I was pretty late to the party with the M1 Macs, picking up my MacBook Air M1 in July
of this year, and I've absolutely loved using it ever since. It's a phenomenal computer,
and the very fact that I can use this computer for all aspects of my daily work, from voice
over editing, to 4K video creation to music production is really staggering. I've made
a review of the M1 MacBook Air, and I'll link to that video in the description of this one.
So, it would be fair to say that I hadn't anticipated back in July that I'd be purchasing
another Mac, certainly not another Mac laptop, so soon after. Yet, here we are, unboxing
a 14 inch M1 Pro MacBook Pro, just a couple of months later.
Now, in my defence, I run a tech channel which I'm trying to grow, and you can only really
grow a tech channel if you feature tech. And I've gone for the entry level MacBook Pro
with no changes or tweaks made to it, this is the 14 inch model, with the M1 Pro chip
with 8 CPU cores, 14 GPU cores, 16gb of RAM and a 512gb SSD.
Because, I think that this is the most obvious upgrade path, or purchasing dilemma for most
people. If you're weighing up an M1 laptop versus an M1 Pro laptop, you're not likely
to then cough up another £1000 to get more Ram, more SSD, more cores. I think it's going
to be an M1 computer or this, and so I really wanted to spend some time seeing how the two
computers compare, so keep an eye out for that content in the coming weeks, where I'll
put this up against my M1 MacBook Air in a range of situations.
But for now, let me show you the unboxing, and give you my initial thoughts, having played
around with this for the past 24 hours. And I have to say, my first thought, understandably,
is how big and heavy this thing feels when compared to the MacBook Air, but with good
reason.
I'm still not sure about the design, I said that when I first watched the keynote, and
I stand by that thought even now, seeing this in the flesh, and using it. It's a MacBook,
there's no denying that, but the bulkiness of it, the more squared design, reminiscent
of the old Mac Powerbooks... I'm hoping that the design is going to grow on me, I'll touch
back on it in my in-depth review in a week or so. I don't hate it or anything like that,
I just don't love it, not yet anyway.
It feels extremely different, that's for certain, especially when compared to my MacBook Air,
the computer I've been using most recently. It feels blocky and bulky when you pick it
up, and your fingers kind of naturally rub along the exhaust vents at the bottom, something
that doesn't exist on the MacBook Air. The display feels slightly rounded, almost smoother
when you grab it to open or close the computer, compared with an almost sharper feeling that
you get on the Air. It's hard to describe, that's about the best I can do.
I do in fairness really like the etched in MacBook Pro emblem on the bottom of the computer,
I think that's a nice touch even though you're almost never going to see it. I don't care
about the apple logo not lighting up, I'm not looking at the back of the computer when
I'm working on it, and I'm not one of these people that likes to draw attention to what
gear I'm using when I'm out in public. I love that we've got some ports back again, although
for me it's mainly going to be the card reader and the additional thunderbolt 4 port that
I care about, I'm not likely to need HDMI. Magsafe is of course back, although when I'm
at home I'll be docking this with my Pro Display XDR, which does mean I'll be able to charge
via USB C, and thankfully you can charge via any of these ports, as well as Magsafe. The
Magsafe will probably become my travel power cable instead. Something to point out is that
the power adaptor that comes with this entry level computer is the slower-charging one,
this is the 67 watt charger, not the 96 watt charger that comes with the higher spec models.
It's not really an issue for me personally, but if this is something that you think you're
likely to care about, do keep this in mind.
OK, the screen, and it's amazing from what I've seen so far, it's super bright, which
was a tradeoff that I had to make when switching to the M1 MacBook Air, that screen is bright
enough to be usable, but it's so noticeable here how much brighter these new screens are.
I'm actually really quite blown away by how dull this screen makes the MacBook Air screen
feel in comparison. And the Pro Motion looks great, you don't get to experience this as
fully as you should just yet as not many apps, not even first party Apple ones have been
updated to take advantage of it, but even just system animations, jumping in and out
of apps, they all feature it and it really does look slick. I love that now my iPhone,
iPad and Mac, my three main computing devices all now feature it.
That notch is going to take a bit of getting used to, although I'm already finding myself
forgetting it's there, and I do appreciate the extremely thin bezels that come with it.
Shame about no Face ID, I really hope they bring that in with the next generation, and
the Touch ID works as brilliantly as you'd expect.
The keyboard is great, I do a lot of typing work on my MacBook Air, and I really enjoy
typing on that keyboard, this one is just as good, if not better, and I actually like
the black on black look that Apple have gone for with it. The full size function keys up
at the top are cool, not a deal-breaker for me either way to be honest, and as much as
I enjoyed having the Touch Bar on my previous 13 inch MacBook Pro, I haven't missed it at
all these past few months, so maybe Apple was correct about it being a bit redundant.
This thing also sounds amazing, probably not surprising when you consider the number and
the quality of speakers that have been packed into the computer, but it's still really enjoyable
to hear. I'll be honest, if I'm at home I've usually got this hooked up to my Apollo interface,
and if I'm away I'm typically using my AirPods, but it is nice to know that you can crank
up the volume and have good quality sound coming out of this computer, it definitely
sounds better than the Air.
Other than that, this is a very typical Mac in every way. There's a part of me that feels
almost like having an M1 MacBook Air has kind of spoiled this for me a little, that computer
is so fast and so capable, I don't really feel like this is noticeably more fast in
regular day to day stuff, apps open up blisteringly quickly on both computers, and I rarely ever
get the beachball of death on the Air. I think it's going to be as I start to use this for
my daily work that I notice a difference, and I'm already working on some followup videos,
where I'll compare these two computers for video editing, for audio work and for office
and student work, so do subscribe to the channel if you'd like to see that content in the next
couple of weeks.
I'll leave this video there, and spend a bit more time with this before creating a full
review also. What about you? Have you picked up an M1 Pro or Max computer? If yes, what
do you think of them? If not, why not? Drop me a comment, and let's talk about it.
And as ever, if you found this video useful, do please consider leaving me a like, and
subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future.
See you on the next video.