We all know Apple’s new M1 silicon macs are good,
but just how good are they?
Today, we’ll put new Apple’s M1 chip to the test,
editing video in Final Cut Pro.
I’m going to compare my base model Mac mini,
to the 2019 16” MacBook Pro,
which cost more than 4 times as much,
just to see how the M1 Mac Mini holds up.
And, just for reference, we’ll also compare both these to an older,
2015 15” MacBook Pro, because let’s face it,
there’s a lot of people out there considering upgrading from this model.
Hey guys, whats up.
My name is Serge, and welcome back to my channel.
If you’ve seen my previous video,
you know I recently got the new 2020 Mac Mini,
powered by the new M1 chip made by Apple.
Today, we’ll compare the performance of this chip
against a coupe of Intel based Macs,
more specifically, the 2019 16” MacBook Pro,
and an older, 2015 15” model.
First, let’s take a look at the specs of these three models.
First up, is my new mac mini.
This is the cheapest model, with no upgrades at all.
This Mac Mini comes with the new Apple M1 chip,
an 8 core CPU, an 8 core GPU, and a 16 core Neural Engine.
Since this is the base model,
it only comes with 8 GB of RAM, and a 256 GB solid state drive,
and can be purchased for about $700 US dollars.
Next up is the 2019, 16” Macbook Pro.
This does come with a few upgrades,
including the 2.3 gigahertz 8 core intel i9 processor,
32 GB of RAM, 1 TB solid state drive,
and the 8GB AMD graphics card.
When I bought this last year, this cost me just over $3000 USD.
And last but not least, is my trusty old 2015 15” Macbook Pro.
Just like the Mac Mini, when I bought it,
this was the base 15” model,
powered by the 2.2 gigahertz quad core intel i7 processor,
16 GB of RAM, a 256 GB solid state drive,
and no dedicated graphics card.
When I bought this in 2015, I think it cost me around $2000 USD.
To run these tests, I’ve made three copies of the exact same Final Cut Pro library,
with a variety of clips with different video resolutions,
frame rates and so on.
The clips used in these libraries, are the types of clips an average YouTuber
would work with, mostly highly compressed HEVC clips,
from an iPhone or a GoPro.
I don’t have anything crazy like 8K
or high bitrate footage from some of today’s newest cameras.
All libraries are stored on the internal drives,
with no optimized or proxy media,
and background render turned off, so no render files.
First up is timeline performance.
What I did, is I made an HD project at 30 frames per second,
and added a variety of clips to my timeline. s
So for 4K or higher frame rate clips,
Final Cut Pro had to downscale the resolution
and adjust the frame rate in real time.
The first set of clips, were just the original clips,
with no effects applied to them.
When I tried to play them back on the 2015 MacBook pro,
the only clip that played back smoothly, was the first clip,
with the same resolution and frame rate as my project.
As soon as something changed, we started skipping frames,
and the clips become almost unwatchable.
Both the 16” MacBook Pro, and the Mac Mini,
had no issues playing any of these clips,
playing them back in real time, without one missed frame.
Next, I took some of the clips with higher frame rates,
and slowed them down.
My 2015 MacBook Pro really struggled with these,
but neither the 2019 MacBook nor the Mac Mini
even broke a sweat playing these back.
To try to make one of these struggle, even a little bit,
I tried a split screen plugin with 4 streams of 4K footage playing at the same time,
added an adjustment layer with a bunch of effects applied,
I even tried adding 3D titles,
but both the Mac Mini and the 16” MacBook Pro
played these back with no issues at all.
What finally made both these machines struggle a bit,
is adding an animated transition between split screen clips,
playing multiple streams of 4K 60 FPS video.
And remember, these are all unrendered files.
Overall, the timeline performance of the M1 Mac Mini
and the 16” MacBook Pro was very similar,
too close to call a winner here.
Next, I made a 16 minute, 4K dummy project.
I used a variety of clips, added adjustment layers
with multiple effects and color corrections,
retimed clips, added 3D titles, layered clips,
basically whatever I could to complicate this project.
My first test was to export an unrendered version of this project
as an Apple ProRes 422 file.
The 2015 15” MacBook Pro took a whopping 1 hour and 31 minutes
to export this project.
Next up was the 2019 16” MacBook Pro.
This model, exported the same 16 minute 4K project
in only 10 minutes and fifty seconds.
I did expect it to export this project faster,
but I never realized just how much faster.
The 2019 16” MacBook Pro exported my project almost
10 times faster than the 2015 model.
Then I tried the exact same project on my 700 dollar Mac Mini…..
9 minutes and 23 seconds.
Thats about 13 percent faster than the 2019 model
I really wasn’t expecting this from a 700 dollar computer.
Next up was rendering this same project.
My 2015 MacBook Pro, took 1 hour and 32 minutes to render this project.
Once again, the 16” MacBook Pro did this almost 10 times faster,
rendering this project in only 9 minutes and 46 seconds.
And just like before, the M1 Mac Mini was the fastest,
coming in at just under 9 minutes.
After rendering this project, I did an export test again.
My 2015 model, exported this rendered project in 10 minutes and 13 seconds,
considerably faster, but thats to be expected.
The 2019 MacBook also exported this project significantly faster,
coming in at 4 minutes and 33 seconds.
And this time, the Mac Mini came in a little bit behind the 16” MacBook,
exporting this project in 4 minutes and 48 seconds.
The last test I did was to see how much difference,
if any, the Neural Engine in the new M1 Mac Mini makes.
This is primarily used for machine learning tasks,
and combined with an 8 core GPU and machine learning accelerators,
should considerably speed up intelligent tasks.
To test this, I converted my 16 by 9 project to a vertical aspect ratio,
using the smart conform tool.
What this does, is analyze every clip in the project,
and re-frames it, so the most important part of your clip is in frame.
On the 2015 MacBook Pro, converting to a vertical project
took 4 minutes and 31 seconds.
The 16” 2019 model did the same task considerably faster,
converting my project in 1 minute and 15 seconds.
The M1 Mac Mini with the Neural engine,
blew both of these away, converting my entire 16 minute project
to vertical video in only 27 seconds.
So for machine learning tasks, such as the Smart Conform tool,
the Neural Engine makes a huge difference.
I’m actually really pleasantly surprised by the M1 chip
in the new Mac Mini.
For only 700 USD, this machine performs just as good,
and in some cases even better than a much higher specced
2019 16” MacBook Pro, that cost 4 times as much.
Keep in mind though, all these test were done in Final Cut Pro,
which is optimized for the M1 chip.
With other apps, that haven’t been optimized yet,
you might not see results like we did today.
That being said, if you’re buying your first mac,
or you use an older machine, like my 2015 MacBook Pro to edit video,
this little thing is a beast, and upgrading to any of the M1 Macs is a no brainer.
If you compare the cost vs performance, nothing else comes even close.
If you enjoyed this video,
let me know by hitting the like button, or in the comments below.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you back here next week.