Oh, my God.
That is insane.
Now, let me tell you that the new 2021 16-inch MacBook Pro is
pretty ridiculous, but I really was not sure how it was going
to compare against my 2020 M1 Mac Mini from a
video editing standpoint.
I'm a video editor.
I had a video several times a week, and time is money,
especially when it comes to adding video because I want to
push out as much as I can, and I want to remove any
bottlenecks that exist in my workflow to alleviate
any pressure, which will allow me to focus on making videos.
Now for this video, I got my hands on the 16-inch MacBook
Pro with M1 Max to see how it compares to my 2020 Mac
Mini with M1.
What is up, guys?
It is Mike!
Welcome back to Tech 24/7 TV.
I'm glad that you're back with me today.
We're talking about the 2021 MacBook Pro and whether or not
it's really worth it coming from the 2020 Mac Mini.
Now I bought the Mac Mini is my primary video editing machine
and it was good at first, but over time, as my product
just got more complex and as my workflow got more complex,
the Mac Mini really started to stress and break down in terms
of working on video.
So I bit the bullet and decided to upgrade from the 2020 Mac
Mini to the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Max.
Let's get started.
Now, today's video is broken down into different sections,
and I have each one of those sections pinned down in
the first comment.
In terms of configuration, I went with a
16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Max and this is a model that has 10
core CPU, which is comprised of eight high-performance cores
and two high-efficiency cores.
There's 32 gigs of RAM and 32 core GPU.
If you're looking at Apple's website, it's broken
down by good,
better, best.
And this is in the
the best category at $3499, and then I have two terabytes
of internal
storage.
Now I did have a one (1) terabyte version, which I did
send back in exchange for this version, which I'll get
into more about why I did that in just a few minutes.
Now there are a lot of things to consider when you are
upgrading from one machine to the other.
And I chose the 16-inch over the 14-inch MacBook Pro for
the following reasons.
First, it is about usable screen size.
I've own both a 13-inch and a 15-inch MacBook Pro in both
machines really left me wanting more in terms of screen real
estate being able to see more do more.
Really, it just was never enough for me because I edit
video several times a week and Final Cut Pro on the 13-inch
without an external display was almost too difficult for
me to read.
I'm getting older and it's just what happens now.
I do have my Mac primarily connected to a 5K monitor that
is here off to the side.
When I'm not using it, if I'm around my house, if I'm sitting
at a desk where that monitor is not available, I want to
make sure that I have enough screen real estate to see
everything within Final Cut, which is the program that I'm
using all the time to edit video.
Now, since portability is a secondary concern over
screen size, this put me squarely in the 16-inch camp,
leaving me to figure out which processor was best for
my usage patterns.
Second, it's about RAM and SSD speed.
Now, my typical video project is somewhere in
the neighborhood, about 150 to 400 gigs worth it
in storage size.
That's because I primarily shoot in ProRes 4K on an
ATOMOS recorder, and if I'm not using an ATOMOS recorder,
I'm shooting internally on a Sony camera using
their XAVC codec.
Now, if you don't know the difference: ProRes
is very lightweight.
You can ingest and your computer very easily, and it's
very easy for your computer to use and run it.
But the problem is that those files are very beefy in size.
Now, comparatively, you have the XAVC codec, which is
highly compressed, making it smaller in size, but it's
harder for computers to use and digest them and read them.
So there's a little bit of a tradeoff there.
So most of my projects are shot both in ProRes 4K and in Sony's
XAVC codec in 4K.
Even if I estimated my average project size to be 200 at
240 gigs, having a 512 gig hard drive is way, way too
small for me.
I wouldn't feel comfortable with that now if I were to bump
up to the next level one terabyte.
Still, I could probably have one or two projects on there,
but not too much past that.
I would constantly have to manage my projects with
an external drive.
So for me, two (2) terabyte (TB) was the right size in the
cost difference between one terabyte in two terabytes
is $400 bucks.
Where I see here in a few minutes here how that drive
performs 400 bucks is actually not very expensive when you
consider the performance that you're getting from
this drive.
The next crucial question for me was how much RAM did I want
to have in the new 16-inch MacBook Pro?
I had sixteen (16) gigs of RAM in the 2020 Mac Mini and also
in the 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro.
But I really felt constrained by the 16 gigs because
there are
often times where I felt like it was like pulling teeth
from the machine.
