Anyone starting to think that the MBP 14" with M1 Max might be a bad idea?

[Fomalhaut]

FYI, there is a new MaxTech video comparing 16" Pro vs Max:

The gains of the M1 Max seem to be "diminishing returns" in many of these tests that are not proportional to the doubling of the GPU cores, memory bandwidth and video hardware codecs.

At a professional level, I can see that these gains are significant, but for my amateur usage, I think it's not necessary, and the trade-off in heat/fan/battery are probably not worth it for me.

I would like to see the same tests with the 14", but the 16" comparison provides a good baseline.

 

[Technerd108]

I think it is amazing that Apple was able to get the M1 Pro and Max in the 14" and cooling and performance is very close to the 16". I think they did exactly what people wanted. I originally preordered a M1 Pro 14" MacBook Pro with 10core cpu and 16 core gpu and 16 gb ram and 512gb ssd. Performance and battery life are good but it depends a lot on load. It did get warm a couple of times but I never heard the fans no matter what I did. I don't know if Apples specs are correct but they are close in terms of battery life. The difference between the 13" and 14" in terms of screen is really nice on the 14". I can give you benchmark from Geekbench 5 for the M1 pro cpu decacore and gpu. 1748 single core and 12598 multi core score and around 38,000 for compute score for the 16 core gpu. This should help give you an idea of what the machine can do. The only difference between the M1 max and M1 Pro in decacore config is gpu and memory. So if we double the compute score we get around 80,000 points in OpenCL which would give an idea of the M1 Max gpu performance. Now because you can get up to 64 gb unified ram the gpu and cpu scores might be a little higher but not a huge difference.

I returned my 14" and got the 16" and I can give you a few differences that made me keep the 16". The 16" is slighter faster in Geekbench 5. The screen is a lot bigger and for me I really like the bigger screen. Also the notch looks smaller on the 16". The other difference was charging speed was a lot faster on the 16" and the battery lasts a decent amount longer. The 14" is good but 16" is way better in battery life. The sound in the 16" is way better than the 14" which is very good. When I put all those together the 16" for me was a lot, lot better for $200 more which considering the cost of these I would rather be really happy with my purchase.

I really think a lot of people who complain about these MacBooks would never be happy. I have heard for years "Pro" users saying they hated Apples obsession with thin and light. Now they get everything they have been asking for- more power, more ports, better battery, promotion screen, MagSafe, mini led, and on and on.

Honestly these are some of the best Laptops Apple has ever made and IMHO the best laptop you can buy right now if you are not a gamer! Everything is amazing. The mini led is really close to OLED but a warning I did see blooming on the 14" but not the 16".

Unfortunately to make such a touch and well made device it is heavy. However I found the 14"MBP to feel lighter than the 13"MBP and I don't know why.

I have an idea? Go to the Apple store and look and try the devices they have and maybe you will get more clarity!!

Good Luck!

 

[Thysanoptera]

I’ve been waiting for powerfull 14 inch laptop for so long. What’s currently on the market is so-so. Starting with Gigabyte u2442 back in the days, which was the first to dump dGPU into small chassis, all the way to current G14 (no TB, issues with USB-C devices, self destruct mode when dual charging), Blade 14 (16GB and 2TB ssd max due to low profile m.2), Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (surprisingly good machine even with slow CPU).

MBP 14 is just perfect. Y’all got used to M1 so quickly you forgot Intel times already? Get out of here. This is really an ultra book that matches top of the line 16’’ MacBook in performance.

OMG, it has lower battery life and runs hotter. I mean, what exactly would you expect? You know, some people buy notebooks because they travel a lot rather than to accessorize their desks. My 14’’ comes with 32 core Max, 8TB and 64GB. Feel free to kiss my hairy butt if you think it’s a bad choice and feel the urge to change my opinion.

 

[Fomalhaut]

I’ve been waiting for powerfull 14 inch laptop for so long. What’s currently on the market is so-so. Starting with Gigabyte u2442 back in the days, which was the first to dump dGPU into small chassis, all the way to current G14 (no TB, issues with USB-C devices, self destruct mode when dual charging), Blade 14 (16GB and 2TB ssd max due to low profile m.2), Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (surprisingly good machine even with slow CPU).

