re basically looking at saving $100 and getting the above four-port iMac. Or there’s the 48GB and 1TB storage upgrades for the M4 Pro Mac mini, though either could be switched for the chip upgrade too.
As usual, unless the display is required for aesthetics, the Mac mini is the better option here.
$1,999 is also where the Mac Studio becomes an option. Fitted with the lower-tier M4 Max, 36GB of memory, and 512GB of storage, it sounds like it’s a viable option.
For people wanting high levels of performance, this is where they should turn, because of the M4 Max chip. However, the performance improvements are tempered by the lower amount of memory available to use.
It’s a hard decision here, but it would depend on whether or not your computing needs would be better with more memory or a still usable amount of memory and a better chip.
$2000 and beyond – M4 Pro Mac mini, Mac Studio
At $2,499, the Mac mini can have the upper M4 Pro chip, 64GB of memory, 1TB of storage, and 10 Gigabit Ethernet. The Mac Studio can be configured with the upper M4 Max chip, 512GB of storage, and an automatic memory bump to 48GB, making it arguably the better option.
The next major price milestone is $3,499, which gets you an M4 Pro Mac mini with the upper tier chip, 64GB of memory, 4TB of storage, and 10Gig Ethernet. The nearest thing you can get is a Mac Studio with the upper M4 Max chip, 64GB of memory, and a 2TB SSD for $3,299, which is the better deal of the two.
At $3,999, the M3 Ultra version of the Mac Studio becomes an option. Equipped with the 28-core CPU and 60-core GPU, as well as a 32-core Neural Engine, it also has 96GB of memory and 1TB of storage in its default configuration.
At this level, the potential buyer’s going to want performance rather than sheer storage capacity, making it probably the best buy overall.
Apple’s Mac price ranges from $2000 and up, as of March 2025
The M4 Mac mini with M4 Pro maxes its configuration to the upper-tier chip, 64GB of memory, and 8TB of storage at $4,699. For the same money, you can get the M4 Max Mac Studio with the upper tier chip, 128GB of memory, and 4TB of storage.
Or, you could get the lower-tier M3 Ultra Mac Studio with 96GB of memory, 2TB of storage, and $300 to spend on a new monitor. This is the much better option.
From this point onwards in terms of price, you’re basically going to be configuring versions of the Mac Studio with either the lower-tier M4 Max chip but slightly higher memory and storage, or the M3 Ultra with marginally lower configuration options.
The M4 Max configurations could be considered the more balanced option of the two variants, while the M3 Ultra offers sheer performance. Going up in price, that’s basically the decision you have to make until you reach $5,899.
At that price, the M4 Max Mac Studio is at its highest specification, with 128GB of memory and 8TB of storage. For $100 more, you could get the lower-tier M3 Ultra, 256GB of memory, and 2TB of storage, which is the far better buy.
Beyond this point, it’s going to be a case of either going for the lower-tier Ultra chip and maybe one upgrade option more, or the faster upper-tier chip. Again, at this price level, performance is probably the main arbiter of which configuration you should choose, so the latter with lower storage levels is preferable.
Eventually, at $10,199, the lower-tier M3 Ultra chip is at its top configuration with 256GB of memory and 16TB of storage. The better option is to go down to 8TB of storage and get the upper-tier chip.
At even higher prices, you’re going to be getting the upper-tier M3 Ultra, but having to choose between 256GB or 512GB of unified memory, and either 8TB or 16TB of SSD storage. Either upgrade is going to cost you $2,400, but the memory is the more important one.
The top of the scale is not far away, with the faster M3 Ultra chip accompanied by 512GB of unified memory and 16TB of storage for $14,099. This is excessive, to the point that you may want to consider dropping down to 8TB of storage and spending the savings on an iPad Pro or an Apple Studio Display.
What about the Mac Pro?
You’ve probably noticed that we didn’t discuss the Mac Pro in the post-$2,000 category at all. There’s a good reason for that: it’s a specialist use case device.
The Mac Pro was previously considered the best Mac you can get, as a powerhouse device. With Apple Silicon and the introduction of the Mac Studio, this became less true.
Indeed, with the current M4 Max and M3 Ultra generation, the M2 Mac Pro’s performance is going to feel underwhelming.
For most people, the Mac Studio will be the better purchase if you’re in need of a high-performance Mac.
The Mac Pro has been out-Pro’d by the Mac Studio
There are some exceptions where buying the Mac Pro is better, but they are specific use cases that most people don’t have to consider.
For a start, the Mac Pro has some limited upgrade options. You can open it up and install hard drives if you want, which you can’t do on a Mac Studio without using external storage.
Opening it up also brings with it the option of PCIe support. You could attach external PCIe enclosures to a Mac Studio’s Thunderbolt port, but with the Mac Pro, it can be installed inside the case.
There’s also the option of buying a Mac Pro in a rack-mountable configuration, which can be useful for networking environments.
Lastly, there’s the design and bragging rights of owning a Mac Pro, though these are extremely minimal concerns.
You can get a Mac Pro, certainly. But it’s not the performance option anymore. At least, until Apple updates the chips inside it.
Save on Apple’s line of desktop Macs
Every desktop Mac is on sale in our Mac Computer Price Guide. There you can find exclusive discounts and instant rebates across popular Apple resellers, including Amazon, Best Buy, Expercom, and B&H.
Expercom in particular is offering exclusive deals on every new Mac when you shop through this activation link. And here’s a breakdown of the guides by product line for easy price comparison:
