- Apple second generation of Pro Mac Silicon is here
with the brand new M2 Pro computers.
This is the base model 14 inch M2 Pro
and this thing is a beast.
And I also have over here the M2 MacBook Air
that was released earlier last year.
This is also the second generation
of Mac silicone from Apple
but it's more of a baseline, more of the standard processor.
Now on the surface,
both of these computers look rather similar
but there's actually a lot that's quite different.
So I wanna take a look at everything that's different
between the M2 Air and the 14 inch M2 Pro.
I wanna see how the performance compares,
and then I kind of wanna talk about
which one you should buy.
And right before we get to that
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Let's talk about the configurations of these two machines.
With the MacBook Pro,
I have the 14 inch model with the M2 Pro chip.
This is the baseline processor
with a 10-Core CPU and a 16-Core GPU.
It comes with 16 gigabytes of unified memory
and it has a 512 gigabyte SSD inside.
For the M2 Air, this is also the base model.
So this comes with an 8-Core processor and 8-Core GPU,
eight gigabytes of memory
and 256 gigabytes of internal storage.
Now looking at these two computers side by side,
it might take you a moment to figure out which one is which
if you don't know what to look for.
And that's because they share an almost similar footprint
with the MacBook Pro being just slightly larger
and weighing about eight tenths of a pound more
than the MacBook Air.
And with a similar footprint comes a similar size screen.
The MacBook Air has a 13.6 inch display
and the MacBook Pro has a 14.2 inch display,
but more on the displays in a moment.
On the left side of the MacBook Pro
you're going to find USB4,
which works with Thunderbolt 3
and basically all versions of USB.
You also get a MagSafe port for charging
and a high impedance headphone jack.
On the right side of the Pro,
you get an HDMI advanced port as Apple called it,
another Thunderbolt 4 port and an SD card slot.
On the left side of the MacBook Air,
you get a MagSafe charging port
and two Thunderbolt 3/USB 4 ports.
Now those ports are not exactly the same
as the Thunderbolt four ports on the MacBook Pro.
There are some subtle technical differences.
And on the right side of the MacBook Air
you also get a high impedance headphone jack.
And one thing to mention right here is that
the M2 MacBook Air can only support one external display,
whereas the M2 Pro in the MacBook Pro
can support up to two displays.
When Apple release the new new MacBook Pros in 2021,
they finally got rid of the touch bar on the top
and replaced that with a full size function key row,
which is great.
And of course, the MacBook Air never had the touch bar
but it also gets now the full size keys as well on top.
Both of these computers have touch ID
at the top right corner,
and the keyboards feel exactly the same.
Apple's done a really good job
of delivering the magic keyboard style
to all of their devices,
and it's awesome when you're switching
back and forth between devices,
you don't have to relearn how you type,
depending on the device that you have,
whether that's a MacBook or an iPad
or the Desktop Magic keyboard.
The track pads on these two devices are also very similar,
with the track pad on the Pro being just a hair bigger
than the track pad on the Air
which measured at about five inches by three inches.
The first big difference we're going to see
between these two devices is the display.
The MacBook Pro has a 14.2 diagonal display
with many LEDs as a backlight.
Apple calls this the liquid retina XDR display
because this thing can get up to 1600 nets of brightness
when viewing HDR content,
and up to a thousand nets of sustained brightness
with HDR content.
But with normal viewing
of regular standard dynamic range content,
this laptop gets up to 500 nets of brightness.
The MacBook Pro also has a variable refresh rate
up to 120 hertz, and Apple calls this Pro motion.
The MacBook Air has a 13.6 inch diagonal
liquid retina display.
Now, just because this is not an HDR compatible display
doesn't mean that this display is a slouch.
It's actually a really good display.
It gets up to 500 nets
just like the MacBook Pro for regular use
and they both have the same wide color gamut
for P three colors and true tone technology built in.
So the difference between the two of them
really comes down to if you're going to watch
HDR content on your computer.
If you are the MacBook Pro
is going to have that better screen for that.
Because both of these displays go as far as they can
to the outside of the edge of the lid,
both of these displays do contain a notch
with the camera built in.
Along with the camera built into the M2 Air,
there's also three microphones.
And in the MacBook Pro,
there are three studio quality microphones.
So this is the audio and video test using these two laptops.
