- Apple has a problem.
See these?
The new M1 MacBook Pro and MacBook Air are outstanding.
Their performance almost lives up
to Apple's extraordinary claims,
their look and feel is reassuringly Apple-grade,
their battery life is, simply put, exemplary,
and the transition from x86 to ARM,
so far at least, has gone shockingly smoothly.
"Linus," you might say,
"those don't really sound like problems."
And they're not. For you.
You gotta pay attention.
I said Apple has a problem, 'cause it's gonna be really hard
to one-up what they've done here.
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When Apple unveiled their first ARM-equipped MacBooks,
we were surprised by the port selection, to say the least.
Just two USB-C's might be nothing new for the MacBook Air,
but there's no high-end option available for the Pro,
which until now had options for four.
Now, this appears to be due
to the M1 SoC's limited I/O capabilities,
which also explains why you're limited
to a single external display
unless you turn to display link adapters.
That may not be a deal breaker
for these classes of machines,
but it's worth mentioning regardless.
What's interesting, though, is that,
while we did determine in our Mac mini review
that you cannot expand that device
using an external graphics card,
we followed up our testing with a 10-gig network card,
and found that when we ran that in our Razer Core X,
the Thunderbolt-like external PCI Express functionality
was working just fine.
So it's definitely down to just a GPU compatibility thing.
The Magic Keyboard style switches remain far superior
to the fatally flawed butterfly switches that were found
on all but the most recent Intel MacBooks since 2016,
and both the Air and the Pro
are an absolute delight to type on
and offer quick biometric authentication
through the Touch ID sensor in the power button.
The only difference in the keyboard is the Touch Bar.
Love it or hate it, you're not getting one
if you buy an M1 Air,
and you are definitely getting one
if you pony up the extra $300 for the Pro.
And that difference in price
is a pretty tough pill to swallow
when you consider how close these machines appear on paper
other than the Touch Bar.
But the keyword is, of course, close.
There are some differences.
Aside from its lack of active cooling,
the baseline MacBook Air only has seven GPU cores,
with the upgraded eight-core version like ours
costing an extra 50 bucks if you factor in the cost
of the bigger SSD that it also includes.
That kinda makes it a "sure, why not" upgrade
if you've got any desire for 512 gigs or more storage.
But if not, you're just gonna have to swallow it anyway
if you need the extra GPU power
that you can otherwise only get with the Pro.
And this inflexibility in configurations
is one of the prices that we pay
for the tight integration of Apple's M1 SoC.
Same goes for memory.
It starts at eight gigs, and only goes up to 16 gigs
for either of these machines, presumably because
adding more DRAM packages to the current M1
would increase cost or power consumption
by too much for this class of product.
They do have a history
of worrying about such things, after all.
And besides, if the performance we saw
in our M1 Mac mini review is anything to go by,
that trade-off is one that has paid great dividends.
But that's on the desktop.
What we haven't seen yet for ourselves
is how it performs against competing mobile products,
like Intel's Tiger Lake and AMD's Renoir APUs.
Dell and HP are gonna be representing the PC competition.
And we also threw a 15-inch HP OMEN gaming laptop in there
in case the M1 gets too fast
to compare to anything in its weight class.
Spoiler alert, by the way: it does.
In Cinebench R23, the only laptop in this lineup
capable of beating either MacBook
is a much thicker gaming machine,
and even it doesn't win
the single-threaded performance crown.
Even more impressively, after a 10-minute run,
the MacBook Pro's performance remained rock solid,
while the HP OMEN,
with its much beefier cooling working noticeably harder,
dropped over 100 points.
Unlike its bigger cousin, the MacBook Air did throttle,
but it still managed to stay well clear
of anything else in its weight class.
Handbrake again shows our M1 Macs
outperforming their x86 counterparts
by nearly double in software encoding.
Seriously, guys, it's not even close.
The 2020 Intel MacBook Air took three times as long.
And as for hardware encoding, again,
we see the M1 encoding blocks doing their job and then some,
beating out both Intel and AMD's
encoder engines by 50 to 100%,
and, this was surprising, even beating out NVENC in H265.
For giggles, we ran GeekBench,
since that's what all the cool kids are running,
and if it's to be believed, the only CPU with any hope
of matching the M1's multi-threaded performance
is a Ryzen 7 eight-core.
It is a good thing we put the OMEN in there. (chuckles)
The GPU, meanwhile, soundly destroys
both the AMD and Intel competition,
although it should be noted
that this isn't a useful real world test,
unlike the rigorous real-world testing
we do on our products at lttstore.com.
This CPU pillow contains 40% alpaca wool
for maximum comfort.
And we have a big one.
Moving on to non-native tests using Rosetta,
Adobe Creative Cloud presented a challenge.
