The Mac Studio sits between the Mac Mini and Mac Pro in Apple’s desktop computer lineup in terms of size and performance. That doesn’t mean there’s anything average about it — it’s still a phenomenally powerful machine in a compact package. But this premium device comes at a meaty price, starting at $1,999 before tax in the USA. You might be aware that it has a different retail price in every country, which begs the question as to whether you might be able to find it for less abroad. We’ll help you answer that question with our rundown of the cheapest places to buy the Mac Studio.

Not only might we discover that the Mac Studio is cheaper in other countries, but you may also be able to benefit from a quirk of the tax system. You know that sales tax you pay on tech in the US? That only applies to residents, and it’s the same in some other countries. If you happen to be in another nation as a tourist, you could avoid paying it or be able to claim it back before you leave. We’ll factor this in as we crunch the numbers.

What are the cheapest countries to buy a Mac Studio?

The table below shows the rundown of how much a US tourist will pay in various countries for the Mac Studio M2 Max or M2 Ultra. Our thanks to The MacIndex website for compiling these figures, and you can head over there to check out how each country compares for the Mac Studio Displays.

The prices beside each country are the equivalent of the local price for the Mac Studio in US dollars, based on the exchange rate at the time of publication. For states in which you can avoid the sales tax, it has been deducted, whereas an approximate 10% sales tax has been added to the US number. This gives you a fairer relection of how much you’d be paying whether you’re home or abroad.

Whether you’re looking at the Mac Studio M2 Max or M2 Ultra, Australia is the cheapest place in the world to buy it in USD terms. The Mac Studio M2 Max is the equivalent of $1,914 down under, while the M2 Ultra model is $3,829. This makes the latter device almost $500 cheaper than buying it in America if you’re a US resident.

Taiwan and Thailand are second and third cheapest, respectively. That’s true of both versions of the Mac Studio as well, and it is unsurprising to see this type of correlation throughout the list. It would be fairly strange to see a country being one of the least expensive for the M2 Max but one of the pricier locations for the M2 Ultra. We’ll get into why that might be later on.

Even with sales tax applied, the US is still cheaper than a lot of other countries for the Mac Studio. It’s number 12 in the list of 39, although the pricing is all very similar in the middle third of the table.

Brazil is by far the most expensive place to buy the Mac Studio. For the M2 Max model, it’s more than double the price of the device in the US and even $2,000 more than the next most expensive country, Turkey.

So I won’t see a cheaper Mac Studio anywhere in the world?

We’re not saying these are the best prices you could ever encounter on the planet. These are the official retail values directly from the Apple website, and there are plenty of countries not covered in the table above.

Having said that, buying the Mac Studio or any other Apple tech from anywhere but an official retail outlet can present risks. Third-party vendors in all corners of the globe will be eager to secure your custom, and some are less scrupulous than others. Many retailers will be genuine, but there are some that could attempt to sell you fake, second-hand, or stolen devices. You should always proceed with extreme caution when a deal looks too good to be true.

Should I buy the Mac Studio from another country?

This entirely depends on your own personal circumstances. If you happen to be passing through Australia in the near future and you were planning on buying the Mac Studio anyway, the prospect of saving almost $500 on the M2 Ultra would be rather tempting. Just bear in mind the non-financial factors, like having to transport it home securely, and having a warranty which might either be invalid or very difficult to use.

Given the position of the US in the table, it won’t be worth trying to make the savings in most cases. You won’t feel a $200 or $300 cheaper device is worth it if you have an issue with the software configuration or something similar and you’re now back home 8,000 miles from where you bought it.

There certainly isn’t any situation in which it’s worth traveling over the Pacific purely for the purpose of getting a more affordable Mac Studio. The cost of the airfare alone will negate the savings you’d stand to make and then some.

For a start, comparing all of these local prices by converting them to US dollars means that exchange rates play a part in this exercise. The global money markets have been pretty turbulent in recent years. If a country’s currency falls precipitously against the dollar over a period of months, that country will rise on the above table as goods bought there get cheaper in USD terms.

But there are bigger reasons for the Mac Studio price variations across the globe. The nature of capitalism means that it costs more to get a product onto shelves in some countries than others. All of the costs to Apple, such as logistics, labor costs, and so on, have to be built into the final price it charges for the machine, and that’s before the company considers how much it can extract in profit from the end buyer. That, in turn, depends on the consumer spending power in each nation.

A good example of the many costs associated with selling a piece of tech in a certain country is Brazil. The Latin American nation has a huge import tax on electronic devices made abroad — often as much as 100% of the cost value of that device. When this is passed on to the consumer, it explains why the Mac Studio is so much more expensive to buy in Brazil.