Over here we have the M2 Air with the 1080P camera
and the three mic array.
Over here we have the 14 inch M2 Pro with the 1080P camera
and the three mic Studio array.
Let me know below how these microphones sound
between these computers.
Now both of these cameras have a 1080P camera
with advanced image signal processing.
However, looking at the Air,
I definitely see a lot more grain
than it does on the M2 Pro for some reason.
So I'm curious to see what that looks like
when I get it into Final cut.
But the colors look the same,
the brightness looks about the same,
maybe a little bit darker on the M2 Pro than the M2 Air.
The M2 Air might be a little bit overblown
but let me know what you think about that as well down below
If we move down a little bit,
the M2 Air has a four speaker sound system
that supports spatial audio.
And the MacBook Pro has a six speaker sound system
that supports spatial audio.
(rhythmic music)
There's also a difference in the wireless systems
built into these devices.
With the MacBook Air, you get wifi 6 and Bluetooth 5.
With a MacBook Pro, you get wifi 6-E and Bluetooth 5.3.
Now, you're not gonna be able to really take advantage
of wifi 6-E or 5.3 and Bluetooth
unless you have upgraded your other devices
that also support that.
So when testing out the wireless signal
on these two devices, I essentially get the same speed.
But you may be able to grow into
the higher wireless specs of the MacBook Pro
if you keep it for a while
and you upgrade your other systems
like your wifi access points and other Bluetooth devices.
Now, when it comes to performance between these two machines
there are going to be some differences.
Again, this model of the M2 Air
is the 8-Core processor and 8-Core GPU.
Whereas this version of the MacBook Pro
has a 10-Core processor and a 16-Core GPU.
And running just static benchmarks
don't give you the whole picture,
but they are a good indication
of how much faster one thing is over another.
In Cinebench testing, the single core score
between the M2 and the M2 Pro was minor
and that's because they're essentially using the same cores.
And if you're just looking at one core
on both of these devices,
they're basically going to be the same.
But with multi-core, the M2 Pro got a score of 11,710,
over the M2's 8,200.
That gives the MacBook Pro a 43% increase in speed
over the M2.
Next, I checked out the GFX bench
and ran the 4K Aztec Ruins offscreen test
which runs both of the computers at a 4K resolution.
The 16-Core M2 Pro scored 78 frames per second
while the 8-Core M2 scored 56 frames per second.
That's about a 40% difference between these two devices
and this one has twice as many GPU cores.
So the overall multi-core CPU and GPU benefits
of the M2 Pro are about 40 to 43%.
Now, checking out the disk speed of the internal SSDs,
the M2 Air's 256 gigabyte drive
scored 1800 megabytes per second write
and 1500 megabytes read.
The M2 Pro's 512 gigabyte drive scored 3,500 write
and 2,900 read.
Now, let me just say this,
that the internal drive speeds of the M2 Air
have not been an issue at all
since I've gotten this laptop, what, six months ago.
For everyday tasks and even light productivity work,
you're gonna see no issues with the speed of the drive
in the MacBook Air.
Now, if we put all of this together,
the CPU, the GPU and the storage speed,
I can test out my Final Cut Pro export.
This is a video of mine from a couple years ago
that has a heavy color grade on it
just to make it a little bit more difficult.
It's got titles, it's got audio,
it's got lots of cuts, and B-roll.
The M2 Pro MacBook Pro finished the export
in six minutes and 23 seconds.
The M2 based MacBook Air finished the export
in six minutes and 43 seconds.
Now, that's only a 5% difference
when these computers perform very differently
in regular tests.
And that's because the M2 Pro is built on top of the M2
which has the same media engine encoder built in.
There's only a single one in both of these
but the M2 Pro Max, the M2 Max
has two media engines built in.
I also did check the thermals on the outside of the casing
while running the Cinebench test.
And on the MacBook Pro, I saw temperatures
of about 35, 36 degrees Celsius
on both the top of the case and on the bottom.
On the MacBook Pro I saw temperatures
that were just slightly higher at about 40 degrees Celsius.
And that's most likely because
there is no internal fan on the M2 Air.
The fans did spin up on the MacBook Pro
during the Cinebench test, and it was noticeably audible.
But in regular use and video export
and other things that I did, there was no fan noise.
The fan wasn't even on most likely.
