how much faster is the 16 gigabyte RAM 512 gig SSD Mt MacBook Pro compared to
the base 8 gigabyte model that has 256 gigs of storage because in our previous
video we showed off that the SSD and this brand new M2 MacBook is half the
speed of the previous generation and that definitely affects it once you have
some applications open and browser tabs like a lot of people use their computers
well today we are going to find out not only what standard benchmarks and real
world tasks when you don't have much open just a single app but also when you
do open up all those browser tabs and you might have Photoshop and Lightroom
open at the same time well let's find out starting out with our Blackmagic
disc speed test here our 512 gigabyte model scores almost twice as fast for
both our write speed and for their read speed and that is because the 256 gig
model only has one nand storage chip instead of two like it used to have with
the M1 MacBook Pro that launched a year and a half ago and this can make a
difference not only if your laptop is using the SSD as extra RAM for swap
which it does but also for trying to transfer files to and from your laptop
it took just nine and a half seconds for me to transfer a small 22 and a half
gigabyte file with the 512 model compared to 28 seconds with the base M2
and imagine if you're transferring hundreds of gigs like we typically do
for our video projects now see the difference between geekbench performance
which runs about 30 different tasks and as you guys could see the performance is
basically identical in fact the 8 gig got a slightly higher multi-core score
but it'll be interesting to run this again once we have a few applications
and some web browser tabs open and now let's run speedometer 2.0 to see the
responsiveness of the systems for web browsing a lot of web-based applications
and as you guys could see we have pretty much the same score and absolutely
amazing highest score I've ever seen and will all surround this again when we
have some other apps open but before I do that let's run a few more real world
tests with applications that do use a decent amount of RAM for example photo
editing here I have Lightroom classic opened up with 50 raw images and
shifting between these so far with just Lightroom open I'm not seeing any
differences at all both are very smooth but let's see what happens when we
export these 50 images wow our 16 gig M2 is flying and if we take a look at our
activity monitor we are using three gigs of swap already on the 8 gig model with
just 50 of these images being exported when I was a wedding photographer we
would export fifteen hundred two thousand images compared to zero swap
used on the 16 gig model allowing it to go so fast bam it is done that is an
incredible uh time for exporting this let's wait on the 8 gig model wow guys I
cannot believe the difference here because all we have open is Lightroom
and our activity monitor there's nothing open in Safari here
um man okay the M2 took two minutes flat that is the best time we got on it two
minutes flat take a guess down below how fast the M2 with 16 gigs took I want to
hear you guys opinions all right it took one minute and seven seconds yes almost
twice as fast and we will run this again when we have some web browsing tasks
open I mean I am just shocked I am closing down Lightroom so we're just
gonna have one Pro app open at a time and now let's run our xcode Benchmark
for you computer programmers so we're running The Benchmark our CPU is maxed
out and it looks like for this test we're actually not using that much RAM
we only have 550 gigs in swap on the 8 gig model and just over four gigs
actually used our 16 gig model is using almost seven gigs with zero swab so it
means it has a little bit more room to breathe and it looks like the difference
is negligible when we don't have anything else open we have 119.6 seconds
versus 120 points six seconds but of course if you're coding you're probably
gonna have some web browser tabs open you're definitely going to have some so
let's go ahead and do that now I have 10 tabs open which is completely normal for
most people especially if you're doing coding oftentimes we have more than that
I have my Google Drive open some sheets some analytics I have a YouTube video
playing in the background I have some websites over here as well and let's run
our Benchmark again and now we are using more swap on the akick model than before
but still not that much and I'm not sure if running The Benchmark through
terminal uses less Ramen having xcode open uh but you guys let me know if you
guys know that alright we have our results and the 16 gig model actually
ran faster this time 118.2 seconds whereas the 8 gigah model
did slow down 125.7 seconds and keep in mind we don't
have xcode running here and we only have 10 web browsing tabs open nothing else
so you could expect xcode being even slower if you had to have other programs
open Virtual machines anything else that supports coding or more tabs in your
