Storage is the quiet problem with compact editing machines. Most give you two M.2 slots and expect you to choose between a fast scratch disk and somewhere to keep your library. The ACEMAGIC M1A Pro+ gives you three, all PCIe 4.0 x4, inside a near-cube chassis — and for a photographer with a large catalogue that changes what the machine can be. Details are on the official ACEMAGIC M1A Pro+ page.

Three drives, three jobs

With three M.2 2280 slots running at full PCIe 4.0 x4, you can dedicate one drive to render caches and scratch for Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve, a second to active projects, and a third to your Lightroom catalogue and archive. All internal, all fast, and no external enclosures cluttering the desk or introducing another point of failure.

Anyone who has watched a timeline stutter because the scratch disk is also the media drive will recognise why that separation matters. It is the sort of practical advantage that rarely makes headlines but changes a working day.

The rest of it

The core is the now-familiar Strix Halo package: the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 with 16 Zen 5 cores and 32 threads, Radeon 8060S graphics with 40 RDNA 3.5 compute units, and 128GB of LPDDR5X at up to 8000 MT/s. ACEMAGIC quotes 126 TOPS of combined AI performance across CPU, GPU and NPU.

Because CPU, GPU and NPU share a single memory pool, data moves between them without copying — which is what makes this class genuinely useful for local AI alongside editing, rather than merely adequate at both.

The chassis measures 166.7 x 166.9 x 160.9mm, almost a perfect cube, with a triple-fan cooling system to handle the chip’s 120W sustained draw. Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 are included.

Worth knowing before you buy

Independent testing has found the M1A Pro+ performs slightly behind rivals using the same chip — the Framework Desktop among them. That is a recurring theme with Strix Halo: identical silicon, different results, depending on how much power a manufacturer allows and how well the chassis dissipates heat. Worth factoring in if outright speed is your priority.

The pricing also deserves scrutiny. ACEMAGIC lists $2,399 as a launch promotion against a $3,299 list price, and we would treat that headline discount with some caution — manufacturers in this category have a well-established habit of setting a high MSRP that is never actually charged. Judge it at $2,399 rather than as a saving.

ACEMAGIC has since teased a second Strix Halo machine, the F9A, in a smaller two-litre aluminium chassis with OCuLink and dual USB4 — though it remains pre-launch with no confirmed price.

ACEMAGIC M1A Pro+: Specifications

Processor: AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (16 cores / 32 threads, Zen 5, up to 5.1GHz)
Graphics: AMD Radeon 8060S, 40 RDNA 3.5 compute units
AI: up to 126 TOPS combined across CPU, GPU and NPU
Memory: 128GB LPDDR5X at up to 8000 MT/s, unified across CPU, GPU and NPU, soldered
Storage: three M.2 2280 slots, PCIe 4.0 x4
Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
Cooling: triple-fan system
Chassis: 166.7 x 166.9 x 160.9mm (6.6 x 6.6 x 6.3in)

ACEMAGIC M1A Pro+: Price and availability

The M1A Pro+ has been shipping since the end of January 2026, listed at $2,399 as a launch promotion against a stated $3,299 retail price. UK pricing varies by retailer — check current pricing before purchase.