New Apply Macbook Pro With M1 Chip - space Gray -Apply | Full Review | Bionick

                           

  Apple has a problem. 

See these? The new M1 MacBook Pro andMacBook Air are outstanding. Their performance almost lives up to Apple's extraordinary claims, their look and feel isreassuringly Apple-grade, their battery life is,simply put, exemplary, and the transition from x86 to ARM, so far at least, hasgone shockingly smoothly. "Linus," you might say, "those don't really sound like problems." And they're not. For you. You gotta pay attention. 

I said Apple has a problem,'cause it's gonna be really hard to one-up what they've done here. Unless you find a discount onthem or something with Honey. Honey is the free-to-use browser extension that helps you find someof the best promo codes on over 30,000 sites. Get it today at joinhoney.com. (upbeat pop music) When Apple unveiled theirfirst ARM-equipped MacBooks, we were surprised by the 

portselection, to say the least. Just two USB-C's might benothing new for the MacBook Air, but there's no high-endoption available for the Pro, which until now had options for four. Now, this appears to be due to the M1 SoC's limited I/O capabilities, which also explains why you're limited to a single external display unless you turn to display link adapters. That may not be a deal breaker for these classes of machines, but it's worth mentioning regardless.

 What's interesting, though, is that, while we did determinein our Mac mini review that you cannot expand that device using an external graphics card, we followed up our testingwith a 10-gig network card, and found that when we ranthat in our Razer Core X, the Thunderbolt-like externalPCI Express functionality was working just fine. So it's definitely down tojust a GPU compatibility thing. 

The Magic Keyboard styleswitches remain far superior to the fatally flawed butterflyswitches that were found on all but the most recentIntel MacBooks since 2016, and both the Air and the Pro are an absolute delight to type on and offer quick biometric authentication through the Touch IDsensor in the power button. The only difference in thekeyboard is the Touch Bar. Love it or hate it, you're not getting one if you buy an M1 Air, and you are definitely getting one if you pony up the extra $300 for the Pro. 

And that difference in price is a pretty tough pill to swallow when you consider how closethese machines appear on paper other than the Touch Bar. But the keyword is, of course, close. There are some differences. 

Aside from its lack of active cooling, the baseline MacBook Aironly has seven GPU cores, with the upgradedeight-core version like ours costing an extra 50 bucksif you factor in the cost of the bigger SSD that it also includes. 

That kinda makes it a"sure, why not" upgrade if you've got any desire for512 gigs or more storage. But if not, you're just gonnahave to swallow it anyway if you need the extra GPU power that you can otherwiseonly get with the Pro. And this inflexibility in configurations is one of the prices that we pay for the tight integrationof Apple's M1 SoC. Same goes for memory. It starts at eight gigs,and only goes up to 16 gigs for either of thesemachines, presumably because adding more DRAM packagesto the current M1 would increase cost or power consumption by too much for this class of product. They do have a history of worrying about such things, after all. And besides, if the performance we saw in our M1 Mac mini reviewis anything to go by, that trade-off is one thathas paid great dividends. 

But that's on the desktop. What we haven't seen yet for ourselves is how it performs againstcompeting mobile products, like Intel's Tiger Lakeand AMD's Renoir APUs. Dell and HP are gonna berepresenting the PC competition. 

And we also threw a 15-inchHP OMEN gaming laptop in there in case the M1 gets too fast to compare to anythingin its weight class. Spoiler alert, by the way: it does. In Cinebench R23, theonly laptop in this lineup capable of beating either MacBook is a much thicker gaming machine, and even it doesn't win the single-threaded performance crown. Even more impressively,after a 10-minute run, the MacBook Pro's performanceremained rock solid, while the HP OMEN, with its much beefier coolingworking noticeably harder, dropped over 100 points. Unlike its bigger cousin,the MacBook Air did throttle, but it still managed to stay well clear of anything else in its weight class. Handbrake again shows our M1 Macs outperforming their x86 counterparts by nearly double in software encoding. 

Seriously, guys, it's not even close. The 2020 Intel MacBook Airtook three times as long. And as for hardware encoding, again, we see the M1 encoding blocksdoing their job and then some, beating out both Intel and AMD's encoder engines by 50 to 100%, and, this was surprising, evenbeating out NVENC in H265. 

For giggles, we ran GeekBench, since that's what all thecool kids are running, and if it's to be believed,the only CPU with any hope of matching the M1'smulti-threaded performance is a Ryzen 7 eight-core. It is a good thing we putthe OMEN in there. (chuckles) The GPU, meanwhile, soundly destroys both the AMD and Intel competition, although it should be noted that this isn't a useful real world test, unlike the rigorous real-world testing we do on our products at lttstore.com. 

