Apple's Mac Studio might be the perfect device for many creators and professionals, but does it have upgradable storage? Apple released the device at its recent Peek Performace event. Essentially, it is a 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, users can get a Mac Studio with Apple M1 Max chip at $1999. It comes with a 10-core CPU, 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 CPU, 48-core GPU, 64GB of unified memory and 800GB/s memory bandwidth. Additionally, users can get up to 8TB of storage on the Mac Studio.
On March 18, a teardown video from Max Tech on YouTube showed how the Mac Studio has a removable SSD drive and ships with an additional SSD slot. The host speculated that the empty SSD slot could allow users to upgrade their Mac Studios by installing another storage drive in the future. However, users 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 users 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 Support 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 support 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 user-accessible, it is using some sort of firmware or software lock to prevent users from upgrading the storage. Further, there is a good chance that Apple will offer SSD upgrades for the Mac Studio at a premium price as it did with the Mac Pro.
Source: Max Tech/YouTube, Luke Miani/YouTube