MBP 14 is just perfect. Y’all got used to M1 so quickly you forgot Intel times already? Get out of here. This is really an ultra book that matches top of the line 16’’ MacBook in performance.

OMG, it has lower battery life and runs hotter. I mean, what exactly would you expect? You know, some people buy notebooks because they travel a lot rather than to accessorize their desks. My 14’’ comes with 32 core Max, 8TB and 64GB. Feel free to kiss my hairy butt if you think it’s a bad choice and feel the urge to change my opinion.

I did expect the M1 Max to consume more power and have lower battery life when under significant load. It has more GPU cores, and they obviously consume power when used. My concern is more that even light use (that shouldn't work the GPU cores) seems to result in significantly lower battery life than the M1 Pro. We'll need to see at least a couple of real world tests on the 14" Pro vs Max to confirm this, but anecdotal reports indicate that this is the case.

My hope for the M1 Max was to have the power "in reserve" for when needed, but for it not to otherwise sip power the same way as the M1 Pro. This doesn't appear to be the case, and if >8 hours "real-world" mobile productivity usage (web, office apps, streaming video / conferences) is required, then the M1 Pro seems to be a better option, at the expense of reduced processing power when plugged in.

Not sure what you mean with your comment about travelling use vs "desk adornment" means - my point is exactly that people buy "notebooks because they travel a lot" - and because of this, battery life is one of the key metrics for laptops that are designed to be used unplugged.

Anyhow, let's wait to see what kind of use real-users are getting before leaping to a conclusion...

 

[Technerd108]

I did expect the M1 Max to consume more power and have lower battery life when under significant load. It has more GPU cores, and they obviously consume power when used. My concern is more that even light use (that shouldn't work the GPU cores) seems to result in significantly lower battery life than the M1 Pro. We'll need to see at least a couple of real world tests on the 14" Pro vs Max to confirm this, but anecdotal reports indicate that this is the case.

My hope for the M1 Max was to have the power "in reserve" for when needed, but for it not to otherwise sip power the same way as the M1 Pro. This doesn't appear to be the case, and if >8 hours "real-world" mobile productivity usage (web, office apps, streaming video / conferences) is required, then the M1 Pro seems to be a better option, at the expense of reduced processing power when plugged in.

Not sure what you mean with your comment about travelling use vs "desk adornment" means - my point is exactly that people buy "notebooks because they travel a lot" - and because of this, battery life is one of the key metrics for laptops that are designed to be used unplugged.

Anyhow, let's wait to see what kind of use real-users are getting before leaping to a conclusion...

Battery life is amazing considering the power. You would at best get a couple hours unplugged with any other mobile device with the power and a 120hz 16.2" UHD screen at 1600nits in the MBP 14"! You can abuse these laptops with heavy loads on battery and they perform the same as plugged in and the battery still goes on. The 16" just goes and again the power is desktop level while sipping battery. The 14" has a 70 watt hour battery on an arm 5nm chip!! The 32 core GPU and 64GB of ram under heavy load would drain battery but I imagine you would still get 6-8 hours under heavy load on battery. Name any other laptop with this power and specs that can get even close to 6-8 hours and I bet it is actually better than that. Also heat is really not an issue compared to Intel devices. Yes it can get warm but it never gets close to hot. I have never even heard the fans even under stress testing? This is a game changing device and this is only the start! I wish I could afford 32 gb ram and the M1 Max but even with the M1 pro and 16gb ram it performs really well.

 

[Thysanoptera]

Not sure what you mean with your comment about travelling

If you scroll through comments, it seems to me that vast majority are using those laptops as desktop replacements. And you have threads comparing heat/noise/battery life of 16'' to 14''. If the size doesn't matter to a particular person, then just get the bigger one, there are obvious compromises in smaller chassis that I'm not sure are worth discussing. Or simply wait for a new iMac.

I have yet to see someone do a test with low power mode forced, instead of auto. My hope is that Apple left some software API available to control power usage of those chips, although that hope is slim. My approach is exactly like yours, to have power when needed. Apple was usually very good at taming powerful chips when not used, they never had to do it on gpu though.

 

[acalegari]

I had initially ordered a 14inch max 32 gpu cores, but after several reviews including the video you also shared I canceled my order last week and placed one for the 16inch. In all honesty the 200 difference that will give you better cooling and thermal envelope, better speakers, better battery, larger touch pad and an astonishingly beautiful large display was enough for me. I decided I’d better wait another week rather than regretting that for the next several years!

