Now that we’re in 2021, Apple’s M1 Macs have proven to be incredibly powerful for the price,
but what happens when we put the absolute least expensive MacBook,
the $999 base M1 MacBook Air, to the absolute most expensive MacBook,
the $3,899 16” MacBook Pro with the 8-core 2.4GHz i9 processor and the insane 5600M graphics chip,
which by the way, was a major improvement over the previous graphics options.
Now this comparison is just a bit insane because the 16” is basically
4x more expensive, it’s a much larger machine and it has two cooling fans while the MacBook Air has
zero, but what if the Air could actually compete in some areas?
If it can, it’ll prove just how good Apple Silicon really is,
and it’ll give us a sneak peak at the potential performance of the upcoming
14” and 16” M1X MacBook Pros which are expected to boost the market share of Apple Silicon Macs
all the way up to 7%, so let’s get right into performance testing with Geekbench 5.
In terms of single-core CPU performance, the M1 Air is way ahead because it uses only 4
very powerful and efficient performance cores, and making it even more surprising, the M1 Air
actually outperforms the 16” in terms of multi-core performance as well.
This basically shows us that the M1X 16” Pro coming this year is gonna be extremely powerful,
having at least 4 more high-performance cores than the current M1 Macs.
Now if we go over to real-world performance using the 10 minute Cinebench R23 stress test,
the 16” now takes over by a huge 38%
because the Air has no fans at all, so it starts to throttle down the performance.
So in terms of CPU performance, the Air is better for short bursts of performance,
while the 16” is better for longer and heavier workloads, which we’ll get into soon.
But now, I want to move onto graphics performance,
and this is where the 16” Pro’s 5600M GPU really shines, being over twice as fast
as the base 7-core GPU on the M1 Air in terms of Geekbench 5 Metal performance.
This will impact everything from gaming to video editing performance,
but we’ve actually estimated the future M1X 16” MacBook Pro with an integrated
16-core GPU to beat the current dedicated 5600M graphics, so that’s very exciting.
Now moving onto gaming performance, we tested GFXBench 5.0 using the Aztec Ruins offscreen test,
and here, there isn’t as big of a difference, with the 16” being
95% more powerful than the Air, which is a big deal for gaming.
So tested out games like League of Legends, where the M1 Air was able to maintain
an average of 82 frames per second, but it’s still nothing compared to the 16”.
And then in Fortnite, the Air couldn’t match up with the 16” Pro, which got very good frame rates.
On top of that, you have to use workarounds like Crossover and Parallels to run Windows
games on the M1, and a lot of them won’t even run, while the 16” can easily use Bootcamp,
which performs much better, so it’s very clear which one is better for gaming.
Now since the M1X 16” is expected to be more powerful than the current 5600M 16” Model in
graphics performance, we should actually get very great AAA gaming results later this year,
and hopefully a lot of the bugs in Crossover and Parallels will be fixed by then.
I personally think a lot of people will eventually start to prefer Macs for gaming over windows
laptops, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next couple of years.
Moving on, let’s focus on a variety of very common tasks for Mac users, like photo editing,
XCode programming and Logic Pro music production, so let’s start with the latter.
We tested the new logic pro benchmark, which measures how many tracks the machine can run
without overloading the CPU, and surprisingly, the MacBook Air was right behind the 16” Pro,
which no one was expecting because of the huge difference in RAW multi-core performance.
So for people who are producing music, the new M1 Air is actually a killer value,
and the upcoming M1X Macs will be even better.
Now moving onto Xcode programming, this is where I was absolutely blown away.
The M1 MacBook Air absolutely destroyed the 16” Pro being a massive 80% faster,
which doesn’t make any sense if you look at the previous results,
and it even did it without a fan, while the 16” was loud and very hot.
I personally think this is because of the more efficient and optimized ARM-based
architecture, including the unified memory, even though it only has 8GB of RAM compared to
32GB on the 16” Pro, so the future is looking very bright for programmers.
Now getting into photo editing with Lightroom classic,
which by the way, hasn’t been updated to Apple Silicon just yet, so it’s running using Rosetta.
We exported 50 RAW 42MP photos, and the Air is performing surprisingly well,
being only 38 seconds slower than the 16” Pro, even though it has 4x less RAM.
However, when we bump up this test to 500 RAW photos instead of just 50,
the MacBook Air begins to suffer from thermal throttling because of the lack of a fan, and
the difference becomes much bigger, with the 16” being around 8 minutes faster in this larger test.
But in terms of editing smoothness, the M1 Air is still very quick and snappy
because of the ARM chip, so it really only makes a difference when exporting photos,
so if you work with very large projects, the 16” is still the way to go.
Now let’s finally get into video editing with Final Cut Pro, starting with the BruceX benchmark,
which fully relies on graphics power, and the 16” Pro was 3x faster, which is extremely impressive.
Then moving onto exporting a 5 minute 4K h.264 clip, which is the most common format that most
youtubers use, the 16” was only 3 seconds faster than the Air, and that’s because this test
is mostly limited by the hardware encoders, and the ones on the M1 are actually faster.
Next, we have a couple of stabilization tests, starting with stabilizing a 1 minute HEVC clip,
and surprisingly, they both finished in just 10 seconds, once again limited by the encoders.
But now when stabilizing C200 Canon RAW footage, the 16” is now quite a bit ahead because there
are no encoders for the type of footage, so it depends on a mixture of CPU and GPU performance.
Moving on, I decided to test some very heavy footage, exporting a 5 minute 8K RED RAW clip,
and here, the difference is massive, with the 16” being over 3x as fast,
because of the extra graphics performance and the fact that it actually has fans.
So if you’re doing any kind of heavy video editing,
the 16” is currently the better choice, for sure.
Now I want to finish off with one final test which was heavily requested,
transcoding and exporting the new Canon R5 10-bit 422 footage.
Surprisingly, the MacBook Air absolutely destroyed the 16” in terms of the 5 minute
export test, and that’s because the M1 Macs are currently the only computers in the world
that have hardware encoders and decoders for this new codec.
Now if you choose to transcode this footage, the massive difference remains,
with the M1 Air only taking 13 minutes to transcode a 30minute clip,
compared to 40 minutes for the 16” MacBook Pro, which is just insane.
So with all of this testng out of the way, I want to remind you guys that this is the absolute
weakest Apple Silicon MacBook that will ever be made,
compared to the absolute most powerful Intel MacBook ever made.
You can quite literally buy 4 of these M1 MacBook Airs for the price of this 16” Pro,
and amazingly, when it comes to real-world performance,
the Air isn’t as far off as you’d expect it to be, and there’s absolutely no fan noise at all.
And in some of these tests like Xcode programming and Canon R5 video editing,
the Air was actually faster.
And one thing to keep in mind is that the M1 chip uses much less power,
only 13 watts for the CPU and 5.6 watts for the GPU,
compared to up to 60 watts for the CPU on the 16” and 50 watts for the GPU.
So if you get anything out of this comparison, you should be extremely
excited for the 16” M1X MacBook Pro that’s coming later this year, because that MacBook
is going to be insane, likely with 4 extra high performance cores and 8 extra GPU cores.
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