- Yo. Jonathan here.
And today, I've got a video covering a question
that I get all the time,
which is, do I iMac or do I MacBook Pro?
Specifically, this is the fastest
16-inch MacBook Pro you can pick up,
head-to-head against the fastest 5K iMac
that Apple just dropped recently.
Should you go for the portability of a MacBook Pro
or the power and size of an iMac?
I'm gonna cover the pros and cons of each,
and ultimately, help you decide
which is the best option for you.
Before I do that though,
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So it's actually pretty interesting
if you spec these two out, side-by-side,
and then max out the respective processor, video card,
and then line-up the RAM and storage,
the price point is nearly identical
with the MacBook Pro coming in at a $100 more.
A really simple way to look at these two
is with the MacBook Pro,
you're sacrificing some power for portability.
Whereas with the iMac, you're getting more power
in a giant 27-inch 5K display.
That right there I think is something
that is often overlooked with the iMac.
Yes, there's that chin.
Yes, there are Apple powered Macs in the near future.
But a monitor of this caliber, of this resolution,
will run you at least $1,000.
So definitely keep that in mind
when pricing these two out.
Now, as far as why more screen real estate
might be advantageous to your workflow,
here's Final Cut Pro X with a 4K video playing
at full resolution, with some room to spare.
We are absolutely cutting things close here,
but for contrast on the MacBook Pro,
we're actually only able to get that up to
77% of the entire video here.
If we bumped that up to 100%,
we see those sides and the video gets cropped off.
So if you're not mobile or not moving around a lot,
the bigger screen on the iMac
can definitely be an advantage.
Aside from screen real estate and size, though,
there are some interesting trade-offs
with the display on the MacBook Pro and the iMac.
For example, the iMac now has
a nano-texture anti-glare option,
which is only available on this and the Pro Display XDR.
I covered that in-depth in my full review,
which you guys can check out if you missed.
But I would love, love, love to see that option
come to a MacBook Pro.
Now, kind of a hidden advantage on the MacBook Pro,
that only it's and the Pro Display XDR share,
so you can see we're kind of trading off features here,
is the ability to adjust the refresh rate on your display.
These are absolutely video-specific refresh rates.
So for example, if you're working in 24 frames per second,
you could match the refresh rate
to the project you're working in.
I definitely would have loved to have seen that on the iMac,
but it's super helpful that it's there on the MacBook Pro.
So it covered the new webcam in the 2020 iMac
in my full review, which you missed,
I'll drop a link to down below.
But there's definitely an advantage here.
Right now, it's pretty harsh
as far as the lighting environment goes.
When we hop over to the MacBook Pro
that is when you will see the huge difference
where it really starts to struggle.
I, myself, I'm actually curious to see
the microphone quality
'cause these were improved when Apple updated
the 16-inch MacBook Pro.
So it should actually be on par with this iMac,
but at the very least, you'll get decent mics out of both.
The advantage to the webcam
definitely goes to the iMac though.
From there, in terms of power, again,
while you are sacrificing some of it with the MacBook Pro,
it hangs surprisingly well with this maxed out iMac.
With MacBook Pro, you have the option
to go up to eight cores, 16 threads,
whereas with the iMac, you can now configure it
with up to 10 cores and 20 threads.
It is really easy to get lost in the clock speed
and the Turbo Boost and all the gigahertz.
But throughout this video,
I really wanna showcase how these two perform side by side
making things as opposed to solely benchmarks.
For example, that intro shot was recorded
on the new Sony a7s III, and one of its coolest features
is the ability to work in conjunction
with Sony's Catalyst stabilization software,
which is literal witchcraft.
I will definitely drop a more in-depth video
explaining that tech down below.
But in a nutshell, there's gyroscopic data
being recorded on the camera
that can then talk to the software
and results in some mind-blowing image stab.
Shout out to Camera Conspiracies.
- Toneh.
- [Johnathan] The actual clip itself was 28 seconds long,
and to export the stabilized shot,
the iMac was 10 seconds faster.
So I then took that stabilized shot,
brought it into Final Cut Pro X,
added some at its motion via effects text tracking,
reversed it, and there you go.
So with the Catalyst software,
it's definitely using both the processor and the video card
to crunch that task.
If we were looking at solely just CPU performance,
in a Blender Benchmark, for example,
here's how the iMac stacks up side by side
against the MacBook Pro,
and you can see those extra two cores and four threads
definitely make a difference.
With that said, if we're talking just CPU driven tasks
on the iMac and MacBook Pro,
the performance difference isn't as crazy
as one might expect.