 

[Technerd108]

I had initially ordered a 14inch max 32 gpu cores, but after several reviews including the video you also shared I canceled my order last week and placed one for the 16inch. In all honesty the 200 difference that will give you better cooling and thermal envelope, better speakers, better battery, larger touch pad and an astonishingly beautiful large display was enough for me. I decided I’d better wait another week rather than regretting that for the next several years!

I think it will be worth the wait !

 

[mr_roboto]

I did expect the M1 Max to consume more power and have lower battery life when under significant load. It has more GPU cores, and they obviously consume power when used. My concern is more that even light use (that shouldn't work the GPU cores) seems to result in significantly lower battery life than the M1 Pro. We'll need to see at least a couple of real world tests on the 14" Pro vs Max to confirm this, but anecdotal reports indicate that this is the case.

Speaking as an engineer, this result is expected and predictable.

M1 Pro has twice the DDR memory interface bus width as M1, at a higher frequency. From this, it was easy to predict that M1 Pro would not be as power efficient under light load as M1. You can't completely turn DRAM memory off, and more memory pins equals more power, so idle power for M1 Pro memory is guaranteed to be higher than M1. This is why a 14" M1 Pro doesn't blow away 13" M1 battery life in Apple's own video playback tests even though the 14" has a much larger battery.

M1 Max doubles memory interface width and chip count relative to M1 Pro, so it's another easy prediction that while at or near idle, it cannot be as power efficient as M1 Pro. There are specific GPU load conditions where M1 Max should be more power efficient than M1 Pro, but the general rule is going to be somewhat worse battery life.

 

[Chancha]

14" with Max is only a bad idea if you aren't ever gonna use its extra performance headroom. If your workflow can make use of it, but you dread the wasted cycles and battery when idling or doing light loads, the Low Power Mode is there for you.

 

[Xand&Roby]

I’m astonished anyone is astonished.
14” and 16” had different target, and also if I known really well the thermal throttling of small portable Macs (12”) I can compromise in footprint and portability, cause it’s portable Mac, not a desktop replacement with wheels.
And if you compare brute force there will be always almost one (or two) Mac better of 16” (or 17” in past times): iMac (also Pro) and Mac Pro.
So also the 16” is a compromise in portability, not the fastest Mac you could buy.

 

[Fomalhaut]

14" with Max is only a bad idea if you aren't ever gonna use its extra performance headroom. If your workflow can make use of it, but you dread the wasted cycles and battery when idling or doing light loads, the Low Power Mode is there for you.

good point about low power mode. It will be interesting to see how much difference it makes.

 

[Chancha]

good point about low power mode. It will be interesting to see how much difference it makes.

I only got a Base 14" which by itself the battery life is already not the worst, but I did try to have Low Power Mode on all day for a test. Granted I didn't have to do anything heavy that day, but I ended up with like 60% at night after say 6-7 hours of light use. The other day without turning this mode on and with similar workloads I saw it left at 40%. The computing experience seemed not that nerfed, it looks like the OS knows when the task calls for power and it will give it, the only noticeable degrade is screen refresh rate is capped at <15Hz or so, which is really visible in UI animations.

 

[Fomalhaut]

Interesting battery life threads on Reddit. Making me think that M1 Max on 14” may be saved by low-power mode…

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/qm3nx6
https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/qirlel

 

[agent mac]

This is the 'tock' cycle. Need the 'tick' cycle with 3nm node shrink to get power consumption, heat and battery life more in check.

I thought that was an Intel concept
Ultimately, you could spend a life time waiting for the next generation. Always just around the corner...

 

[Fomalhaut]

I thought that was an Intel concept
Ultimately, you could spend a life time waiting for the next generation. Always just around the corner...

Yes, it was an Intel idea, until their mantlepiece clock got stuck on "tick, tock, tick, tock, tock, tock, tock, tock, tock, tock, tock..." a few years back.

I doubt we will see any MBPs with 3nm Apple Silicon until the end of 2023, maybe later, so unless you want to wait for 2 years, I think now is the time to get on board the train.

