Midjourney V8.1 Review: HD by Default, 5x Faster, and Surprisingly Useful on a Mac
Midjourney V8.1 rolled out to midjourney.com and Discord on April 30, 2026, two weeks after launching in alpha on April 14. It is the fastest model Midjourney has shipped, with standard jobs rendering 4 to 5 times faster than earlier versions and HD mode running 3x faster and 3x cheaper than V8.0. Native 2K images are now the headline feature, generated at 2048 by 2048 pixels without a separate upscale step. This Midjourney V8.1 review covers what changed since V7 and V8.0, how V8.1 stacks up against GPT Image 1.5, Imagen 4, Nano Banana Pro, and Flux 2, what it costs, and how to actually use it on a Mac […]