Not only did After Effects fail to run
on either of our Intel Macs,
it and Premiere Pro also failed to run on our HP Envy
due to its mere eight gigs of memory,
and we suspect that Photoshop performance
probably suffered as well.
Still, though, we were able to at least observe
that even running in Rosetta,
remember, this is non-native code,
the M1 MacBooks both managed to smoke the competition,
and the same holds true for Blender,
where the M1 MacBook Air manages
to triple the speed of its predecessor
and run eight to nine minutes faster
than its x86 competitors.
The only potential response to M1, at least in class,
is in LuxMark, where the XPS 13's Xe graphics core
puts up better numbers across the board,
while the others languished
at about half of the performance, or even less.
On that subject, I mean, we can't talk about graphics cores
without talking about gaming,
so of course we ran the Tomb Raiders
to see what we could get,
and found that our MacBooks managed
double or better the frame rates
recorded by either the AMD or Intel UHD integrated graphics
in our competing products.
The one exception aside from the dedicated gaming laptop
is the Xe-equipped XPS 13,
which put up an admirable fight, at least by comparison,
but still couldn't really close the gap.
Thanks to a recent update
to another great Mac system monitor, TG Pro,
we can glean a little more information
about M1's throttling behavior
compared to our Mac mini review.
By default, our MacBook Pro at full synthetic load
breaches 90 degrees and does throttle,
with the fan ramping up to about 3,500 RPM,
or roughly half-speed.
Now, that's still very quiet,
and there are two important notes here.
One: as we've seen, that throttling clearly didn't have
a measurable impact on performance.
And two: these core sensors that we're reading
are buried inside the multi-layered SoC.
So unlike previous generations,
these readings act more like hotspot sensors,
which from our experience can report
10 to 15 degrees higher than the rest of the chip.
So with that in mind, then,
we don't foresee any serious reliability problems.
But manually setting the fan to maximum using TG Pro
can improve core thermals to between 80 and 85 degrees,
which should keep max performance locked
and provide peace of mind to enthusiasts
who just like low temperatures, even if it's at the expense
of having a laptop fan that they can actually hear.
It's really refreshing to see Apple take
a more conservative approach to thermals,
maybe because now it's their own silicon
that they're messing with.
The MacBook Air
takes a different approach altogether, though,
again allowing the cores to reach
as high as the mid-90 degrees or so,
but then after it reaches an average temperature
of roughly 70 degrees,
it throttles to maintain that, at least for a while.
Then, it dials everything back
and targets a CPU temperature of 60 degrees.
This is why the Air gets such great burst performance,
while also maintaining comfortable surface temperature.
Of course, it comes at the cost of sustained performance.
Now, since we can't just ramp up the fans on the Air
to see if that changes things,
maybe we'll need to take another crack
at fixing Apple's thermal design.
Get subscribed, by the way, so you don't miss that one.
The webcam on both new MacBooks is, shockingly,
the same old 720p affair that they've been using since 2011.
But, in fairness, at least it's got a new trick.
Now that MacBooks run the same hardware
as Apple's mobile devices, but on 'roids,
they can use the same image processing tricks
that were previously iPhone or iPad exclusive.
So in practice, the image is still pretty soft.
I mean, 720p is 720p.
But it's significantly less noisy,
with dramatically more natural-looking lighting.
No more blue computer face.
The experience using iOS apps
is also significantly better on the MacBooks
compared to the Mac mini,
particularly where gestures are needed.
Though it's still not perfect.
You might intuitively think
that you'll start touching and swiping
from where the cursor is visually located on the screen.
Instead, though, the Touch Pad surface
is mapped to the window area.
Now, this isn't necessarily the wrong approach,
but it'll definitely rub some people the wrong way.
Having an actual touchscreen
would really make the experience come together
in a way that makes sense.
Unless, of course, more apps come through
with updates for mouse compatibility.
Really, though?
Please, Apple. Add a touchscreen to the MacBook.
Just make my dreams come true.
Speaking of dreams, in order to test
Apple's pie-in-the-sky battery life claims,
we set each of our 13-inch laptops
to roughly match the Dell XPS 13's brightness
at two steps up from minimum,
turned on the optimized video streaming feature
in Energy Preferences on our Macs,
fired up a 100-hour timer on YouTube,
and set them all off at once using some coordination
and a handy-dandy power delivery unit to cut the power.
The Intel MacBook Pro was the first to go,
keeling over at just over a respectable 11 hours,
followed by the Dell XPS 13 just after the 12-hour mark.
Then fell the Intel MacBook Air,
and the HP Envy x360 not long after.
Surprisingly, the M1-equipped MacBook Air in second place
only lasted a little longer than those,
at just under 13 hours.
Still great, but well shy of the promised 15 to 18 hours.
