So, it's been about a week
since the 14 inch M1 Pro MacBooks were released,
and I have to say it's been a
pretty interesting and exciting week.
Now, the theme of this particular video
is going to be about portable power,
because at the end of the day,
that is the main function of a laptop.
It's all about balancing three things,
power, portability, and battery life.
And with that in mind, let's begin.
So starting off with connectivity,
as you guys have already seen from our videos,
we do get MagSafe back, which is great.
It has also received a few updates as well.
You've got these slimmer MagSafe connector.
The cables been upgraded to a braided cable,
which seems much stronger.
And some of you guys might remember
the old school MagSafe cables,
they were quite brittle,
and sometimes they would bend or snap
right at where the charger connected to the MacBook.
So with this new cable, it seems a lot more robust.
We've also got HTMI 2.0 and the SD card reader.
And this is so good because I actually don't need to bring a
dongle or a hub with me when I go traveling.
And when I leave home, for example,
now I've got HTMI, I got SD card,
I really don't need to bring anything with me.
And some people have complained about the lack
of a USB-A port on the MacBook.
I don't agree with this because most people these days,
most of their accessories are USB-C.
Guys, the USB connector just really needs to
hurry up and die and just be completely phased out.
But worst case scenario,
you can get a little mini dongle that you can convert to a
USB-A to USB-C very, very easily and very, very cheaply.
One other thing that's great to see back is Thunderbolt
ports on both sides.
If you guys remember with the previous M1 2020 MacBooks,
you only had Thunderbolt ports on the left side.
Now you've got them on both and you can actually charge this
device from both sides,
which is just such a good thing to have back.
Now, moving on to the notch,
which is a really controversial topic.
Guys, I honestly don't mind it.
And I usually don't even notice it,
especially if you're using dark mode, or a dark wallpaper,
or your apps are in full screen, for example.
And at the end of the day,
you do gain more screen real estate with notch.
Obviously, you can move that menu bar
up towards the top of the screen.
Yes, Apple probably could have fit the webcam
into the top bezel and eliminated the need for the notch.
But at the end of the day, again,
remember that you're getting a 10 ADP webcam,
which is better than most other laptops out there.
And I think Apple is also going for a uniform look
between its devices.
Obviously, we have the iPhones with the notch,
now the MacBook.
So I think it's almost like the new trademark
for Apple devices in a sense.
Now, moving on to performance, this thing is blazing fast.
Now, maybe not a super big upgrade from the M1 MacBook Pro,
even though this certainly does outperform
that previous machine,
the M1 MacBook Pro is just an awesome bang for buck.
Even the Air, if you don't need that fan
and increased battery life.
I did make a video comparing this to the
2020 M1 MacBook Pro, if you're interested.
But that being said, you do get a pretty significant
performance bump with this machine.
But the most impressive thing is you get a lot of new
features over the 2020 M1 MacBooks.
Especially if you're a video editor
and you use Final Cut Pro,
those dedicated video encoders and decoders
really do make a difference,
especially if you use ProRes and Final Cut Pro
so much so that I've actually decided
to switch my entire video workflow
over to ProRes because of these new MacBooks.
This essentially means I can ditch
my huge RTX 3080 editing PC,
and just do everything on my MacBook
and probably do it even better.
Even more so because these MacBooks
have professional grade color correct screens.
It's essentially a shrunk down version of the $5,000
Pro Display XDR.
Seriously, it would cost me about 3000 US dollars
to get a standalone non-Apple monitor
with a similar quality.
Now, even if you're not a video editor,
the 14 inch M1 Pro just gives you a really high level
of not only performance,
but also portability and battery life
compared to many other laptops on the market.
Sure, you can get an absolute beast of a Windows PC,
but don't forget, they typically need to be attached
to the charger to reach full performance.
I actually uploaded a video yesterday
where I put the 14 inch base model M1 Pro MacBook
against the 2021 Razor Blade 14 with an RTX 3060.
I'll link that in the top right-hand corner,
but the Razor does have more raw power,
but at the cost of it needing to be attached to a charger,
which is absolutely massive by the way,
its fans are really loud,
and it just has way less features.
Now, moving on to cons.
And guys, I really don't have anything really negative
to say about these devices. They're really great.
And I do recommend them for most people,
if you can afford the 2000 US dollar price tag.
But these things are meant to talk
about aren't necessarily cons,
they're more so misconceptions or issues that surround
these machines at this point in time.
So, first of all, let's talk about the thermal differences
between the 14 inch MacBook and the 16 inch MacBook.
Now, this is only an issue because on paper
they're both exactly the same,
except for, obviously, the larger screen size
and footprint on the 16 inch.
So, it makes sense that the performance between the two
would be the exact same, right?
Well, not quite.
And this can be a bit of an unwelcome surprise
to people who aren't aware.
The 16 has larger fans and also has more surface area
to cool the same M1 Pro chip.
Now, you're going to see the biggest difference here.
If you're using the M1 Max chip, it's bigger,
it runs hotter, it just produces more heat.
But even with the smaller M1 Pro chip,
I did notice that the 14 inch
would run a little bit hotter,
and you'd also have more fan noise compared to the 16 inch.
And under the same load, oftentimes the fan on the 16 inch
wouldn't even be spinning when the fan on the 14 would be.
And that's not to say the fan on the 14 was obnoxiously
loud, but it was definitely more loud than the 16 inch.
Now, I think this is an important point to bring up,
because a lot of people just really hate fan noise.
So just be aware if you are looking to pick up the 14 inch.
And maybe you're deciding against the 16 inch, for example.
Now, let's talk about support for Apple Silicon.
Now, take Blender, for example.
It's a relatively popular program. Lots of people use it,
but Metal GPU support is not supported
on Apple Silicon for Blender.
So what that means is if you have a really GPU heavy scene
or render your MacBook is just not going to be able to
compete anywhere near what a PC can, for example.
So I tested this on the Razor Blade 14
with the RTX 3060, which is $200 cheaper, by the way.
And it outperformed the base model M1 Pro 14 inch MacBook
by a factor of three to one.
It was three times quicker to render the same Blender scene,
than the MacBook.
And that is a massive difference.
Also, tons of apps and games and programs
still require Rosetta 2 in order to actually be able
to run at all on Apple Silicon.
And if you guys aren't familiar with Rosetta 2,
it's essentially emulation software on MAC OS
that emulates these apps and programs
that aren't yet supported
to actually run at all on Apple Silicon Max.
This means that even though you have this awesome,
powerful computer, you're completely handicapped
by badly optimized software.
And guys, it is so frustrating
cause it's like having a sports car on a racetrack,
and there's a guy standing there, waving a sign,
saying that you can't go above 30 miles per hour.
It's just such a frustrating experience,
especially for those of you who use
like Blender and apps like that.
Apple Silicon's been out for a year.
It's really up to the developers at this point
to sort it out.
So, hopefully those updates come sooner rather than later,
especially because I think with these new Macs and
specifically the Apple Silicon Max last year
getting even more popular, it's kind of forcing developers
to update all of their software.
Anyway, guys, hopefully you enjoyed this brief recap
of the last seven days of using this machine.
Honestly, been a really, really positive experience.
Like I said before,
I'm about to completely ditch my desktop beefy RTX 3080,
a Ryzen 3900X editing PC for one of these machines.
And I'm switching over my entire workflow to ProRes
so that I can use Final Cut.
That's how good these things are.
So, I'm really excited to see how the next couple of months
are going to go, and I of course will keep you guys updated.
But apart from that,
thanks for watching this video
and I will catch you in the next one.