browser and now let's test out video editing I have a simple five minute 4K
project here with a few Luts applied this is something that most YouTubers do
there is a load on the graphics but it's not too heavy and as far as playback
we're not seeing a big difference now let's go ahead and check our activity
monitor while we're playing this back and as you guys could see with those 10
tabs open we're still not using very much swap just having the short five
minute project open and now let's go ahead and Export this five minute
project all right wow this one started up right away it is a already at twenty
percent compared to eight over here with the eight gig model and that makes sense
because the 8 gig model is using four and a half gigs of swap it's actually
going up compared to zero swap on the 16 gig now I was a big proponent when the
m1s came out the swap isn't that big of a deal the ssds last way longer now it
is super Speedy the responsiveness difference was minimal back then and the
Machine even the 8 gig for a lot of people most people it worked great this
time around I have to change my stance not on swap in general but on this
machine using swap because now it just slows down so much which did not happen
with the M1 MacBook Pro and people talk about before ssds were quite a bit
slower with the Intel models but the CPU and GPU in the Intel models were way
slower anyways so they were the limit station not the SSD itself but now with
this fast M2 Chip this SSD and the amount of RAM is slowing it down the 16
gig model took 2 minutes and 22 seconds to export this five minute project very
quick but the 8 gig one took four minutes and 45 seconds that's twice as
long now if you remember previously when we just had Final Cut open no web
browsing tabs at all it took 2 minutes and 23 seconds so that is how much of an
impact we are getting when we have just our 10 tabs open over here regular use
no other applications no photoshop nothing else and you start exporting and
getting into that swap with the ssds being that speed at this point the
fameless M1 MacBook Air that you could buy for as low as 850 bucks on Amazon
we'll put links down below will be faster than this this brand new M2
equipped machine let that sink in now when I'm working with Final Cut I often
have Photoshop open as well and oftentimes more tabs than what I have on
this machine right now so let's go ahead and open up Photoshop I'm gonna drag in
these nine images and we are gonna do an HDR photo compilation the 16 gigabyte
model took 13 seconds to do this very fast but the 8 gigabyte model go and
take a guess down below how long it took it took 40 seconds basically three times
longer now at this point our 16 gig model is also starting to use the SSD as
RAM we have two gigs of swap used but it doesn't matter because the ssds are
really quick and it's not limiting the performance whereas the 8 gig is using
six gigs of Swap and you saw how much it slowed down because of that and then
we're creating the final file here our 16 gig took 10 seconds versus 30 for the
8 gig model now what I want to do is go ahead and run speedometer 2.0 and you
guys are seeing even just typing is kind of glitching up which is so weird for a
brand new machine in 2022 looks like both of them did slow down with 326 for
the 16 gig and 299 for the 8 gig what's also interesting that this plus and
minus 33 means that it's not being very consistent sometimes things load quick
sometimes they'll be quite quite slow but let's see the responsiveness of the
system I'm going to go back through these tabs
16 gigs perfectly quick seems like a brand new computer it should be
come on it's not even letting me click here
so even though speedometer is showing that there's not much difference I mean
we could see ourselves how much of a difference we have here
and Google Drives had to pull from SWAP let's go ahead and open up Final Cut Pro
much quicker now let's open up Photoshop
here check these files
instant here we're waiting I don't know was that four
seconds for that one the whole system as you
guys could see is glitching up here come on let me let me do something now there
are a lot of apologists online saying you know what it's fine the SSD doesn't
make a difference even some reviewers saying that well make sure to send them
this video because we are not doing some extreme benchmarks we are doing Simple
Things on this system we're not pushing it hard I push the M1 MacBook Air way
harder than this before it started to slow down this is real world use not
some fake thing just to get these crazy headlines which some people are saying
now let's go ahead and close down Final Cut Pro I was going to do some tougher
tests uh but as you see the menu bars doesn't even want to pop open here I
can't I don't even want to touch any prores footage or raw footage or
anything we just did the basic stuff I'm gonna go ahead and open up Lightroom we
did that testing beginning when we only had Lightroom open let's see what it
