Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Best Laptop of 2020 – Apple M1 MacBook Air vs M1 MacBook Pro”.
Hey, what’s up folks how’s it going! This watch hope you guys are all doing well. I hope you guys had a great christmas and holiday season. Now apple launched their own soc, the m1 processor almost a month ago. They put it in their new macbook pros airs. As well as the mac minis, we’ve been testing out all three products for the past month or so specifically in this article, we’re going to be comparing the 13-inch version of the macbook pro and air powered by the m1 processor. Both of these laptops are the base model, poor man’s configuration, which starts around a thousand dollars for the air at about 12.99.
For the pro. The main thing that we want to address in this article is determine which macbook is the best in terms of overall value and performance. We’Re going to be taking a look at the overall specifications, capabilities and performance results of these two computers to determine that.
But on paper things look very similar on both pcs. They both have an eight core cpu, with the slight exception is on the gpu side on the air. We have one core deactivated, so effectively have seven core gpu versus eight core gpu. On the pro now, we’re going to be taking a look at the actual graphical differences between the two, as well as the video editing capabilities, specifically with the new adobe premiere pro beta version. That allows you to utilize the hardware encoding and render capabilities of the new m1 chip. Now, just to give you guys an idea in terms of what the key differences and similarities are between the two.
Let’S first talk about the common features internally they’re using the exact same architecture on the m1 processor. Besides the slight uh change in the gpu configuration, the cpu is identical. We have four high efficiency cores for performance cores maximum core clock. Speed is the same 3.2 gigahertz and we have 12 megabytes of level 2 cache on the performance, cores and 4 megabytes on the efficiency cores. It’S also important note that the system in package incorporates dram, so whatever ram configuration you go with you’re, pretty much stuck with that for life. You can never really upgrade it, so it’s either 8 gigabytes or 16 gigabytes on the upgraded models. Now the properties of the displays of the notebooks are pretty much identical as well same exact resolution of 2560 by 1600 same pixel density count since they’re, both the exact same size. Now the bezels are slightly thicker on the macbook air, as you can see, but not by a huge difference, and there is a slight difference in terms of brightness, the pro being a little bit brighter rated up to 500 versus 400 nits on the air respectively. The color rendition dynamic range are pretty much identical on both computers as well. Both have wide color p3 rating, as well as true tone technology from apple. So, in terms of the overall viewing experience, there’s not really a major advantage or difference coming from one pc to the next. Furthermore, both are using the new generation magic keyboard that was recently replaced from the old butterfly low profile switches. Definitely a better typing experience compared to previous generation of macbooks and both have the same size, force touch, track pad which feels super responsive and has tons of real estate and is probably one of the best track pads on a notebook today. The only real difference is on the macbook pro we have the touch bar attachment at the top of the keyboard, which some users find useful.
Others can kind of live without i’m kind of in the latter group. Furthermore, regarding connectivity, both of these m1 powered macbooks are very similar. Both have a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack on the right hand, side and, on the left hand side. You have two thunderbolt connections that will allow for usb 4 interface, potentially giving up to 40 gigabits.
A second in terms of data, throughput capabilities, and obviously these days, it’s pretty easy to convert a thunderbolt into any other connection. You want, including a full-size hdmi connection, usb type, a c or card readers for your sd card, given the right adapter. Now it’s important to note that the current version of the m1 processor seems to be limited to uh two thunderbolt connections versus.
If you get the intel version of the macbook pro, you can actually get four thunderbolt connections. So that might be an important thing to note. If you’re going to use the macbook pro as a desktop replacement, and you need a lot of connectivity options now, another minor difference between the air and the pro is regarding the speaker, configuration as well as the microphone at pickup on the webcam itself. Now, regarding the speakers, the pro definitely sounds louder has a better overall base response and the overall auto fidelity is definitely at a higher quality level uh.
Furthermore, in terms of the microphone pickup, it has a higher signal to noise ratio on the pro compared to the air. We’Re listening to the pro right now, but we’ll switch over to the macbook air right now and, as you can see, the air still sounds fairly good. It just doesn’t have the full dynamic range and uh. If you are going to be in noisy ambient environment, it should do a better job in terms of voice pickup and things like that. But the video quality on the air and the pro when they have the m1 chip on board is pretty much identical.
720P, video at 30 frames per second now. Interestingly, this is actually a video sample of the early 2020 macbook air that doesn’t have the neural engine with the m1 chip. It’S just using an intel based processor and you can see uh the webcam, even though it’s 720p 30 frames per second doesn’t look as good in this particular lighting condition. There’S more noise and the overall dynamic range is not as optimized as we find on the m1 processor.
So certainly from a video conference perspective, the new chips have an advantage there, as well now from a design perspective. Both of these haven’t really changed from the last couple of generations and ironically, the macbook pro is actually slightly thinner at around 15.6 millimeters and it has the same overall thickness throughout its unibody construction versus on the air. It’S tapered. So, at its thinnest point it’s about four millimeters and 16 millimeters at its thickest point. The air is slightly lighter than the pro at 1.29 kilograms versus 1.4 kilograms, and both computers have the same exact overall footprint at about 30 centimeters by 21 centimeters now moving forward. Let’S take a look at our benchmark results and the overall performance capabilities of the m1 chip.
Now we’re going to be comparing obviously the pro version of the m1 versus the air, which is pretty much identical on the cpu side, but we’re also going to be factor in my results of the previous generation, a macbook air that had the 10th generation i3 processor. Just to give you guys a little comparison between the intel previous generation and what the m1 is capable of now. Firstly, let’s take a look at the geekbench results on the pro and air.
