The good news is that even the 13-inch M2-powered MacBook Pro is worthy of consideration for music-making. Not every musician has the budget for Apple’s M2 Pro-powered MacBook Pro though. Check out these MacBook Pro deals for the best discounts. This is an expensive Mac, but we often see very good discounts so we strongly recommend that you shop around to save. Should you want the most powerful MacBook Pro you can buy, then you could look at the M2 Max, which maxes out at 38 GPU cores. ![]() Those are all good reasons to choose the larger MacBook PRo over the 13-inch model, another is the M2 Pro, which brings extra GPU cores (16 or 19) that can be used to crunch the numbers needed when using loads of plug-ins, VSTs or rendering multi-channel compositions onscreen. There is no 256GB SSD option for the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro, which avoides the whole issue with slower SSDs that plagues the 256GB SSDs. You’ll get 512GB or 1TB storage as standard, with the option to increase that to a mega 8TB. This can, of course, be upgraded at the point of sale, maxing out at 32GB for the M2 Pro (you can get up to 96GB in the more expensive M2 Max models). Both come with the M2 Pro chip and 16GB Unified Memory (aka RAM) as standard. If you want a good-sized screen, plenty of ports, and plenty of power the 14-inch MacBook Pro, introduced in January 2023, is a good option (and the 16-inch MacBook Pro if you want an even bigger screen). This could matter if you wish to use graphics with the music you play. The Mac mini, Mac Studio and all other MacBooks support a number of external displays. Speaking of external displays, note that if you want to plug in more than one additional display the standard M1 and M2 MacBooks won’t officially support more than one additional display (although there are ways around this, see: How to connect two or more external displays to Apple M1 or M2 Macs). The Mac Studio and Mac Pro go further offering the M2 Ultra with 60- or 76-core GPU. If you think you will benefit from more graphics prowess then look to the 14-inch or 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M2 Pro (16 or 19 graphics cores) or the M2 Max (30 or 38 graphics cores). Apple’s M2 Macs offer 8 or 10-core GPUS and should suffice in most cases. It’s also a factor should you require additional displays. Things are more complicated these days as some audio software is GPU-accelerated. Historically, recording and editing audio didn’t utilize many graphics card resources, unlike 3D design and video editing. If you are studio based you may think that you need an iMac so that you can take advantage of the large display, but you can plug in an external display to any Mac, so even if you had a laptop Mac you could happily use it with a 30-inch screen when you are at your desk. ![]() But if you’re a solo musician who only ever creates music in a home studio, you could get more bang for your buck with a desktop machine such as the M2 Pro Mac mini. If you’re always moving around, working with various musicians in different countries, a Mac Studio probably won’t fit in your hand luggage. Speaking of being at different locations, you must decide whether you need the Mac to be portable or not. Cloud storage might be a good option here: check out our Best Cloud Storage Services for Mac. External drives can be fine for large sample libraries and the like, especially when connected using Thunderbolt, but you then need to determine how to take everything with you if you’re a musician who works with people in many different locations. You must figure out what you’ll need, and whether assets will be stored internally or externally. Another reason to avoid the lower-capacity Macs is that we’ve found the smaller SSDs to be slower than their larger-capacity counterparts. So you probably want a minimum of 512GB SSD with your Mac. Entry-level Apple notebooks have 256GB SSDs, but pro instrument and effects collections when installed can require hundreds of GB, and that’s before you even start to add your own music files. However, SSDs are far more expensive per GB than hard drives.
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