hi this little machine this one right here that
I could hold in my hands has more power than a base Mac Pro
let's see if that's true
last year when the M1 version of the Mac Mini came out I picked one up because I wanted to see how
a 699 computer compared to my thirteen thousand dollar Mac Pro now as Marquez suggests the base
model Mac Pro which actually is this one from a CPU standard I just added a GPU bunch of RAM and
some storage but this is the 8 core Mac Pro and in this video I want to test out the new cheaper 5.99
M2 Mac Mini let's see how depressed I can get in this video shall we I've also owned the M1 MacBook
Pro again base model 8 gig so I thought it'd be fun to compare all three of these computers from
a video editor's perspective the size of this computer is just ridiculously small there we go
I solved my problem I now have a M2 Mac Pro but in all seriousness this this is what I'm hoping
for Apple can come out with something like this that has a PCI slot in the back plug it in right
there turns off the Intel chip and activates the M chip of Engineers figure it out I don't
know already I got all of my computers set up so as you can see we have the Mac Pro back here I
have my M1 MacBook Pro right here and then on this we have the M2 Mac Mini hooked up so basically I
just want to run a handful of real world tests comparing all three of these computers to see
where they stand in terms of video editing and the first test I think is fair is before
we even jump into DaVinci Resolve so just run a disk speed test so first let's test the MacBook
Pro we're just gonna select the desktop and start reeds are reeds are uh they they were they were
solid and one Macbook Pro not that impressive now I actually want to test the M2 Mac Mini
wow much better than the M1 MacBook Pro pretty consistent speeds running both times there I
don't know if it's consistent where it's an M1 and M2 thing or a Mac Mini verse MacBook
Pro thing but whatever SSD they're using in the Mac Mini is definitely a lot better performing
than last year's MacBook Pro again the base model 13. all right so then there's my Mac
Pro which actually the internal drives that it came with the 256 gigs from Apple are some
of the slowest ssds in any Apple computer honestly they were probably on par with the
M1 MacBook Pros but I can't even test those right now because I don't use that drive as
a startup disk I don't use that drive at all I actually installed a two terabyte nvme SSD
and so that's what we'll test as my desktop but then I'm also going to show you what I edit off
of which is a 16 terabyte OWC Excelsior 8m2 well that's a mouthful alright so first we're going to
to select just the desktop here so this is that two terabyte nvme
and we can see it is already kicking butt of both the other base model M1 and M2 machines
rocking over 2 000 megabytes per second and this was an extremely cheap nvme SSD this was
not an expensive one uh double line Samsung or something I don't even remember the brand
I'll try to show the Amazon listing but I think I got it for like 150 maybe 200
bucks for a two terabyte but now let's check out the Excelsior Drive so I call my initial
public is active this is where I have all of my YouTube projects and everything I edit off of
boom that's what I'm talking about over 5 000 rights and almost 7 000 read so definitely hard
drive performance we can start this video off strong it goes to the much more expensive Mac
Pro so something that I don't think really matters but it kind of gets on my nerves each time and why
I hate Adobe products is like I want to see how long it takes to open DaVinci Resolve and get
the project open on each computer because when I was setting up the M2 Mac Mini I was like this
feels really fast open up resolve all right so first the M1 MacBook Pro three two one go
foreign
all of our media isn't linked but I just want to get the project open so
32 seconds for the M1 MacBook Pro not terrible now for my Mac Pro
three two one click
it's all been 38 seconds so six seconds slower than the base M1 MacBook Pro again
am I actually gonna be really mad about a six second difference for opening a program
not really but still a little depressing and finally the M2 Mac Mini I actually have to
put it over here on the table three two one
25 seconds a whole seven seconds faster than the M1 Macbook Pro 13 seconds faster than the Mac Pro
for 5.99 so now that we have the actual project open let's talk about the experience of editing on
each computer but just for reference this is a 48 Hour film festival project that I did actually won
best editing for it like six and a half minutes or so pretty much every clip has noise reduction
uh the project file is 49.60 by 2160 so it's 4K project all right so currently on the MacBook Pro
scrubbing through everything is quite laggy every time I scrub the playhead it's a solid probably
five or six seconds before it jumps to the next clip and if I were to play back anything with all
my effects on or playing back at literally like between one and five frames it's pretty rough
now if I turn off all of my effects it actually plays at real time and this has o always impress
me about these base model M chips they're just so ridiculously powerful I wouldn't expect a computer
of this price point to be able to play back a project like this with files like this with
full color grades on now if I turn all my effects back on what happens if I just change my playback
to quarter resolution instead of full it actually
plays back pretty well let me go to a little bit more complex scene here
again the lag in between stuff you never let me finish as an editing experience it's a little
frustrating this is where definitely that 16 gigs of RAM version or going up to like the M1 Pro and
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today's video alright so editing on the Mac Pro so obviously this has been my primary machine for the
past two and a half three years or so again the same exact project file 4K currently our playback
is set to full and scrubbing around the project there's really no lag going between Clips I can
scrub and it keeps up with me I can click around to different scenes and there's essentially no lag
no matter what type of clip I go to it basically immediately plays back at full frame rates
full effects on no issues no real lag whatsoever a lot of times if I'm working with 6K project files
that's where I'll have to go into my playback settings and go to like quarter resolution but
honestly this project like I edit it in a 4K timeline and add points and at no point was
I having any issues even if I go to this scene which we accidentally shot at a really high ISO
and so it was ridiculously noisy has a ton of noise reduction on it yeah no no issues playing
back that whatsoever so the editing experience on here has always been just really fun again
