Apple's M2 chip was announced mere weeks ago
at WWDC 2022 and two new devices are already within our grasp -
the new 13-inch MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro.
But is the new chip packing passable power to have such a premium price? Let's find out.
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Hey everyone!
Trisha Hershberger here and you are watching DIY in 5 -
the show where we make tech easily digestible for the everyday user.
In today's video, we'll go over the benefits and drawbacks of the latest Apple silicon
- the M2 chip - and help you decide if an upgrade or a splurge is right for you.
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Both the 13-inch MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, which hit the market in July 2022,
will offer the next generation of silicon designed specifically for the Mac.
The new 5nm chip is the successor to the M1, introduced in November 2020.
The M1 chip is based on Apple's A14 Bionic chip.
And on the other hand, the M2 is seemingly based on the A15 Bionic chip.
While both chips feature an eight-core CPU with four performance cores
and four efficiency cores, the M2's cores offer moderate performance and efficiency improvements.
The M2 also adds the option for two additional GPU cores.
In fact, when comparing the two chips,
Apple states that the M2 provides an 18 percent faster CPU, a 35 percent more powerful GPU,
and a 40 percent faster Neural Engine.
It also delivers 50 percent more memory bandwidth compared to M1,
and up to 24GB of fast unified memory.
So let's break it down. When it comes to processing, where the M2 really shines is in its multi-core performance.
Compared with the latest 10-core PC laptop chip,
the CPU in M2 provides nearly twice the performance at the same power level.
And, M2 delivers 90% of the peak performance of the 12 core PC chip while using just a quarter of the power.
Apple's new M2 chip is configurable with an 8-core CPU and up to a 10-core GPU.
While that's an improvement over the original M1,
it can't match the core counts of the beefier M1 Pro and M1 Max chips,
which offer CPU core counts of 10 and GPU core counts of 16-32.
Apple claims the M2's GPU can deliver up to 25% better performance than the M1's GPU at the same power level,
and up to 35% better performance at max power.
The M2 chip offers a number of significant upgrades over the standard M1,
including a beefier CPU/GPU combo with more power,
improved memory bandwidth, and support for Apple's ProRes and ProRes RAW codecs.
There's also a 16-core Neural Engine built into the M2, just like the M1.
It's a specialized processing unit that excels at machine learning tasks
and it helps out with everything from image processing to voice recognition.
The Neural Engine in the M2 can process up to 15.8 trillion operations per second,
which Apple claims is over 40 percent more than on M1.
Video editing pros can look forward to some improvements in the M2 that weren't present in the M1,
including a higher-bandwidth video decoder for the media engine that supports 8K H.264 and HEVC video.
You can also now play back multiple streams of 4K/8K video using the ProRes video engine,
which seems like good news for those who work regularly with Apple's video format.
Users can convert their video projects to ProRes nearly three times faster than before.
And Apple says the M2 MacBook Air runs 40% faster in Final Cut Pro
and up to 20% faster in Adobe Photoshop than the previous generation.
Content creators rejoice!
Not only will the content you create look better on the M2,
but your image in video calls will look even more pristine
thanks to the M2 chip's improved image signal processor - or ISP.
Overall, the M2 is a powerhouse chip focused on delivering impressive performance
for everyday tasks with lots of efficiency to keep things running cool for a long time on one battery charge.
macOS Ventura, coming this fall, is set to take full advantage of M2
and there's rumors of this new silicon appearing in a new iPad Pro, including a fresh 14-inch model.
Add to that reports of an Apple MacBook Air 15-inch and MacBook 12-inch in the works,
and it sounds like we can look forward to a slew of M2-powered devices
hitting the market between 2022 and 2023.
So what do you think?
Are you all aboard the M2 hype train
or waiting patiently for the potential of what an M2 Pro could look like down the line?
Let us know in the comments.
As always, I'm Trisha Hershberger and I'll see you next time with more DIY in 5!