Want wheels on the Mac Pro? That’ll be $400, please

Ok, Apple

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

Ever since theMac Prowas first announced, we knew that it was going to be pretty expensive –it’s anAppleproduct marketed to professionals, after all. However, now that we’ve had a chance to mess around with the configuration tool, we knowjust how expensive it can get.

One of the most jaw-dropping price additions that the Mac Pro has is the wheels. This is a giant metal box, so it can get heavy – having wheels makes it much easier to move around an office. However, if you want to upgrade the Mac Pro chassis with these wheels, it’ll set you back $400/£360/AU$640. You read that right.

It’s important to note that the Mac Pro isn’t really intended for everyday users. This is a professional machine for rich grown-ups, and the pricing definitely reflects that.However.$400 for a set of wheels seems a little ridiculous, no matter how fancy they actually are.

This is the same company that isselling a $999/£949/AU$1,699 monitor standfor the Pro Display XDR, so the wheels almost seem like a bargain in comparison. The price of these wheels only further proves that this device probably won’t be found in many people’s homes, but instead in a lot of offices.

Wait, there’s more

Because the Mac Pro configurator is out, we did what any other computing-obsessed geek would, and we turned everything up to the absolute max. Now, unless you’re literally running a Hollywood rendering farm, you’ll have absolutely no need for a maxed out Mac Pro, but it’ll run you $52,748/£47,588/AU$84,778. That’s enough to buy a pretty decent car.

For that jaw-dropping price tag, you’re getting an absolutely ridiculous stack of hardware, including a 28-coreIntelXeon W processor, 1.5TB of RAM, 4TB of SSD storage and twoAMDRadeon Pro Vega II graphics cards, each equipped with 32GB of VRAM. Again, you will never need this level of hardware unless you’re literally Pixar.

One thing we do have to call to attention, however, is the entry-level model. Just to get in on the ground floor of theMac Pro experience, you’re going to have to drop $5,999. That’s a high price for any computer, to be sure, but the really insulting thing here is the paltry 256GB of storage you get. At this price point, 1TB of SSD storage should be theabsolute minimum –instead, you’ll have to shell out an extra $400/£360/AU$640. To put things into perspective, we can buy twofastNVMe 1TB SSDs for the same amount of money.

Get the best Black Friday deals direct to your inbox, plus news, reviews, and more.

Sign up to be the first to know about unmissable Black Friday deals on top tech, plus get all your favorite TechRadar content.

Basically, the Mac Pro is an obscenely expensive machine, and the pricing seems to indicate that Apple simply isn’t interested in selling the Mac Pro to everyday users. If you want a desktopmacOS Catalinaexperience, you’re probably going to be going with the Mac mini for a while.

Bill Thomas (Twitter) is TechRadar’s computing editor. They are fat, queer and extremely online. Computers are the devil, but they just happen to be a satanist. If you need to know anything about computing components, PC gaming or the best laptop on the market, don’t be afraid to drop them a line on Twitter or through email.

Apple iMac 24-inch M4 (2024) review: the best, and most colorful, all-in-one computer levels up

A new dawn for Mac gaming? Apple’s M4 Mac mini will support hardware-accelerated ray tracing

Another reason to avoid edge-lit 4K TVs: they may fail faster than others, according to this report