New apple M1 chips - who's buying?

[Magnum 475]

I'm sitting here with a pair of 16" M1 Pro Macbooks.

I do 4k video editing. I manipulate 36MegaPixel raw files. I can't get the fans on, and the performance is still miles ahead of anything else. The M3 must be quite spectacular for performance, but I'd struggle to justify the purchase while the M1 series is still so capable.

For contrast I've also got a client-issued HP "Elitebook" running Windows 10, with an i5 / 16Gb that struggles to create a powerpoint slide without turning the fans on - although it does have some extraordinary endpoint security on it, including Tanium... But the MacBooks are also end-point security heavy and don't have anywhere near the level of CPU loading.

[Blown2CV]

2020 model intel chip mac air here. Will probs replace next year like for like (ish). I am assuming M3 might make it into the air in 2024...

[bitchstewie]

Have M chip MBPs always started with 8GB of RAM?

Quite surprised the "entry" level M3 has "only" 8GB for £1700.

[jfdi]

bhstewie said:

Have M chip MBPs always started with 8GB of RAM?

Quite surprised the "entry" level M3 has "only" 8GB for £1700.

Nope.
They've made a big thing of the reduced the price of entry level MBP with the M3.

What they don't mention is to achieve this they've dropped the memory from 16gb to 8gb and your MacBook Pro is quite so Pro.
The entry level no longer has the M2 Pro chip with 10 CPU cores & 16 GPU core. Instead it has the M3 (non pro) chip with 8 CPU & 10 GPU cores.

To get a Pro chip and 16gb RAM in your M3 MBP the price is the same as the M2 MBP was.

[Lee Jones Jnr]

I have a 14” M1 MacBook Pro.
The outgoing machine was still more than capable of doing anything I needed, I just wanted the new shape.
The vast majority of people won’t tax any machine on the market today, progress is there for headlines and sales rather than necessity.
With regards ‘only 8GB ram’, doesn’t the Apple architecture use RAM differently?

[bitchstewie]

Lee Jones Jnr said:

With regards ‘only 8GB ram’, doesn’t the Apple architecture use RAM differently?

Yes but I was still under the impression that at some point or other it's still physics and more is better.

I'm not saying it's a "bad" thing the entry level Pro has 8GB just that I'm slightly surprised even if I may be wrong to be

[SteveKTMer]

bhstewie said:

Lee Jones Jnr said:

With regards ‘only 8GB ram’, doesn’t the Apple architecture use RAM differently?

Yes but I was still under the impression that at some point or other it's still physics and more is better.

I'm not saying it's a "bad" thing the entry level Pro has 8GB just that I'm slightly surprised even if I may be wrong to be

Probably trying to attract business users who just use office apps and a browser. 8GB will be sufficient for most users and with an M3, it'll still be very fast. We've got a couple of the MacBook Airs with M2 and 8GB memory, 512GB storage and they are very fast for basic office stuff, battery still lasts all day and people love them.

[random_username]

I'm going to be in the market for a new laptop soon - my current laptop is a macbook pro from 2015 which is still working, but starting to get a bit slow. Main use it web / mail / office. Not really any gaming or hardcore computational tasks.

Looking at either:

13" M2 Air (8 Core M2, 16Gb RAM, 512SSD) which comes in at £1549
14" M3 Pro (8 Core M3, 16Gb RAM, 512SSD) which is £1899

The Pro is a newer generation CPU than the Air, and has a slightly better screen, but other than that they are pretty similar and both are going to be blazing fast compared to my current pro. Is the Pro worth the £350 investment over the air considering it is going to be kept for a fair few years, or for the money would I be better off with the air and maybe upgrade the ram/storage to future proof?

[bitchstewie]

My guess is you'd be absolutely fine on a £800 M1 Air

It's what I'm using for the same as you say and it eats it up.

[ch37]

random_username said:

I'm going to be in the market for a new laptop soon - my current laptop is a macbook pro from 2015 which is still working, but starting to get a bit slow. Main use it web / mail / office. Not really any gaming or hardcore computational tasks.

Looking at either:

13" M2 Air (8 Core M2, 16Gb RAM, 512SSD) which comes in at £1549
14" M3 Pro (8 Core M3, 16Gb RAM, 512SSD) which is £1899

Either would be like buying a Koenigsegg and never taking it over 30mph for the use cases you've outlined. M2 Air more than enough, although in reality if I was buying one for our home (similar usage requirements) I'd get an M1 Air.

[mikef]

random_username said:

I'm going to be in the market for a new laptop soon - my current laptop is a macbook pro from 2015 which is still working, but starting to get a bit slow. Main use it web / mail / office. Not really any gaming or hardcore computational tasks.