There will always be a point where whatever you buy will no longer be "new tech". In many cases, this happens only 6-12 months after purchase, but generally, the changes are relatively minor, e.g. the new one is 10-20% faster for *some* things. Apple upset the apple-cart with the M1, because it was *much* better than the machines in replaced (entry-level Macs), and competed well with their expensive high-end models (looking at you i9 MBP16....).

Think of it this way. If the MBPs don't see significant jumps in improvement until late 2023, you will have 2 years of owning near-cutting-edge tech. After this, you'll still have a good and competitive machine. You might be happy with the performance for many years after this point, or you might hanker for an upgrade when there is a big jump in performance from your current one.

My personal "upgrade metric" is either (a) my current machine can no longer adequately do what I need or want, e.g. runs annoyingly slowly with current software, or (b) has at least 50% performance improvement in my workloads.

My experience has been that iPads and iPhones seem to age faster than Macs in that they become frustratingly slow as mobile app demands have increased rapidly.

About 5 years ago I ditched my iPad 2 (2011) because it became frustrating to use. I replaced it with a 2016 iPad Pro 9.7, which was a big improvement. I've just moved to an M1 iPad Pro to replace the iPad Pro 9.7, which was started to show signs of sluggishness (and lack of memory, by always reloading pages). 4-5 years is an OK lifetime, but I've found Macs to be useful for about 10 years or more.

 

[filmgirl]

I'm willing to take the trade-off of battery life for portability (especially when battery life is still really good), so for me, getting a 64GB/32-core M1 Max 14" was perfect. Price wasn't an issue for not getting the 16" for me -- I've had 15" laptops before and they are great -- but I have an iMac, I have a gaming PC -- this is for me when I travel (which hopefully will happen sooner rather than later), and a 1.3 lb weight difference *is* significant, especially when you have a lot of other stuff in your bag -- not to mention the whole size thing (I can slip the 14" in a smaller bag if necessary, I'm forced to use a backpack or briefcase-style bag for the 16"). That isn't going to be the case for everyone and if I had looked at this as a desktop replacement, I would have considered the 16" -- but again, I have a 27" iMac and a second 5K display (and several 4K monitors), so for me, this was a laptop.

I will say that battery drain is definitely faster if you're using stuff like Zoom/Teams/Skype -- but it also charges faster via MagSafe and at least in my experience, the places where I would most likely be far away from a power source like an airplane (and even then, I almost always have AC power on a plane) or in the back of a car, are also places I would *not* be on video calls. So for me, it works fine. But if battery if your biggest concern, getting a Pro or a 16" is probably the best choice. I wanted power and portability above battery life, so I'm thrilled I was able to max it out without having to get a 16" laptop.

 

[Tagbert]

I thought that was an Intel concept
Ultimately, you could spend a life time waiting for the next generation. Always just around the corner...

Yes, some people here have been pushing the idea that Apple plans some kind of Tick-Tock update cycle. That seems unlikely. Apple is pushing performance from all of their hardware every year. The increase in performance is sometimes large, sometimes moderate, depending on how they were able to implement changes. When the die process is ready for a shrink, that will usually give a larger bump at lower power cost. This results in some variance from version to version but is not really some arbitrary Tick-Tock strategy.

 

[bill-p]

The gains of the M1 Max seem to be "diminishing returns" in many of these tests that are not proportional to the doubling of the GPU cores, memory bandwidth and video hardware codecs.

At a professional level, I can see that these gains are significant, but for my amateur usage, I think it's not necessary, and the trade-off in heat/fan/battery are probably not worth it for me.

I would like to see the same tests with the 14", but the 16" comparison provides a good baseline.

I feel like you should have done your research before jumping in. And even then, if you know the apps you are running, then you could have made an informed decision.

For instance, I got my MacBook specifically for Capture One Pro and Fusion 360. Here's how Capture One Pro performs:

Judging from the above, there is benefit going to M1 Max. But it's not enough of a leap for me, so that's why I've stuck with 10-core M1 Pro for now (slight boost over M1 Pro with 8 cores). But again, there is noticeable benefits for anyone using Capture One Pro to go with M1 Max. In fact, even M1 Max is not the fastest possible setup.

If my deadlines were tighter, the 14" M1 Max would be totally worth it for me as a portable machine with this much power. Battery life be damned.

But even when we want to talk about battery life...