When I was doing my edit, it just felt long.
There were things that where it would close.
I don't think it was a good experience,
particularly for my workflow.
Now I wanted to get a little bit more breathing room so I
started from going from 16, which I had previously to going
to 32 gigs of unified memory.
Now I also went to the 32 core version of the GPU, and there's
a couple of different benefits here.
So first, the RAM speed is going to be four times as fast
in comparison to the M1 Mac Mini,
MacBook Pro 13-inch, and twice as fast as what is found in
the M1 Pro.
That in addition to I'm getting to ProRes
encode/decode engines, which on the M1 Pro you only get one and
on the M1 Mac Mini you get zero.
So there's a lot of benefits by going with this beefier
processor that helps me in terms of video editing because
of the way that my workflow is structured.
Now.
Going in this, I had a few different questions really
based on performance and really what would be the limitations
of this upgrade.
First did double the number of performance cores on the 16-
inch MacBook Pro directly translate into an increase
in multi-threaded performance.
Second, given that the GPU cores was going from eight in
the 2020 Mac Mini to 32 cores in the 16-inch MacBook Pro,
would I see the same type of scaling effect for GPU-related
tasks?
And finally, how would the two ProRes encode/decode engines
impact my workflow?
Because again, I want to invest in technology that's going to
shorten my workflow and make it easier to allow me to
produce more content.
Now I'm going to answer all these questions throughout
the video, but I can tell you right now that I am very
satisfied with my upgrade.
I think it's the best computer for me, and who knows, it might
even be the best computer for you if you have similar needs.
Let's get on with the testing.
Now, the first test case is going to have to do with
setting baselines for ingesting video.
Now, the MacBook Pro now has a super-fast SSD, which you'll
see in just a moment here just how fast it is.
But the question is, is there a bottleneck with the SSD?
If I were to go ahead and maybe think about, please, oops, if I
were to go ahead and think about replacing it with an
external drive like this Thunderbolt drive that I have
here from Samsung, I think this is the X5.
Now the reason why you'd want to choose something over this,
because presumably this is going to be cheaper than what
you are able to purchase from Apple, and you should
get similar performance.
Well, we're going to see here in just a moment what
the case is.
Now, I'm going to take this SSD and I'm connected to my MacBook
Pro and I want to see what the Thunderbolt read-write speeds
are of this drive.
I'm going to use the black magic speed disk tool.
Now let's go and select a target drive.
Now, for context, this is a $350 SSD drive,
it is Thunderbolt three.
The inside interface is going to be NVMe, so it is
super fast.
It does get hot because of the small enclosure, but it is
super fast and it should give you really,
really High-Performance.
Now, click start.
And these speeds right now I'm getting 2300 right and 2
600 read, which is nothing to sneeze at.
That is extremely fast.
But let's take a look here at what the internal drive speed
on the MacBook Pro.
Oh my god.
That is insane.
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So we are getting what it's actually even getting faster at
sixty-three hundred and fifty-four hundred,
that is ridiculous.
That is twice the amount of speed in comparison to this
external SSD drive.
So I was thinking here if I wanted to save money and go
with the one terabyte version of the MacBook Pro and not pay
the $400 upgrade fee for the two terabytes.
Well, this drive itself is $400 or $350, depending on if you
can find it on sale.
I'm getting half the performance that I would be
getting if I were to just spend an extra 50 bucks and get a
larger two terabyte MacBook Pro.
So for me, that seems kind of like it's like a non-issue.
You shouldn't even really consider getting the two
terabyte version because of the performance of this drive.
I
t's going to be half the speed.
Now speed might not be the entire equation.
Let's actually put this to the test, and let's start
editing avideo and see what happens.
Now, depending on how you are setting this up, the read-write
performance of this drive might be a little bit lower if you're
connecting it to a dock, which is then connected
to your MacBook.
You always want to connect any type of external media that you
want to maximize throughput on directly to your computer,
so that's what you want to make sure you do.
And that's how I've connected it here.
I'm doing all my tests while they're directly connected
to the computer.
For the second test case, we are going to see how fast
the render performance is of the 2021 MacBook Pro versus
the Mac Mini.
Now, in context, rendering is the act of making the changes
in your project, but not necessarily producing a final
deliverable like a video file that you would then
upload a YouTube.
