hey guys this is vadim with max tech and in this video
we are doing something very very interesting and you guys really wanted
to see this so right here we have the modded m1
macbook air and the m1 macbook pro the way we modded
this macbook air is by grabbing a couple of thermal pads
and placing them onto the m1 chips heatsinks
to get some extra performance and to our surprise
it actually worked so in this video we're going to compare these two
but we're going to mix it up a little bit we're not only going to be comparing
the performance but we're also testing the battery life and we're going
to check the temperatures of the bottom of the case
because those thermal pads are going to heat it up more on the macbook air
as you can see we have a 100 battery life on both of these
and we're going to be doing a bunch of testing going through a bunch of real
world
tests and benchmarks to see if it's actually worth just getting the air
and doing the thermal pad mod instead of just paying the extra 300 bucks
for the m1 macbook pro so now that we're at 100 battery life on both of these
let's dig right into it the first test we're going to run is of course
geekbench 5 the cpu test to show you guys the difference because the macbook
air is clocked a little bit lower of course because it does not have a fan
the macbook pro with the fan is able to clock a little bit higher
and get a little bit better speed so let's test this out and there we go we
got our scores and this is actually pretty
funny the macbook air is actually scoring higher in terms of multi-core
score 76-33 compared to 76-12
now that is within a margin of error so they're actually basically the same no
difference there so we're gonna have to move on to more
serious real world stress tests but before we do that i do want to run
metal the graphics test to see how big of a difference there is because this is
the base macbook air with the 7 core gpu
compared to the 8 core gpu
and the macbook pro so let's just quickly run this here we have the
graphic scores and as you can see 19 000 for the macbook air 21 and a half
for the macbook pro that's about what you're getting for the extra gpu core
now let's finally get into the cinebench r23 stress test
this is basically going to max out the cpus
for a full 10 minutes and we're going to make it even more interesting because i
have a seek thermal camera right here i'm going to
plug it into my iphone and i'm going to take some temperatures
while these tests are going i'm going to check the top of the keyboards and i'm
going to flip them over and check the bottoms
to see how much more temperature this thermal pad mod
adds to the macbook air so with that said let's
hit start now just for fun i want to take some initial readings with this
thermal camera we're not even one minute into the test
we've got 28 degrees celsius on the macbook air's keyboard moving
over to the macbook pro we have a hotspot of 27 degrees celsius
so it is staying a little bit cooler right now just hit 28 so let's see
how they heat up now that it's been seven minutes i want to take another
reading looks like we're sitting at 40 degrees
celsius on the macbook air on the keyboard 37 degrees
38 on the macbook pro so the macbook pro is staying a little bit cooler
because of that fan and now let's flip these over and check the bottom case
all right now this is a huge difference guys
49 degrees celsius on the bottom of the macbook
air we actually have a hot spot right here on the table look at that 37 degree
hot spot on the table here 28 degree hot spot
and the macbook pro is 33 degrees celsius so that's 33
compared to 49 all right
yeah it's it's hot it's definitely more hot
wow so i can see how you probably wouldn't want this on your lap
with this thermal mod so that's the one downside but luckily
it is reversible just take those pads right out
the 10 minute test is now finished and this
is just insane we almost have the exact same score
7708 for the macbook air modded 77.45 for the macbook pro
i cannot believe it's performing almost the same because without the mod
the macbook air only gets around 60 700 points
you're getting a huge 20 gain
with the thermal pad mod and by the way if you didn't watch how we did that
definitely watch that video because this type of performance is crazy
and now let's move on to our first real world test
this is our very own max tech benchmark using xcode for
programming now you can find this by simply googling it
and downloading it and running it on your machine i have it loaded through
terminal i have a code to run it on both so let's
do it as you can see it is now running through
the terminal on both of these machines so i'm very curious to see
the difference in programming performance between these two
with that thermal mod all right the test is done and i don't know if you guys can
see from that top cam but we have 133.6 seconds for the
macbook air and 132.3 seconds for the macbook pro
that's very interesting because our 16 gigabyte version of the macbook pro
not this one this one's eight that one finished it in 120 seconds
but seeing it here it's actually only like a second off
so the performance of this macbook air is really impressive i think it used to
take around 137 seconds before this mod so that's great and now
with that let's move on to some final cut pro
video editing test and we're going to start it off with
bruce x now i fully expect the macbook pro to be faster because this is very
graphics intensive and the macbook pro does have an extra
gpu core but let's see if we can actually get
better performance out of the macbook air got the settings loaded up i got my
stopwatch right here so let's export the test is finished and it
looks like we have around 24 seconds for the macbook pro
and just under 30 seconds for the macbook air
so it's not quite as fast but of course it is lacking that one
gpu core let's move on to a more serious test
and now moving on we have our standard five minute 4k
h.264 clip export now this kind of footage is the most
common footage that youtubers use so we're gonna export this five minute
clip and see the differences now i don't expect that big of a difference because