As for the M1 MacBook Pro, it just kind of kept going.
And going.
And going!
Until finally it broke the 20-hour mark,
and decided that was enough flex for one day.
Almost literally one day.
I mean, we ran this test over a weekend
because we knew that this result was possible,
but we didn't really think
it would manage it in the real world.
Like, guys, this cannot be overstated.
We are looking at iPad-like endurance
on a laptop running a full-fat desktop operating system.
You could, in theory, use this thing
for days at a time without juicing up
depending on what you do with it.
That's what ended up throwing a wrench
into my original premise for this video,
because up until now,
the M1 MacBook Pro had very little to show for itself
over the MacBook Air for most people.
But suddenly, the difference is so much bigger
than just, well,
do you want a Touch Bar and a brighter screen?
The M1 MacBook Pro, despite being heavier and a bit thicker,
might end up being the better commuter laptop for many
through sheer force of its endurance alone.
But if you're worried about longevity,
it may ironically be the lesser of the two.
The fact that the MacBook Air
doesn't have any fan whatsoever
means that there's no dust being sucked in
and no air intake to clog.
This means that, barring thermal compound degradation,
the thermal profile of this device
is going to remain pretty much identical
throughout its entire life.
The one internal moving part on any modern laptop
that is most likely to fail
not only isn't necessary to spin up in here,
it doesn't even exist to fail.
There aren't even any heat pipes or vapor chambers,
just a plain Jane flat heat plate for thermal mass.
(bomb detonates)
In spite of these accomplishments,
it ironically feels, though, like these Macs
are more transitional than revolutionary.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining.
The transition from PowerPC to Intel was a lot worse.
I mean, compared to the iBook that came before it,
the first Intel MacBook brought
a new chassis design with a new keyboard,
an integrated eyesight webcam,
and it introduced the MagSafe connector,
just to name a few of the highlights.
But it suffered from first-generation syndrome big time,
thanks to the very first revision
using a 32-bit Core Duo CPU.
That was one of only a single generation of Macs
to ever use 32-bit x86.
By contrast, these M1 MacBooks
don't seem to have a problem with their internals at all,
but I expect that Apple will soon introduce
new chassis designs with 14-inch displays that,
like the 16-inch MacBook Pro, will reduce bezel sizes
without significantly altering the footprint that we praised
in our review of the final Intel MacBook Air.
I'd also hope to see
that 1080p FaceTime HD camera from the iMac
make an appearance at the same time.
For now, the M1-equipped MacBooks
have more to differentiate them
than I had originally suspected.
This level of battery life
in a machine as compact as the MacBook Pro 13
is absolutely a game changer,
and that's not even considering its performance.
Meanwhile, the MacBook Air has performance
that rivals the Pro, just without the endurance,
both in terms of battery life and thermal design,
especially when you factor in the lower price.
So you're really not sacrificing much
by choosing one over the other,
and it boils down to your use case.
At $999, the MacBook Air is a bit more expensive
than the HP Envy x360,
but for those who are willing to pay the Apple tax,
well, you're only sorta paying one,
'cause you're getting a much faster computer
with a higher resolution screen,
a more spacious palm rest, and a better trackpad.
Plus, arguably superior expansion thanks to USB4,
although the HP does have an internal M. 2 slot,
so you can kinda pick your poison there.
I could see many people, then,
choosing the MacBook Air for a daily driver laptop
for school or for everyday carry,
although if you do, I would caution against
ordering one with eight gigs of memory
if you wanna use it longer than a couple of years.
Remember, you cannot upgrade it.
The MacBook Pro at $1,299
at first seems to compare less favorably
compared to the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 that goes for $200 less.
But you gotta remember,
that's for the base model XPS with a core i3.
The core i7 option runs $100 more than the MacBook,
and that's on promo.
And while Intel's Xe graphics
are in the ballpark of what Apple's delivering,
the Tiger Lake core i7 simply cannot compete
against the M1 in any meaningful way.
I mean, nevermind the core i3.
Now, the XPS 13 does enjoy
convertible form factor and a touchscreen,
but its expansion is no better than Apple's,
unless you count the microSD reader.
And, like the Air versus the Envy,
Apple's display is higher resolution.
And as we've seen, that fact, for a change,
doesn't negatively impact battery life.
It's nearly eight hours longer in this case.
I mean, some laptops in this class
don't even last for eight hours,
let alone eight hours longer than the competition.
I guess what I'm saying is,
even if you were to go out of your way
to point out the flaws,
it's hard not to recommend either of the M1 MacBooks.
They really are just that good.
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So thanks for watching, guys.
If you enjoyed this video,
go check out our review of the M1 Mac mini
for a look at how M1 behaves on the desktop.
It really is a different enough experience
that it's worth watching two videos,
which is why we made two different videos.