OK….yes….the new MacBooks Air and Pro with the Apple M1 Chips have arrived. And
after a really long work day, and the delivery guy not getting here until 5, and a long night
of testing, I have some mixed results comparing them against each other and my other Macs.
Hey, Im Jerry and this is the most excited I have been for a tech product in a long time….Yes,
even more so than the iPhone 12 Mini. When Apple announced the Apple Silicon transition
this summer and then these new computers a couple weeks ago, there was something different
about this compared to other tech products. It feels like a generational leap with a future
that is yet to be defined but also very interesting……….Instead of the normal modest speed gains we come to
expect from what was essentially the sole provider of PC chips, we get a whole new trajectory
that has a much more undefined path and potential.
Be sure to hit subscribe for more M1 videos and I will have a playlist you can find in
the description where you can find them all.
These first products with the M1 Chip are the baseline going forward for Macs. These
are the worst they will be, which is saying something if you look at all the other reviews
and benchmarks.
Unboxing these MacBooks is a familiar experience. Both of these MacBooks are almost indistinguishable
from their predecessors with the main difference being what you cant see on from the outside…………I
have the MacBook air with 8GB of ram and 256SSD and the 13” pro with 16GB of ram and a 1TB
ssd.
Inside each box you will find a laptop, stickers, charger, and a USBc cable……….physically,
the MacBook air has a function row with a few new keys including search, dictation,
and do not disturb………which, I got to say, I like, and totally reminds me of the
old 90’s PCs which had a sleep button on the keyboards. ……..there is also a touchID
slash power button on the far right.
The MacBook Pro obviously, and unfortunately, has a touchbar with the same touchID slash
power button.
The trackpad on the Air is a little smaller than the Pro but Physically, these 2 laptops
are about the same footprint
Setting up 2 laptops at the same time was a first for me and felt kind of weird. I installed
all the same apps and moved the same files over to each of them.
I wanted to compare these machines to each other and also to my other 2020 Macs I bought
in the last 6 months. A base model early 2020 MacBook Air with 8gb of ram and an i3 and
a mid-tier iMac with an i5 and the radeon pro 5300.
First up was ssd speed and as you can see, both of these computers had read speed of
over 2700MBps beating out my iMac and doubling that of the previous air……..The write
speed on the Pro beat out the air 3100MBps compared to 2700MBps,,,,absolutely destroying
the previous air.
In the Cinebench test running for 10 minutes, both of the M1 MacBooks came out ahead with
about 1500 for single core. The Pro beat the air with multi-core by about a 1000 but that
still came short of the iMac by about 1400.
I wonder how much of that is due to having less ram, 8 in the air compared to 16 in the
pro. If you have an Air with 16GB of ram, let me know in the comments what your score
was.
And let me just say, that was the first time I heard the fan on the pro. Using it for a
couple hours and installing software I kept picking it up and holding it to my ear, listening
for the fan. There was no sound..,.none. I am pretty sure the fan was not running at
all when it wasn’t needed….and it only came on after 5 minutes of the multi-core
cinebench test. During the single-core test..nothing.
And there was no fan at all with the geekbench test either which resulted in scores that
were nearly identical to eachother and beating out the iMac by a healthy amount.
The Radeon Pro 5300 in the iMac won out in the metal tests by a lot with over 37000 compared
to the just below 19 and 22000 for the M1s.
Now something interesting. Doing a final cut pro export of my iPhone 12 unboxing video,
I found that the M1s did not perform as well as I was expecting. I used this same 10 minute
and 39 second Final cut project with multcam video, separate audio, transitions, titles,
and music. The iMac Completed it in 13m 56s, the i3 MacBook air in 46m 14s. Both of these
M1 MacBooks completed in the exact same amount of time at 15m 35s.
I was surprised by the fact that they actually completed slower than the imac, and the fans
never turned on once for the Pro.
Looking at the activity monitor during the export you can see that they both are barely
using CPU and the GPU is not being fully utilized. The Air GPU percentage was slightly higher
due to only having 7 cores compared to the 8 on the Pro.
I am not really sure why they were not using more resources to complete the export but
they were slower compared to the iMac.
Next I did an export of an older project with Premiere Pro. Again, multicam, titles, transistions
and it is 8m 6s in length. The iMac crushed it at 5m 48s, the i3 air at a laughable 52m
4s. The M1s maxed out their GPU and 4 of the 8 cores on the chips. The Pro’s fans were
definitely spinning on this one and it completed in 12m 50s while the air came in a bit later
at 14m 7s. So the iMac beat it again in exporting a 4k,
multicam video but this air costs $1000 and the iMac cost 2x as much at $2000. ………and
don’t forget….this is running under rosetta because adobe has not updated premiere for
apple silicon yet
I did decide to check the temperature of the laptops during the premiere export and the
air, with no active cooling did peak at up to around 109 degrees F. I was pretty surprised
by that, and the pro peaked around 104.
So how hot will this thing be on your lap? The only way to check the temperature is to
go ass up and whip out a thermometer. As you can see things can still get a bit toasty
under here.
But don’t worry, this will only happen in the most extreme situations, and generally
I think will be cooler than previous macbooks.
So, benchmark wise, I have 3 thoughts on these new M1 MacBooks. First it’s a mixed bag.
In some standard benchmarks like Geekbench, they out perform my iMac and many other computers
out there. With Cinebench they were pretty good. With my video export tests they were
not so great compared to my i5 iMac and radeon graphics.
Second, there is not a whole lot of difference between these 2 machines. They have the same
chip and although they differ in ram and cooling, the Air performed remarkably well compared
to the Pro.
Third, these are baseline computers with a new chip architecture that are already outperforming
computers costing twice as much in certain situations. And that is Amazing!
Game wise? These should work well for most casual games you can find in the Mac App store
or Apple Arcade. And as more iOS games become available for Apple Silicon Macs you will
have plenty of options to choose from.
I tested Minecraft Java edition which has not been updated for Apple Silicon. My daughter
likes to play Minecraft and on her i3 macbook air it is almost unplayable and the fans are
louder than the game music. On the M1 Macbook air at default settings the computer had no
problem hovering around 60 fps.
The Apple arcade games I tried started quickly and ran without issue and I plan on trying
some more games in the coming days. If you have any suggestions let me know below and
follow me on twitter @jerryschulze.
So that is it for tonight/ this morning. My first impressions, like most people, is that
these Apple Silicon Macs are off to a great start. As more apps get updated for them we
will really see their potential. Let me know below what you think or what types of tests
you would like to see in future videos……If I can test something but it doesn’t make
it into a video I may post it on twitter so be sure to follow me @jerryschulze. Hit thumbs
up if you liked it, hit subscribe if you want and Ill see you next time.