It only makes the changes here on your computer and you to be
very surprised what this computer is able to do.
Now I'm going to use my 30-day review of the iPad Mini as my
project file, and it's a mix of ProRes 4K, 1080p as well,
in addition to Sony XAVC 4K, so there are three different
resolution sizes that are in here.
So it would make for a very good example of how quickly or
how slowly something is going to be able to render
out those changes.
So we are now recording my computer screen.
We've got the screen on my camera here.
We have a camera here and we have the audio, right?
Yes, we have the audio.
So we have a lot of things being recorded right now.
Now this project file looks like, I said, is about
100 gigs in size, which double check here.
So you see that here, this is a pretty lengthy video 12 minutes
in length, and I think it produces a
thirty-eight-gigabyte master file, which is
a ProRes file.
I'm going delete all the render files that are in here and make
sure I click on that.
Click here.
File, I'm going to lead generated media files,
delete everything, and you see here on the timeline, all these
little dash marks that shows what is unrendered, which is
the whole thing.
Now, if I were to right-click on this and click Render all,
it's going to render that timeline.
Now, rendering is important depending on what you're trying
to achieve and the capabilities of your machine.
But in context of the M1 Max, it's not
necessarily even relevant.
You can use your M1 Max with large project files.
Again, I'm talking 4K HDR.
Obviously, I can't comment on too much on 8k because I don't
have an 8K video camera.
If you want to let me know where I can find one for a
very inexpensive, drop that down below, but you can use
your M1 Max without the worry of having to
render videos first.
This system is so fast and everything works so well
together is that you can use your M1 Max while, you know
without rendering a video and all of your changes are
immediately available and pre- viewable on this machine.
It's actually just quite mind- boggling how they were able to
construct this in such a way where everything works
so effortlessly together.
Now, for example, the content is still immediately playable.
Click anywhere in this timeline.
You could see here it just it's like butter.
That's how smooth it runs.
It is so quick and efficient.
We're on the M1 Mac Mini.
That file actually takes seven minutes and 10 seconds, so it's
almost a 50 percent reduction.
Or twice as fast is another way we look at it.
It's actually going twice as fast as the M1 Mac Mini,
and that is because of, you know, one, it's the speed
of the RAM to the speed of the processor.
Three The video encode engine that we talked about earlier.
So all of these things are working together in such a way
where it really makes the experience as someone who has
to edit video very enjoyable.
So I don't know if you've ever had this, but editing video can
sometimes be a pain in the butt because it just takes so
long to do.
Well here with the M1 Max, it is literally,
literally effortless, literally effortless.
Now another example here where I'm able to output a ProRes
master on my M1 Max, which is kind of like a final version
that you would use in two minutes and 26 seconds,
which that is kind of quick.
It's a 12 minute video.
I'm able to export it in two minutes.
So it's the end of the day, and you need to figure out,
does this machine make sense for you, right?
Does it make sense because it's thirty-four hundred ninety-
nine to start.
Thirty-eight ninety-nine the way I've configured it
obviously goes up way, way more than that.
I don't know what your workflow is.
I would say that depending on your workflow,
it might make sense, it might not.
But I would tell you that look at how much time you are
spending in each one of the kind of the components
of your workflow.
You know, ingestion, editing, rendering, exporting.
If there is a potential time saving there, you know,
think about how many times per week or per day that you
do those, you know, parts of your workflow.
If you're exporting videos, you know, several times a week
because maybe you make daily vlogs and you're saving five
minutes per vlog or per export.
You know, if you do that seven times a week,
that's 35 minutes.
If you do that, you know, every week for a month, you can
probably save the money on this computer or, you know, kind of
recoup the money on your computer much quicker than what
you think in terms of return on investment.
And can you now do other things within that time that you're
saving?
Because to me, that's where you're going to see all the
return on your investment on this.
Now, I would love to know what you think and what you think.
Let me know in the comments below.
Are you going to pick up an M1 Max?
And if you are, what configuration are you
getting?
I think two terabytes is the sweet spot for most people,
especially if you're having, you know what?
I would consider a normal-sized project somewhere between 200
and 400 gigabytes in size.
My name is Mike.
This is Tech 24/7 TV guide.
If you like this type of video, let me know by
subscribing to the video so I can make more content like
this for you.
I will talk to you in the next one.