This CPU pillow contains 40% alpaca wool for maximum comfort. And we have a big one. Moving on to non-nativetests using Rosetta, Adobe Creative Cloudpresented a challenge. Not only did After Effects fail to run on either of our Intel Macs, it and Premiere Pro alsofailed to run on our HP Envy due to its mere eight gigs of memory, and we suspect that Photoshop performance probably suffered as well. Still, though, we wereable to at least observe that even running in Rosetta, remember, this is non-native code, the M1 MacBooks both managedto smoke the competition, and the same holds true for Blender, where the M1 MacBook Air manages to triple the speed of its predecessor and run eight to nine minutes faster than its x86 competitors. The only potential responseto M1, at least in class, is in LuxMark, where theXPS 13's Xe graphics core puts up better numbers across the board, while the others languished at about half of theperformance, or even less. On that subject, I mean, wecan't talk about graphics cores without talking about gaming, so of course we ran the Tomb Raiders to see 

what we could get, and found that our MacBooks managed double or better the frame rates recorded by either the AMD orIntel UHD integrated graphics in our competing products. The one exception aside fromthe dedicated gaming laptop is the Xe-equipped XPS 13, which put up an admirablefight, at least by comparison, but still couldn't really close the gap. Thanks to a recent update to another great Macsystem monitor, TG Pro, we can glean a little more information about M1's throttling behavior compared to our Mac mini review. By default, our MacBookPro at full synthetic load breaches 90 degrees and does throttle, with the fan rampingup to about 3,500 RPM, or roughly half-speed.

 Now, that's still very quiet, and there are two important notes here. One: as we've seen, thatthrottling clearly didn't have a measurable impact on performance. And two: these coresensors that we're reading are buried inside the multi-layered SoC. So unlike previous generations, these readings act morelike hotspot sensors, which from our experience can report 10 to 15 degrees higherthan the rest of the chip. 

So with that in mind, then, we don't foresee any seriousreliability problems. But manually setting thefan to maximum using TG Pro can improve core thermals tobetween 80 and 85 degrees, which should keep max performance locked and provide peace of mind to enthusiasts who just like low temperatures,even if it's at the expense of having a laptop fan thatthey can actually hear. It's really refreshing to see Apple take a more conservative approach to thermals, maybe because now it's their own silicon that they're messing with. The MacBook Air takes a different approachaltogether, though, again allowing the cores to reach as high as the mid-90 degrees or so, but then after it reachesan average temperature of roughly 70 degrees, it throttles to maintainthat, at least for a while. Then, it dials everything back and targets a CPUtemperature of 60 degrees. 

This is why the Air getssuch great burst performance, while also maintainingcomfortable surface temperature. Of course, it comes at thecost of sustained performance. Now, since we can't justramp up the fans on the Air to see if that changes things, maybe we'll need to take another crack at fixing Apple's thermal design. Get subscribed, by the way,so you don't miss that one. The webcam on both newMacBooks is, shockingly, the same old 720p affair thatthey've been using since 2011. But, in fairness, at leastit's got a new trick. Now that MacBooks run the same hardware as Apple's mobile devices, but on 'roids, they can use the sameimage processing tricks that were previouslyiPhone or iPad exclusive. So in practice, the imageis still pretty soft. I mean, 720p is 720p. But it's significantly less noisy, with dramatically morenatural-looking lighting. No more blue computer face. 

The experience using iOS apps is also significantlybetter on the MacBooks compared to the Mac mini, particularly where gestures are needed. Though it's still not perfect. You might intuitively think that you'll start touching and swiping from where the cursor isvisually located on the screen. Instead, though, the Touch Pad surface is mapped to the window area. Now, this isn't necessarilythe wrong approach, but it'll definitely rubsome people the wrong way. Having an actual touchscreen would really make theexperience come together in a way that makes sense. 

Unless, of course, more apps come through with updates for mouse compatibility. Really, though? Please, Apple. Add atouchscreen to the MacBook. Just make my dreams come true. Speaking of dreams, in order to test Apple's pie-in-the-skybattery life claims, we set each of our 13-inch laptops to roughly match theDell XPS 13's brightness at two steps up from minimum, turned on the optimizedvideo streaming feature in Energy Preferences on our Macs, fired up a 100-hour timer on YouTube, and set them all off atonce using some coordination and a handy-dandy powerdelivery unit to cut the power. The Intel MacBook Pro was the first to go, keeling over at just overa respectable 11 hours, followed by the Dell XPS 13just after the 12-hour mark. 

Then fell the Intel MacBook Air, and the HP Envy x360 not long after. Surprisingly, the M1-equippedMacBook Air in second place only lasted a little longer than those, at just under 13 hours. Still great, but well shy ofthe promised 15 to 18 hours. As for the M1 MacBook Pro,it just kind of kept going. And going. And going! Until finally it broke the 20-hour mark, and decided that wasenough flex for one day. Almost literally one day. I mean, we ran this test over a weekend because we knew thatthis result was possible, but we didn't really think it would manage it in the real world. Like, guys, this cannot be overstated. 