Now, if you're not using your computer
to run benchmarks constantly or export videos,
if you're just wireless browsing,
you can expect a battery life of up to
12 hours on the MacBook Pro
and up to 15 hours on the MacBook Air.
And of course, those tests
are really hard to accurately gauge
because there's so many differences
between what you're doing, how you're doing it
and background processes that may be running.
So take that with a grain of salt, as always.
But if you're not running heavy workloads,
you should be able to get a couple more hours
out of the MacBook Air.
And I will say that during my time with the M2 Air,
along with the M1 machines and the M1 Pros and M1 Maxes,
I've not had any issue getting through
a full day of battery life
with regular workloads on any of those devices.
So I don't think you're gonna have any issue
with the M2 Pro version either.
So that's pretty much the differences
between these two devices, except the price.
The M2 Pro MacBook Pro starts at $1,999.
The M2 MacBook Air starts at $1,199.
So what do you get for that $800 difference?
Well, you get a larger SSD, you get more memory,
and you get a better screen, you get better speakers
and you get a much faster processor.
And if you spec up the MacBook Air
and move it up to 512 gigabytes of SSD
and 16 gigabytes of memory to match the Pro,
you're at about $1,600, only $400 away from the MacBook Pro,
which has, again the better screen,
better speakers and much bigger processor.
And those differences may or may not matter to you at all.
So who really should buy these machines?
Well, in my opinion,
if you are a casual user of your computer,
somebody who just does the basics every day,
who does web browsing, email, shopping,
watches YouTube and other content,
you do banking and light gaming
and some photo editing with iPhoto or Apple Photos,
maybe some light video editing,
even up to some light video editing on Final Cut Pro
then the base model MacBook Air may suit you.
It will work, it will do all of those things,
mostly just fine.
And most of those things
it will probably do really, really well
better than any computer you've had in the past.
But my issue with the base model
comes down to the eight gigabytes of memory.
And yes, the unified memory architecture
inside of the Apple Silicon chips
is really amazing and really fast,
and it does more than any other 8 gigabyte machine could do.
But memory is memory,
and applications and browser tabs
and all of these things want real memory.
So with my regular daily work
of everything I do with my regular day job,
plus some things I have going on on the side,
I definitely hit that bottleneck
of the eight gigabytes on the base model machine
if I'm really pushing it.
And I don't mean pushing it with, you know,
exports of Final Cap Pro and video editing
and things like that.
I mean, just the regular apps that I need on a regular day.
Sometimes I hit that bottleneck of the eight gigabytes.
The base model M2 Air is really good for today
for most people,
but there's just not a lot of room to grow into it.
So if you're a student or professional
or getting into content creation
or looking to do more with your laptop,
you're a developer or going into machine learning or AI
or whatever is going to demand
more and more workload in the future
then you should definitely go with the MacBook Pro.
There's just a lot more room in the MacBook Pro to grow
compared to the MacBook Air.
Plus, if you do watch HDR content
or you're looking at creating HDR content,
the Liquid Retina HDR display on the Pro,
you just, you can't beat it.
It is such a good display.
And the 16 gigabytes of unified memory in these machines
actually does pretty good.
I ran my entire YouTube business
and all of my regular day job stuff
on a base model 14 inch MacBook Pro for about six months
and I did just fine.
So if performance now or performance
that you're going to need in the future is an issue
you should definitely look at the Pro.
If you're okay with what you do right now
and you don't plan on moving into
more advanced computing needs
then the MacBook Air is probably going to fit you just fine.
Maybe upgrade the memory.
But if you do need to start specking up the Air
to more storage or more memory,
you're starting to get into the price territory of the Pro.
And the M1 Pro from 2021 frequently goes on sale as well.
So I don't really see a lot of sense
in specking up the M2 Air when there are other options,
whether it's refurbished from Apple or sales on Amazon.
But anyway, those are all the differences
between the M2 MacBook Air and the M2 Pro MacBook Pro.
What do you guys think?
Which one of these devices are you more interested in?
Let me know below.
I'm also going to be making some more videos on this M2 Pro,
along with the M2 Max that I have coming very soon.
So if you are interested in seeing that,
definitely hit subscribe.
If you wanna see some of my first thoughts
on this M2 Pro MacBook,
check out this video right over here.
Hit the thumbs up button if you liked it.
Hit subscribe if you want, and I'll see you next time.