But in terms of graphics power,
the iMac is leaps and bounds ahead.
16 monstrous gigs of video memory on the iMac
versus eight on the MacBook Pro,
and jumping into "Shadow of the Tomb Raider"
you can definitely see the jump in performance here.
So with applications that take advantage of the GPU,
that are Metal accelerated, you will definitely see gains
with the iMac over the MacBook Pro.
But with that said,
there are applications that don't take advantage
of all that graphics power, like audio.
So this is iZotope RX 8,
and much like Sony's Catalyst software,
this is equally mind-blowing in literal witchcraft.
It's incredible for dialogue, in voiceover,
for repairing, and processing audio,
but one of its craziest features
is the ability to take a stereo mixed down music file
and somehow, extract stems.
It's kind of like if you baked a cake
and then somehow were able to extract
the eggs and sugar separately, after the fact.
So here is the original file, shout out to Lauv,
and then somehow, it extracts the vocals.
♪ Right to the bottom, where we've gone now ♪
The drums.
(drums thudding)
The bass.
(bass reverberating)
And then everything else. What is happening?
In this instance, the iMac was able to extract everything
around 16 seconds faster than the MacBook Pro.
So definitely an advantage.
But it also showcases,
performance on the MacBook Pro is no joke.
I will say, one giant advantage
with the iMac over the MacBook Pro is the noise and fans.
Yes, while the iMac definitely get hot
and those fans can rev up,
the MacBook Pro is on a different level, in not a good way.
If you're editing video or basically, not recording audio,
it's not the biggest deal in the world,
but if you're into audio production
and are recording live audio anywhere near the MacBook
it can absolutely get in the way.
From there, I thought it'd be fun to take those stems,
really just the vocals and the bass,
and then ditch everything else,
bring that into Logic Pro, record some acoustic guitar,
recreate the track, and then test performance there.
This by no means was an intense session.
There was a handful of tracks, a couple of samples,
a decent amount of plugins.
But you can see, there is miles and miles of headroom
on both the iMac and the MacBook Pro.
Again, the big advantage with the iMac
in terms of audio production,
is it's not as loud as the MacBook Pro.
I actually dropped that entire track on a new channel
which I will link to down below.
You guys can check it out and subscribe
if you're more into the music side of things.
But bouncing that final project, in Logic Pro,
into three different formats,
AIFF and MP3 and Apple Lossless at the same time,
there was about a 10-second advantage
with the iMac or the MacBook pro.
So again, performance difference between these two
is close but consistent.
From there, continuing the theme of making things,
recorded the video to that track
using the Sony a7s III in their highest quality,
10-bit 4K codec which can definitely be taxing,
depending on your machine,
whipped up a multi-cam edit in Final Cut Pro X
Chopped it up.
And little secret behind the video,
I took Lauv's live acoustic version of this song
which is completely different,
then time stretched the audio to fit.
♪ Every time I think I love somebody ♪
♪ Every time I think I love ♪
♪ Every time I think I love somebody ♪
And now it looks like he's singing along.
From there, rendering out the timeline,
because that is really where you will test performance
in Final Cut Pro X,
it is heavily GPU-accelerated, Metal optimized,
so the more graphics power you have the better.
And with that, you can definitely see a bigger jump here,
with the iMac over the MacBook Pro.
From there in a heavier, more time-consuming task,
I took all that a7s II footage,
which totaled to be just under 24 minutes,
and then transcoded that 10-bit footage
into ProRes, which is much easier to edit.
This is definitely where you see the graphics power
flexing in the iMac over the MacBook Pro
because this was the biggest jump
in performance we've gotten so far.
From there, it's a smaller things like ports.
With the MacBook Pro,
you have four USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports, that's it.
Whereas with the iMac, you get SD card slot,
the ability to have 10 gig ethernet built right in.
You can, of course, always add those
to the MacBook with an adapter, but you have to add them.
You also have the ability to upgrade RAM,
something you can't do on the MacBook Pro.
All in all, I have thoroughly enjoyed both of these machines
and I think it's pretty simple.
If you need the portability
the MacBook Pro is a stellar option,
but if you're not planning on traveling or being mobile,
the iMac is more powerful and definitely the better option
when you factor in that giant 5K display.
Aside from that though,
recently jumped into the PC side of things
with the RTX 3080.
So potentially, if you wanna see a comparison with this
versus the iMac, let me know.
If you guys miss that video, I will drop a link down below.
Thank you so much for watching.
This is Jonathan and I will catch you guys later.