We are looking at iPad-like endurance on a laptop running a full-fatdesktop operating system. You could, in theory, use this thing for days at a time without juicing up depending on what you do with it. That's what ended up throwing a wrench into my original premise for this video, because up until now, the M1 MacBook Pro had verylittle to show for itself over the MacBook Air for most people. But suddenly, thedifference is so much bigger than just, well, do you want a Touch Barand a brighter screen? The M1 MacBook Pro, despitebeing heavier and a bit thicker, might end up being the bettercommuter laptop for many through sheer force ofits endurance alone. But if you're worried about longevity, it may ironically bethe lesser of the two. The fact that the MacBook Air doesn't have any fan whatsoever means that there's no dust being sucked in and no air intake to clog. 

This means that, barringthermal compound degradation, the thermal profile of this device is going to remain pretty much identical throughout its entire life. The one internal movingpart on any modern laptop that is most likely to fail not only isn't necessaryto spin up in here, it doesn't even exist to fail. There aren't even any heatpipes or vapor chambers, just a plain Jane flat heatplate for thermal mass. 

(bomb detonates) In spite of these accomplishments, it ironically feels,though, like these Macs are more transitional than revolutionary. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. The transition from PowerPCto Intel was a lot worse. I mean, compared to theiBook that came before it, the first Intel MacBook brought a new chassis design with a new keyboard, an integrated eyesight webcam, and it introduced the MagSafe connector, just to name a few of the highlights.

 But it suffered fromfirst-generation syndrome big time, thanks to the very first revision using a 32-bit Core Duo CPU. That was one of only asingle generation of Macs to ever use 32-bit x86. By contrast, these M1 MacBooks don't seem to have a problemwith their internals at all, but I expect that Applewill soon introduce new chassis designs with14-inch displays that, like the 16-inch MacBookPro, will reduce bezel sizes without significantly alteringthe footprint that we praised in our review of thefinal Intel MacBook Air. I'd also hope to see that 1080p FaceTime HDcamera from the iMac make an appearance at the same time. 

For now, the M1-equipped MacBooks have more to differentiate them than I had originally suspected. This level of battery life in a machine as compactas the MacBook Pro 13 is absolutely a game changer, and that's not evenconsidering its performance. Meanwhile, the MacBook Air has performance that rivals the Pro, justwithout the endurance, both in terms of batterylife and thermal design, especially when youfactor in the lower price. 

So you're really not sacrificing much by choosing one over the other, and it boils down to your use case. At $999, the MacBook Airis a bit more expensive than the HP Envy x360, but for those who arewilling to pay the Apple tax, well, you're only sorta paying one, 'cause you're gettinga much faster computer with a higher resolution screen, a more spacious palm rest,and a better trackpad. Plus, arguably superiorexpansion thanks to USB4, although the HP does havean internal M. 2 slot, so you can kinda pick your poison there. I could see many people, then, choosing the MacBook Airfor a daily driver laptop for school or for everyday carry, although if you do, Iwould caution against ordering one with eight gigs of memory if you wanna use it longerthan a couple of years. Remember, you cannot upgrade it. 

The MacBook Pro at $1,299 at first seems to compare less favorably compared to the Dell XPS 132-in-1 that goes for $200 less. But you gotta remember, that's for the basemodel XPS with a core i3. The core i7 option runs$100 more than the MacBook, and that's on promo. 

And while Intel's Xe graphics are in the ballpark ofwhat Apple's delivering, the Tiger Lake core i7simply cannot compete against the M1 in any meaningful way. I mean, nevermind the core i3. Now, the XPS 13 does enjoy convertible form factor and a touchscreen, but its expansion isno better than Apple's, unless you count the microSD reader. And, like the Air versus the Envy, Apple's display is higher resolution. And as we've seen, thatfact, for a change, doesn't negatively impact battery life. It's nearly eight hourslonger in this case. 

I mean, some laptops in this class don't even last for eight hours, let alone eight hourslonger than the competition. I guess what I'm saying is, even if you were to go out of your way to point out the flaws, it's hard not to recommendeither of the M1 MacBooks. 

They really are just that good. Just like my segues. FreshBooks is a small businesscloud accounting solution that is built for owners. With FreshBooks, youcan work from anywhere, thanks to their mobile app that allows you to create professional-looking invoices in seconds when you're on the go, snap pictures of your receiptsso you don't lose them, and, this is new, you canautomatically track your mileage on the iOS app as you drive, so you can be more organized and ready to maximize yourdeductions at tax time. 

With FreshBooks, you'llnever miss an update, you can see when a clienthas viewed their invoice or when an invoice has become overdue, and you can get 50% off your first three months of FreshBooks when you sign up for a paidplan at freshbooks.com/techtips. 

We're gonna have that linked below. So thanks for watching, guys. If you enjoyed this video, go check out our review of the M1 Mac mini for a look at how M1behaves on the desktop. It really is a different enough experience that it's worth watching two videos, which is why we made two different videos. 

Download Now