I wasn't planning on making this video, because just about every tech channel on the planet has
made a similar one. But, by now I m pretty sure I've spent the most amount of time testing all
the M1 Macs out of pretty much anyone else, and people kept asking for my opinion, so here it is.
To start off, my recommendation is almost always to spend the maximum amount of money you can
on the highest spec machine possible, while still staying within your budget.
There's no point in waiting because there's always going to be a better
upgrade or slightly more improved version just around the corner.
If you need a new computer, just get one now, and get the highest spec you can afford.
This is especially good advice for those of you who simply need a laptop for everyday
tasks such as web browsing, basic school or university work, or light to moderate
photo or video editing. The M1 lineup will serve you well.
In saying that however, there are a lot of you moderate and
high level power users sitting on the fence (for example developers,
coders, editors, and artists), and my opinion is that if you haven t yet bought an M1 Mac,
you should definitely wait a few more months until the M1X, and updated 14 and 16 inch MacBook Pros
are announced. Yes, I know, I'm going against my traditional recommendation, but hear me out.
When I first saw Apple announce the M1 Macs running on Apple silicon,
I was very cautious of being a glorified beta tester. Although Apple has been using their own
silicon on mobile devices for some time, the switch to desktop ARM architecture is a little
trickier than some uninformed individuals in my comments section have claimed. I was very
pleasantly surprised that the M1 lineup worked almost flawlessly out of the box in mid November.
I expect the M1X (or whatever Apple ends up calling it) launch will go even smoother.
Now the major reason why I recommend to wait until this next round of Apple silicon is released,
is pure performance. I'll touch on other aspects like MagSafe, Mini LED screen
and chassis redesign later on. Now I don't like to go into too much technical detail
like the difference between 7 vs 5 nanometers or something similar in these types of videos,
I'll save that for some of my other ones.
What I will talk about is just how powerful the M1X is rumoured to be. First up, it s said to
be 12 cores, versus the 8 cores in the current M1 lineup. To dig into this a little deeper,
out of those 8 cores on the M1, 4 are high performance and 4 are efficiency. On the M1X,
you have 8 performance cores, with the same number of efficiency cores totaling 12 all up.
That is double the amount of performance cores of the current M1 processor.
Now, although the M1X will supposedly have double the performance cores, this doesn't necessarily
mean the M1X will be twice as fast, it's impossible to say at this point with no actual
data or announcements from Apple, but sources have claimed that the M1X is rumored to be blazing fast
when compared with the M1, and I really don't doubt that. As we've already seen with Apple
s first attempt at their own desktop ARM based RAM, the Mac hardware they've been designing has
been super efficient and effective, and I can only imagine what Apple is going to be able to squeeze
out of a processor that technically on paper, is around twice as powerful as the M1.
So what does this mean in a more everyday usage scenario? Well again, if you re just
web browsing and doing some light photo or video editing, you won t even notice. But,
if you re a content creator for example working with lots of 4K, 6K or 8K footage including BRAW
or R3D RAW and you re loading up on effects, LUTs, and transitions, you definitely will notice. Like
I've shown in many prior videos, the M1 performs flawlessly with the majority of editing workflows.
But, when you start to really push it with 6K BRAW on a complicated timeline for example,
it will stutter. It s not the be all and end all super computer that some people hype it up to be.
Likewise if you re spending all day running intensive code, using multiple developer apps
or even doing 3D design or animation, it s going to make a huge difference.
So at this stage, you re probably thinking ok he's made his point, I understand now. But I haven t
even got to the main point I m trying to make. In my opinion, the M1X chip will be so powerful,
that it will be able to replace the main desktop computer of most moderate to high level
power users. I don t just mean replace as in only using a single MacBook instead of 2 computers
just for convenience, I mean the M1X will literally be more powerful than 95% of desktop PC
systems (or at least similarly powerful in most tasks), which is what many moderate to
high level users (including myself) resort to for those really complicated timelines or demanding
programs. Unless you re running some kind of Ryzen 5900x and GTX 3080 combo, I really think the M1X
will give powerful desktop systems a run for their money, just like we ve seen with the M1 MacBook.
I personally would love to ditch my custom 3900x and GTX 1080 Windows PC for a single device
such as an M1X laptop. Yes, a moderately specced M1X Mac is going to be expensive,
but for people in my line of work (which is who the M1X Macs are designed for)
we can usually justify the cost. If it means I can have the performance of my
powerful editing desktop in a 14 laptop, that s an incredibly tempting choice.
Like I mentioned previously, there are other rumored cool updates to the new range of
MacBooks including the return of MagSafe, the removal of the Touch Bar (finally), and
mini LED screens, but to be honest I don t really care about any of that because
I just want the super high performance of what is essentially an M1 chip on steroids.
If you are interested in these other updates, I'll include an article I wrote on the Created
Labs website with more details which you can click on in the video description.
Anyway guys, hope you found my thoughts and opinion on this topic interesting. I
wanted to keep it short and sweet, so if you have any comments or questions please leave
them down below. Apart from that, thanks for watching, and I ll catch you in the next one.