The fan never kicked into noise levels that got disturbing nor did the Mac ever hang arbitrarily. Everyone will find their comfort zone with the Mac Studio, even if it's simple tasks like opening Music, WhatsApp, Calendar apps with a few tabs on Safari for good measure. Of course, you could do all that with a MacBook Air too, but the joy of having apps open instantly and the gorgeous 27in display makes the mundane seem enticing.
The solid 12.3.1 version of MacOS Monterey ensures that everything keeps ticking like a well-oiled smoothie machine and with the latest iPadOS release, you can even use Universal Control in all its glory, which means you can use both screens with a single mouse and file sharing as easy as drag-n-drop from one screen to another.
Regardless of power, the I/O remains generously similar. After years of making Mac fans yearn for the basics, Apple has taken the altruistic approach with four Thunderbolt, USB-A, 10Gbps ethernet, HDMI and a headphone port. Collectively between its Thunderbolt and HDMI ports, the Mac Studio can drive up to five simultaneous 4K displays!
It’s ironic that while most cutting-edge games are developed on Macs such as this Studio, Apple’s own gaming ecosystem, especially on the newer M1 SoC remains embarrassingly weak. Sure, you can max out an Arcade game or use Rosetta to translate an older title, but nothing that will bring every core of the Mac Studio to its knees, because the big-name titles don’t exist for MacOS with M1 series SoC.