MacBook Pro 14-inch and 16-inch review (2021): Apple’s mighty Macs

Our 14-inch evaluation mannequin was outfitted with an M1 Professional sporting 16 GPU cores, 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. The 16-inch had the 32 GPU core M1 Max, a 2TB SSD and a whopping 64GB of RAM. (This, by the best way, marks the primary time I’ve reviewed a laptop computer with that a lot RAM.) Each of Apple’s new chips additionally function 10 CPU cores — for comparability, the M1 had eight CPU cores and eight GPU cores.

Simply based mostly on specs, I anticipated to see some wild efficiency enhancements. And the benchmarks did not disappoint: In response to GeekBench 5, each MacBook Professionals blew away each Home windows PC we reviewed this 12 months by a big margin. That features the NUC 11 Excessive powered by Intel’s Core i9-11900KB, a high-end desktop CPU! The one-core efficiency on the M1 Professional and Max was just like the M1, which is unsurprising. However the multi-core figures have been far greater. One other good plus: Each of those computer systems are outfitted with very quick NVMe SSDs, which shall be an enormous assist when working with massive initiatives. 

The GPU-heavy Geekbench 5 Compute rating made it clear that Apple hasn’t utterly surpassed the likes of NVIDIA and AMD, although. The 14-inch MacBook Professional was greater than twice as quick because the Floor Professional 8 (working Intel’s Xe graphics) and the M1-equipped 13-inch MacBook Professional, whereas the larger pocket book was on-par with the Floor Laptop computer Studio outfitted with an NVIDIA 3050 Ti. These aren’t unhealthy scores, but it surely makes it clear that customers who want critical energy for 3D rendering or information crunching could also be higher off with PCs outfitted with devoted GPUs.

I do not suppose these are the individuals Apple is attempting to court docket, although. As a substitute, the 14 and 16-inch MacBook Professionals look like an try to get again within the good graces of audio and video producers. Apple’s new chips will definitely be greater than sufficient for coping with media. Each computer systems managed to transform a 4K video clip to 1080p in 34 seconds with Apple’s VideoToolbox {hardware} encoder, which is 4 seconds slower than the NUC 11 Excessive, however 4 seconds quicker than the XPS 15. They have been additionally among the many quickest Cinebench R23 performers we noticed this 12 months — solely the ASUS ROG Strix G15 gaming laptop computer bested them.

And earlier than you ask, no, the M1 Professional and M1 Max do not magically flip these computer systems into gaming rigs. Certain, the whole lot on Apple Arcade runs easily, however that was true of the MacBook Air. Once I tried to load Borderlands 3, one of many few semi-recent video games that truly works on Macs, I simply bought an unplayable mess working under 30fps. Possibly the the assure of respectable GPUs will encourage extra recreation builders to construct for Macs, however extra doubtless they’re going to simply find yourself ensuring their iPhone and iPad video games run easily.

Surprisingly, I didn’t discover an enormous distinction in efficiency after I was working the MacBook Professionals on battery. PCs typically decelerate dramatically at any time when they’re disconnected from a socket, however not so with these notebooks. That’s helpful if it’s good to encode one thing remotely and also you’re prepared to sacrifice battery life to get it finished.

Don’t fear although, the effectivity of the M1 chip’s ARM design results in nice battery efficiency. The 14-inch MacBook Professional lasted 12 hours and 35 minutes in our benchmark, whereas the 16-inch went for 16 hours and 34 minutes. That’s over 5 hours longer than the final Intel mannequin.

It’s clear that Apple listened to most of the complaints from Mac followers (and even perhaps lowly reviewers). However actually, that’s one thing the corporate has been doing extra over time, like when it lastly moved away from these terrible butterfly keyboards to extra tactile Magic Keyboards. By the best way, typing on the 14 and 16-inch MacBook Professional stays wonderful, and the trackpad is a dream to make use of, as all the time.

Apple did not skimp on the audio entrance both. Each MacBook Professionals sport a six-speaker array, made up of two tweeters and 4 force-cancelling woofers. Merely put, they sound miraculous. I usually simply play a couple of songs on pocket book audio system to verify how disappointing they’re. However these laptops gave the impression of I used to be listening to 2 small bookshelf audio system, with clear vocals and punchy bass. Sure, I am as shocked as you might be.

The 16-inch MacBook Professional sounds a bit higher, because it has room for barely greater drivers, however each notebooks are sufficient for a personal jam session. The MacBook Professional’s microphones additionally do a strong job of capturing speech throughout video calls. I would not use them to file skilled music, as Apple instructed you might, however they’re most likely high quality for a fast podcast session on the highway.

Wrap-up

So in case you’re available in the market for one in all these new computer systems, which do you have to get? In case you’re largely utilizing it for common productiveness duties, then I’d lean in the direction of the 14-inch mannequin, which was simply simpler to journey with. It’s a very good choice for coders and individuals who might not want a ton of display actual property. However all the video and audio producers I’ve talked to have been unequivocal: they wished to go huge with the 16-inch mannequin.

The largest draw back of the brand new MacBook Professionals are their excessive costs — however actually, what else do you anticipate from Apple? The 14-inch model, specifically, will most likely provide the vapors in case you’re evaluating it to the 13-inch MacBook Professional. However on the earth of gaming and high-end productiveness notebooks, Apple’s pricing is not that far off. The Razer Blade 14, for instance, is simply 200 {dollars} lower than the MacBook Professional 14-inch. Dell’s XPS 15 OLED is round $500 cheaper than the most cost effective 16-inch MBP, however that is with a CPU that is a lot slower than Apple’s. When you begin speccing that machine up, although, you’ll doubtless pay near $2,500.

On the entire, these computer systems have virtually the whole lot we’d need in a robust pocket book. In case you’re a inventive skilled with a big funds for a brand new laptop, and also you need one thing that’ll genuinely velocity up your workflow, the brand new MacBook Professionals are precisely what you want.