this type of codec is limited by the hardware encoders
and of course they both have the m1 chip with very nice new encoders so let's go
ahead and hit export all right we're getting
close to being finished and these are neck and neck this is crazy oh the
macbook air popped up first what is going on that's crazy basically
three minutes and two seconds for the macbook air
and the pro was literally a split second behind
i cannot believe that the air with the thermal
mod just beat the macbook pro in this export
that is crazy now let's go ahead and move on to hevc
that's a different codec and this time we're going to be stabilizing
a one minute hevc clip right this is moving
very fast what's going to finish first oh
look at that they're basically the same it was literally just
around 10 seconds on both of these so i don't know i'm not really seeing much
of a downside to this macbook air so far it's doing very well let's make this a
little bit more interesting right here i have
loaded up an hevc clip on both of these it's a one-minute clip
it's 10-bit instead of 8-bit so it's going to be a little bit more tough
and it's 60 fps as well alright guys this is weird because the macbook air
is slightly ahead of the macbook pro it does not make
any sense all right we're almost done i'm going to wait for that pop
up in the corner oh same time same exact time on both of these
one minute and 12 seconds
this is crazy because the macbook air used to always be behind
in these final cut tests i'm starting to feel like we just converted this macbook
air into a macbook pro without a fan
with just the thermal pad mod this is just crazy
enough messing around it's time to bring in
the big guns this is 4.5 k red raw it's a one minute clip and
as you can tell it's pretty tough to run we're getting
dropped frames it's stuttery because this is
really tough footage to run so we're gonna go ahead and export it
and compare the speeds all right this is just about there you go
that's the macbook pro finished and the macbook air is lagging behind a little
bit and there you go the macbook air is now
finished so we got two minutes and 36 seconds for the macbook pro
and two minutes and 47 seconds for the macbook air so it's just
11 seconds slower now i do want to mention that this test was completely
maxing out the graphics so the macbook pro is getting the
advantage of the extra gpu core now this makes me wonder if you go with
the macbook air and you pay for the upgrade to get the 8 core gpu
what if it's going to have the exact same speed
that would be awesome because it seems like the thermal pad mod
is not allowing it to throttle like it used to
before that mod so that's great let's take this up another notch into
the ultimate video editing test this right here
is 8k redraw footage and as you can see
they can barely play it because it's just it's overkill it's insane so
we're going to export this wow that took forever but we finally have our scores
for the m1 macbook pro we got 20 minutes and 20 seconds
and for the modded m1 macbook air we have 23 minutes
and basically 40 seconds so it's around 3 minutes and 20 seconds slower than the
m1 macbook pro so considering that it has a 7 core gpu
that's actually not bad and now with video editing finally finished i want to
do one more test for all of you photo
editors out there this is a lightroom classic and i want
to mention that it's the intel x86 version
running using rosetta it's not updated for apple silicon
and i have it open right here on both of these machines i have
50 raw 42 megapixel photos and we are going to export them
and see how long it takes as you can see the cpus are fully maxed out and 100
load on both of these machines and so far
they're looking to be neck and neck guys the macbook air is winning
and this is totally blowing my mind it is almost done
there you go the air just finished the pro
is still going i can't believe it it's almost done
i actually hear the fan i hear the fan blowing right now that's crazy
there you go the macbook pro just finished i cannot believe this just
happened
we have two minutes and 37 seconds for the macbook air and we have two minutes
and 54 seconds for the macbook pro that's a 17 second difference
i have no idea what's going on they're both using the same version
the same test the air finish sooner this does not make sense because the pro
has a fan so that's just insane it seems like
we've turned our 1 000 macbook air into a 1300
macbook pro with that thermal pad mod that is absolutely mind-blowing so
there you guys go that was all the testing and i've got to
say i am extremely impressed and i did not expect a simple mod like that
thirty dollars for those thermal pads on amazon
i did not expect to get that big of a performance jump
from a simple thermal pad mod so if you guys have not seen that tutorial video
on how to do it yourself definitely check it out now the only
downside is that the bottom of the case is gonna get more hot
and if that is gonna bother you it's totally reversible
just open up the case take those pads right out and you're back to normal
hold on there is one more thing and that is the battery life comparison
when we started this video both of them were at a hundred percent
it was 11 48 and now it is 159 that's basically two hours and 11
minutes of recording so let's check out the battery life
difference the macbook pro is at 67 percent
that's actually really good and the macbook air is at 52.
now if you calculate that out the macbook pro is getting
28 better battery life throughout all of this testing so that is the main
advantage if you want to spend 1300 and get the macbook pro but if you
already have the macbook air or you don't want to spend that much on
the pro just go with the one thousand dollar
macbook air we have links down in the description below and
go ahead and try out the thermal pad mod because as you saw in this video
you get very very impressive results so hopefully you guys enjoyed this video
and if you did go ahead and tap the like button
and click the circle above to subscribe for more videos like this one
definitely check out one of those two
videos right over there thanks for watching and we'll see you in
the next video you