The m1 processor is pretty much the same overall results on the cpu side. We’Re getting around 1700 points on the single core performance at about 7 600 points on the multi-core performance and comparing these results to the early 2020 version of the macbook air that had the 10th generation i3 processor that got a score about 1077 and 23.95 on the Single core and multi-core scores respectively. It’S almost like a three and a half times performance bump, going from the intel to the m1, which is super impressive to see now on the cinebench r23, a benchmark.
The single core performance on the m1 is around 1 500 and the multi-core performance is around 7 700 points versus on the 10th generation intel i3 processor. We were getting around 900 points on the single core side and about 1900 points on the multi-core aside. So again, the m1 processor is outperforming the intel chips by three to four times the amount which is super impressive. To see, and at this point the performance that you’re getting out of the m1 is more similar to a high-end, workstation or gaming pc, rather than a mobile laptop now moving forward. I did notice a slight bump up in terms of the ssd performance on the pci express storage on the macbook pro compared to the air. On the blackmagic speed test, i was getting around 200 more megabytes, a second in terms of read and write performance comparatively to the air.
Both ssds are still incredibly fast, getting over 2.5 gigabytes, a second in terms of read, sequential speeds and about twice as fast as the previous generation macbook air. Now, in terms of the graphical performance, differences between the air and the pro, as we mentioned before, the baseline version of the air comes with a 7 core gp versus an 8 core gpu on the pro now, based on our experience, the performance loss with that one Core missing on the air is around four to five percent. If you take a look at our eu valley benchmark at around 1440 by 900 resolution with high details, settings we’re getting around 72.5 average frames per second on the pro versus the air scored around 69.9 average frames per.
Second. Both are super impressive, especially compared to the previous generation intel iris graphics, on the 10th generation i3 processor, which, in the same exact scenario and settings, got our average frame rate about 20.3. Now, as we’ve demonstrated thus far, there’s some massive advantages of having a custom-made processor.
Specifically designed for your hardware and software and that’s what apple does really well is full integration. But one of the problems of using an arm base processor is that some apps that were coded around an x86 intel based platform simply won’t run or will have to be converted using a translation system like rosetta 2 that essentially convert intel x86 base applications to run On the m1 chip, however, the transition period to getting more and more native apps support for the m1 has been kind of lightning fast, mainly due to the fact that apple is so influential and developers are quick to respond to make sure that the users don’t run Into compatibility issues when they upgrade at their max and that’s exactly what adobe has recently done with their new beta version of adobe premiere pro, which i use on pretty much a daily basis and the regular version of a premiere pro does work. But it works through rosetta 2 and the performance is certainly not optimized you’re not going to get the hardware encoding capabilities that you will get when using final cut x and imovie, and things like that.
So now, with the beta version of premiere pro, we can utilize hardware encoding for h.264. He vc and prores codex and dramatically decrease the render output times, as well as the editing capabilities for 4k video projects. Now we have a six minute 4k project over here.
It has a decent amount of color correction, inbound uh. We have some audio effects as well and the total time it took to export this into a youtube. H.264.
4K 30fps file was only four minutes and 53 seconds on the eight core gpu version of the macbook pro versus on the seven core air. It took about five minutes 15 seconds, so not a huge difference there, but check this out. The old version of the macbook air, with the i3 10th generation processor, it took about 20 minutes and 21 seconds.
So that’s an eternity compared to what the m1 processors are doing, uh using in the new beta version of premiere pro now. Last but not least, one of the big uh advantages of an arm base processor, specifically designed for the hardware and software, is going to be power, efficiency and the m1s are certainly no exception. There apple claims that, on the pro version, macbook, you can get video playback times up to 20 hours and about 18 hours on the new generation airs now, based on our own independent video playback test, where we use the vlc app to play a video on a Loop in airplane mode 50 brightness, we got our total run time on the pro about 15 hours and 32 minutes.
That’S the longest run time of any notebook that we’ve ever tested to date and the macbook air, which does have a smaller battery of 49 watt hours versus 58 watt hours on the pro got a total run time about 13 hours, 48 minutes and that’s a significant Increase from the eight hours four minutes on the intel base, macbook airs that came out early 2020., now pretty much every scenario that we’ve seen the m1 processor seems extremely remarkable, very fast, very power efficient and in pretty much every regard is a fantastic upgrade if you’re Coming from a previous generation macbook or need an awesome, a laptop that’ll work great with almost anything you’ll do there are some limitations, as we’ve talked about in terms of application, support and optimization, but that will probably get addressed as we go later into 2021.. Of course, coming back to the main question at hand, in terms of which m1 macbook is best air or pro, you do have to consider that for about 50 dollars less than the base model version of the macbook pro, you can actually get the macbook air with The 8 core gpu, as well as 512 gigabytes of ssd storage, which is double of what the pro has so the air is probably the best bang for the dollar, certainly gives you uh more options for cheaper money, but for about 300 dollars less under a thousand Dollars, i don’t think you can get a faster and more capable pc than the macbook air right now. The seven core uh gpu is, as we mentioned before, 95 the exact same performance as the pro, and you still have an exceptional amount of battery performance and power.
Efficiency better than 98 of most laptops out there sure the pro does have two more hours of battery life based on our experience and if you really uh need to have a laptop that you never really need to plug in most of the time. It’S definitely a great option, but, generally speaking, i think for the bang for the dollar, the air is probably the winner for most people definitely love to know what you guys. I think in the comment section down below. Please check out the description for more details about everything we’ve talked about thus far, and definitely let me know what you guys think of the new m1 processor we’re going to be taking a look at the new mac mini with the m1 chip in a little bit Check out the description, if that video isn’t out already and make sure you have post notifications turned on. Thank you so much for your support. Thanks for watching and we’ll see you real soon in the next one, take care. .