Looking at either:

13" M2 Air (8 Core M2, 16Gb RAM, 512SSD) which comes in at £1549
14" M3 Pro (8 Core M3, 16Gb RAM, 512SSD) which is £1899

I had the Macbook Pro 14" M2 for work. The advantages over my M2 Air were an HDMI port and SDXC card slot, and the ability to drive two external monitors, whereas my M2 Air can only support one natively (yes, there are some horrible workarounds....). If none of those matter to you, the Air is a great laptop

Edited to add that there is very little in it, in terms of form factor

Edited by mikef on Thursday 2nd November 13:17

[Mont Blanc]

random_username said:

I'm going to be in the market for a new laptop soon - my current laptop is a macbook pro from 2015 which is still working, but starting to get a bit slow. Main use it web / mail / office. Not really any gaming or hardcore computational tasks.

Looking at either:

13" M2 Air (8 Core M2, 16Gb RAM, 512SSD) which comes in at £1549
14" M3 Pro (8 Core M3, 16Gb RAM, 512SSD) which is £1899

The Pro is a newer generation CPU than the Air, and has a slightly better screen, but other than that they are pretty similar and both are going to be blazing fast compared to my current pro. Is the Pro worth the £350 investment over the air considering it is going to be kept for a fair few years, or for the money would I be better off with the air and maybe upgrade the ram/storage to future proof?

I'm going to agree with the others above, and say that for your requirements, you would be mental if you didn't just buy the 8GB M1 Air for £800ish (Amazon) and therefore save hundreds. Anything else is overkill IMO.

As myself and others have posted in the thread, you can use an 8gb M1 Air for fairly intensive batch photo editing, video editing, and other stuff like that, and it tears though it, all whilst giving you a daft battery life of 14-18 hours in the real world. The stuff you want to use it for wouldn't even touch the sides so to speak.

You don't really even need to upgrade the storage. Base model is 256gb and that is way more than enough to store your OSX/apps/software etc. Best practice is not to store any of your documents, files, or photos on your laptop anyway. Cloud storage is convenient and much safer.

Edited by Mont Blanc on Thursday 2nd November 13:12

[mikef]

Mont Blanc said:

You don't really even need to upgrade the storage. Base model is 256gb and that is way more than enough to store your OSX/apps/software etc

The 256GB SSD supplied with the M2 is horribly slow (half the speed of the M1). I’d recommend getting 512GB or larger. If you need more working space, Thunderbolt 4 external NVMe storage can run at upwards of 3Gb/s

[ch37]

I have a little Crucial X8 2TB portable drive which I use (currently £90 on Amazon), I edit photo and video directly off of that, as an average shoot would fill a decent chunk of the internal hard drive. I wouldn't know I was working off of an external device, so fast.

[bitchstewie]

mikef said:

The 256GB SSD supplied with the M2 is horribly slow (half the speed of the M1). I’d recommend getting 512GB or larger. If you need more working space, Thunderbolt 4 external NVMe storage can run at upwards of 3Gb/s

Isn't "horribly slow" still relative here though? As in still damned quick compared to an 8 year old MBP.

I've never even thought to benchmark my M1 Air but I just did and it's this.

[mikef]

The M1 models were fine - it was the M2 256GB SSD where cost-cutting impacted performance

[Mont Blanc]

mikef said:

The M1 models were fine - it was the M2 256GB SSD where cost-cutting impacted performance

I agree.

I was just suggesting that the 256gb drive was fine in the M1 which is what I was recommending to the poster random_username.

[Durzel]

mikef said:

random_username said:

I'm going to be in the market for a new laptop soon - my current laptop is a macbook pro from 2015 which is still working, but starting to get a bit slow. Main use it web / mail / office. Not really any gaming or hardcore computational tasks.

Looking at either:

13" M2 Air (8 Core M2, 16Gb RAM, 512SSD) which comes in at £1549
14" M3 Pro (8 Core M3, 16Gb RAM, 512SSD) which is £1899

I had the Macbook Pro 14" M2 for work. The advantages over my M2 Air were an HDMI port and SDXC card slot, and the ability to drive two external monitors, whereas my M2 Air can only support one natively (yes, there are some horrible workarounds....). If none of those matter to you, the Air is a great laptop

Edited to add that there is very little in it, in terms of form factor

Edited by mikef on Thursday 2nd November 13:17

This is another reason the Touch Bar never really made a lot of sense. My MBP is closed most of the time I'm using it, plugged via a USB-C cable into a large monitor.

[random_username]

Thanks for the comments - I understand than an M1 air would be enough, but who doesn't like new and shiny?

I'll have a proper hunt around for the older models as well

[bitchstewie]

random_username said:

Thanks for the comments - I understand than an M1 air would be enough, but who doesn't like new and shiny?

I'll have a proper hunt around for the older models as well

I actually get this.

Trust me I really want an M3 Pro or an M2 Air.

My use case is the same as yours so if you just want a shiny toy absolutely do it.

But don't even try to justify it based on the actual requirement