we have to realize like yes newer stuff is probably going to be better and it's probably
going to be better for cheaper but the thing that I currently have does what I needed to do
with flying colors and so that's what's really important to me all right so now we're finally
on the M2 Mac Mini once again same project file open clicking around it's definitely way faster
than the M1 MacBook Pro but it still is lagging behind a little bit from my click so you can see
me click on a scene and then it kind of takes a couple seconds to catch up sometimes faster than
others I'm guessing depending on the complexity of the clip if I go to play back anything
it's struggling seemingly about the same as the uh the M1 MacBook Pro may be marginally
better by the way the reason I'm not like screen capturing any of the screens is because I find
that hinders performance so much and sometimes the screen capture causes things to be even
more laggy and so I know you can't perfectly see what's going on on the screen it's a more real
world representation of how the computer is going to perform when you're actually editing
seems kind of Frozen now to be honest the first just like the M1 let me turn off
all the effects all right kind of caught up with us here
instantly becomes way more responsive jumping around to different clips no
more lag and when I go to playback it just immediately plays uh at full frame rate
you can get some graphics going yeah no no issue whatsoever if I turn back on effects quarter res
how's life changing honestly it's been great but playing pretty much smoothly once it got to that
lower third graphic there's kind of some issues there and again there's no cache files there's
no proxy files this is all just working with the raw be raw files so again going with the 16 gigs
of rammer the M2 actually has the option for the M2 Pro chip I believe I expect those to perform
significantly better but for a 5.99 machine I mean edit with the effects turned off edit in
quarter resolution before you export and this machine is killer for anyone getting started in
video editing and even intermediate but speaking of finalizing the final test I want to run through
is how fast can each machine export the final output because that is something that used to
annoy the heck out of me on my old trash can Mac Pro because exports took forever and when you're
not very busy that doesn't sound like a big deal you just hit export and who cares if it takes a
couple hours you can just go do other stuff come back and it's exporting but when you have clients
and deadlines and Brands and all these different things and you're trying to Output multiple pieces
of content a day you need things to export very quickly so I am fascinated to know what the export
time difference for all the same project in the same settings will be so since we're already here
let's start with the M2 Mac Mini so we're simply just going to go to the deliver page
I'm just going to call this M2 Mac Mini just a nice h264 file although some people are going
to debate me saying I should have done h.265 so I'll see what both is for for all three computers
so all right and we're gonna hit render on both of those so it'll do them sequentially and it's
already chugging along so let's go ahead and do the same thing on the other two computers here so
deliver page and one all right Pro and render for MacBook Pro and finally my beloved Mac Pro we got
both h264 and h265 set up we will hit render now we have all three machines going and we'll check
back in a few minutes to see where everything is at one eternity later holy good night this is what
I was talking about before of like I don't have time to wait all day for rendered all right first
the MacBook Pro uh it's actually still going on the h265 but we can see that the h.264 render took
55 minutes basically almost an hour to export the six and a half minute film all right what about
the M2 Mac Mini again this actually aired out a bunch because of some weird Fusion clip I don't
fully blame the computer because I've had that issue every once in a while on my Mac Pro and
every type of computers but I had to restart it like three times before finally would export the
whole thing again still going on the h.265 but the h.264 completed in 30 minutes 29 30 to be
exact so definitely a big improvement over the M1 but still a decent amount of time and it's still
got quite a bit of ways to go on the h.265 version so if you're exporting a video in multiple formats
multiple different parts of videos uh you're gonna be waiting a while for exports on these base model
machines and finally how did the Mac Pro do yeah it did the h.264 in five and a half minutes and
the h.265 in just under five minutes yeah so I think it's safe to say that I am pretty happy with
my Mac Pro okay so here's the thing like a year ago I made the Mac Mini M1 versus my Mac Pro video
and they were kind of close and I think one of the reasons is because I used just a handful of sample
Clips I only did some basic editing and moving around I've been very guilty of this in the past
where I review a product and I get really excited because you know I'll drop in like a single 6K or
12K clip and I'm like oh my gosh look at what it can do that's amazing and that's and that's fine
for playing around and stuff like that but when it comes to recommending something to really buy to
use day in and out these base level machines are incredible don't get me wrong and if you have the
budget to go a couple steps up your experience is just going to get better and so it's still
true that you can get probably better performance or equal performance to my Mac Pro or higher spec
Mac Pros with like the Mac Studio which costs half or a third of the price but what a lot of
people test with geekbench scores and single like video export modes they don't really speak to the
use case of content creators and professionals who need to export multiple multiple multiple
pieces of content almost every single day and even this was just kind of one project
in one kind of use case but I hope that I was able to shed light on what it's really like to
work with all these computers again for 5.99 it's incredible it it's value I don't want to downplay
what it can accomplish the fact that I do run these tests alongside computers that are like
20 times its price very fun very cool to see I can feel the optimizations in DaVinci Resolve
with how fast it boots up on the M2 the fact that you can play around on 4K timelines with a bunch
of effects with not too much lag and set it to half or third playback resolution and you can have
a great editing experience incredible well done DaVinci Resolve well done Apple but I'm very happy
with my Mac Pro and I don't feel as that as I was worried about at the beginning of this video so