Yes, the M1 MacBook Pro Really is THAT Good

diciembre 30, 2020

Yes, the M1 MacBook Pro Really is THAT Good

Right before Christmas, PetaPixel published its review of the M1 Macbook Pro, heaping praise upon the new computer, saying it was “much further ahead than anybody expected.” That review isn’t alone: in this 17.5-minute video, Linus Tech Tips finds even better performance.

Linus ran multiple tests and showed the M1 Macbook Air and Pro performing extremely well, but made sure to include Geekbench as well since “that’s what all the cool kids are running.” The result? Extremely impressive.

“The only CPU with any hope of matching the M1’s multi-threaded performance is a Ryzen 7, 8-core,” he says.

Specifically for creatives, the M1 Macbooks performed insanely well against the competition in the Adobe Creative Cloud. Below are benchmarks in Photoshop from Linus:

Compared to the Photoshop benchmarks published in the PetaPixel review:

Bear in mind, PetaPixel tested the M1 Macbook Pro against an Intel MacBook Pro that cost $700 more and had 2x the RAM. Additionally, PetaPixel uses an older version of PugetBench that includes a photo merge test, which may explain the differences between Linus’s results and the ones in its review.

“Even running in Rosetta – this is non-native code – the M1 Macbooks both managed to smoke the competition,” Linus reports. “The only potential response to M1, at least in class, is in LuxMark, where the XPS 13’s XE Graphics core puts up better numbers across the board, where the others languished at about half the performance or even less.”

Below are two more benchmark tests:

Basically, in Linus’s tests, the only computer that consistently outperformed the M1 Macbooks was a much thicker, beefier, dedicated gaming laptop.

Battery life performance was also wildly impressive: it broke 20 hours of continuous use, eight hours more than the next closest competitor. Those eight additional hours are longer than some laptops last in total.

“We didn’t think it would manage it in the real world,” Linus says “And this cannot be overstated: we’re looking at iPad-like endurance on a laptop running a full desktop operating system. You could in theory use this thing for days at a time without juicing it up depending on what you do with it.”

Anyone doubting the performance or battery numbers of the Macbook Pro published here should be thrilled by this confirmation of performance. Linus managed to get over 20 hours of battery life using optimized settings (PetaPixel did not use optimized settings on purpose while reviewing the Macbook Pro and still clocked nearly 16 hours of battery life) and their performance benchmarks are even more impressive than what was published in PetaPixel’s review.

It has been easy to ride Apple for years for over-promising and under-delivering, so skepticism of performance in reviews is to be expected. But with repeated reviews stating how incredibly the M1 Macbook Pro performs, it might be time to just accept the reality: it really is that good.