Apple's Mac Pro inside a slightly bigger Mac Mini. Once the Mac Studio is connected with an external display, keyboard and mouse, it's a full-fledged yet portable desktop setup.
Mac Studio comes in two configurations. First, s can get a Mac Studio with Apple M1 Max chip at $1999. It comes with a 10-core U, 24-core GPU, 32GB of unified memory and 400GB/s memory bandwidth. On the other hand, a Mac Studio with the new Apple M1 Ultra chip starts at $3,999. It comes with a 20-core U, 48-core GPU, 64GB of unified memory and 800GB/s memory bandwidth. Additionally, s can get up to 8TB of storage on the Mac Studio.
On March 18, a teardown video from allow s to upgrade their Mac Studios by installing another storage drive in the future. However, s would have to get rid of the rubber ring at the device's base and then unscrew it to get inside. So, while Max Yuryev, the host of the Max Tech channel, made it look easy, regular s won't be able to do so. However, another YouTuber Luke Miani has claimed that the device is not upgradable at all.
Mac Studio Does Not External SSDs
To do so, Miani took two different Mac Studios, a $4,000 and a $5,000 one, and experimented with the primary SSDs that come with the device. He tried out three different scenarios to test whether the Mac Studio is upgradable or not. Firstly, he took the primary SSD from one machine and installed it in the second machine's empty slot to upgrade its storage. However, the portable computer did not boot up, and the status light on its chassis blinked in an amber color. In the second attempt, Miani tried to determine whether installing the original SSD in the empty slot on the same Mac Studio works. Unfortunately, the machine did not recognize the storage drive and did not boot up.
In another attempt, the YouTuber exchanged the SSDs on his Mac Studios only to find out the devices did not each other's storage drives. Given that both the SSDs were from Apple, the device should have turned on. But it didn't, in normal mode or recovery mode. So it can be concluded that Mac Studio is not upgradable. Furthermore, the secondary SSD slot seems to be non-functional.
While Apple mentions on the official product page for Mac Studio that its storage is not -accessible, it is using some sort of firmware or software lock to prevent s from upgrading the storage. Further, there is a good chance that Apple will offer SSD upgrades for the Mac Studio at a price as it did with the Mac Pro.
Source: Max Tech/YouTube, Luke Miani/YouTube