runs at now with just photoshop with nine images open in Lightroom actually
let's test how fast these open how responsive the systems are
so that was I don't know three seconds and twice as slow maybe even a little
bit slower than that let's go ahead and flip through these images
pretty sure I hit that it still hasn't changed oh there you go
there you go bam it's switched there I don't know how
long that was maybe Angelica could put the time there uh that is crazy
okay is this not real world
do people not buy a MacBook Pro to be able to have Photoshop open with some
images there not a crazy amount not a crazy amount of layers compositions and
then have 50 images open in Lightroom with 10 web browsing tabs open I think
that's fairly normal it would not be this bad before
my goodness this is worse than I expected I don't
even want to try a brush but let's try to brush the sky alright I did the brush
stroke I'm not seeing anything let's do another breaststroke all right
we got the beach ball oh it skipped the first portion
all right there you go no that's a little bit better our 16 gig
one super smooth no issues let's change our exposure down
look at that beautiful beautiful all right so let's just go
ahead and Export these 50 images and while we're doing that let's just go
ahead and jump back into Photoshop say we want to go ahead and remove some
spots from an image let's see how responsive this is
before that image even loads I'm gonna go through all these images
let's see how many times
I can Loop it oh my goodness we're on the third Loop
so far okay it's switched we still got a beach ball there you go all right well
you know what let's get out of Photoshop let's go back into Google Chrome I'm
oftentimes you're multitasking something's exporting you know you're
gonna go in you're gonna do some web browsing you're gonna write some emails
here we're loaded up already oh wow okay I missed this actually getting done
that was super quick I presume it was the same time as before I mean I looked
down it was very close uh we are using swap here my goodness
we're using 12 gigs of swap that is a lot but you guys are seeing how fast it
just exported that you know I'll probably just run it again and here our
whole system's locked up okay there you go let's go back to Lightroom and that's
how far we've gone all right let's look at our activity monitor yeah here we're
using uh 13.59 gigs of swap hope we're up to 14 gigs of swap now we'll export
this one one more time and stop right there one minute and 19 seconds I
think it was a minute and seven the first time and that's running with all
of that open using the swap we ran the first time we waited then I ran it a
second time and look at our eight gig model that is how far it's gone so far
so so far it's uh I don't know six minutes or so or seven it's gonna take
another 20 minutes to finish I'm gonna go ahead and cancel that if I can it's
being way too stuttery I'm gonna run geekbench 5 One More Time and here are
the results the 16 gig slow down by about 200 in the multi-core and then a
little bit in the single core whereas the eight gig model it is close to now
an M1 chip but benchmarks don't tell the whole story people online are saying the
ssds don't matter that only shows up in benchmarks no you guys saw for
yourselves how the systems compare in real world use and not even pushing them
that hard I would push them harder on a day-to-day basis and I push my M1
MacBook Air harder than this which is why you know we're doing these real
world tests for you guys now my verdict is that Apple should not be selling the
M2 MacBook Pro with this SSD with the 8 gig Model A lot of people say hey it's
2022 we should not have an 8 gig laptop as a Pro laptop
um I agree or with that the ram but when you combine eight gigs and the slow Ram
that's half the speed as it was a year and a half ago with the M1 macro Pro and
air you get this disastrous result so please do not buy one of these and for
the people out there that say well Pros would never buy a base model Apple said
this is the number two best-selling laptop and guess which spec sells by far
the most the base spec the one that is kept in stock everywhere that is the one
that is discounted that's the one that people buy and I know many people that
have base spec M ones that perform very well and they are very happy with it and
they didn't need to go upgrade a bunch of stuff they're using it just like this
for Creative work so you guys let me know your thoughts down in the comments
section below share this video with other people that are commenting that
are talking about this doesn't matter that we're blowing it at perforce
proportion you guys saw the proof for yourselves click that Circle above to
subscribe if you guys appreciate this type of testing and Reporting check out
one of those great videos right there this is Max and I'll see you in the next
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