The 16" won't last that long if the workload demands constant CPU/GPU load for high performance. For instance, with this particular use case (exporting photos) done constantly, the 16" will barely last 3.5 hours whereas the 14" will last just barely under 3 hours. It's a difference of like... 30 minutes at most. The 16" 2019 literally will die within an hour.

So that's the price we have to pay for performance. Note that I also did try this use case with the M1 MacBook Pro 13". The supposed "battery life king." It honestly lasted... just about 4 hours for me. But it's significantly slower. So it's not "significantly better" as a Pro machine even when battery life is concerned.

Edit: sorry, I forgot the source. Here's the video that these came from:

^ I highly recommend his videos. Very informative. Clearly outlines why someone may need >16GB RAM and/or a processor update in many of these cases. It's far better than the "benchmark-fest" that Max Tech is doing. Like... honestly, it's not like we need more benchmark results, or videos of people doing benchmarks and narrating those benchmarks. We need more real life use cases with actual apps.

 

[Fomalhaut]

I feel like you should have done your research before jumping in. And even then, if you know the apps you are running, then you could have made an informed decision.

But I haven't jumped in yet! My informed decision is still being formed

There are still relatively few actual reports from "real world" users rather than YouTube reviews, so I will be lurking on forums to get a better picture before making a decision. In any case, I'm travelling and won't be able to buy a new machine until early next year. By that time I'm hoping any "gotchas" will be discovered and Monterey will have had a couple of upgrades to fix the inevitable bugs that emerge.

I am leaning more towards a 14" M1 Pro now and your (very useful) data also confirms that there is unlikely to be a huge difference between a 14" M1 Pro 10/16 with 32GB and a 24-core M1 Max. I see the M1 Max as giving diminishing returns that are probably only going to give me marginal improvements on my usual work and hobbies. Apart from saving $200, I would probably get a cooler machine with slightly better battery life.

 

[jinnyman]

M1 Max itself is a wonderful chip. But that CPU+GPU combined SoC can reach up to 100W as seen in MBP 16" M1 Max stress test.

Apple can't defy the physics. I suspect that, for sustained 100W operation in 14' enclosure, Apple should have gone vapor chamber cooling in order to maintain decent temperature.

 

[mr_roboto]

Apple can't defy the physics. I suspect that, for sustained 100W operation in 14' enclosure, Apple should have gone vapor chamber cooling in order to maintain decent temperature.

How would a vapor chamber help? They're the same technology as a heat pipe, you select one or the other based on factors which aren't really about the number of watts.

 

[jinnyman]

How would a vapor chamber help? They're the same technology as a heat pipe, you select one or the other based on factors which aren't really about the number of watts.

Vapor chamber is much more efficient. Vast number of PC vendors are using vapor chamber in their top of the line gaming laptop in order to control Intel & nVidia's hooooooooooot chips. I'm no expert in thermodynamics, but apparently a vapor chamber is big & wide sized heat pipe, and in PC side, there's tons of track records showing vast different between vapor chamber laptops and typical heat pipe laptops.

 

[Thysanoptera]

Vapor chamber is much more efficient.

It depends on design. Vapor chamber is better at spreading the heat, at the end of the day you need heatsink somewhere and that will be limiting factor. If you can mount big heatsink directly on vapor chamber plate - hell yeah, it will be more efficient. Unfortunately in laptops, the keyboard is usually in this spot.

If you take two designs, vapor chamber and heat pipes, connected to the same heatsink/fan combo, like the ones in laptops where you need to move heat horizontally, you will end up with the same heat dissipation. Vapor chamber will take longer to heat up due to sheer amount of material involved, giving an illusion of better cooling. Just like the wedge tapered Macbooks look so much thinner than the new ones. Vapor chamber will also dissipate more heat through the keyboard, which is not something I like.

If you have CPU and discreet GPU - vapor chamber will give you some advantage by spreading the heat, in case of Apple's SOC - heatpipes are better.

 

[leman]

Vapor chamber is much more efficient.

You know, I have this suspicion that when Razer uses something, it’s „vapor chamber“ and when Apples uses something, it’s a „heat pipe“. I mean, look at the heap pipes in these Macs - they are huge! Surely that classifies as vapor chamber already?

At any rate, it is fairly obvious that these Macs have no problems transferring the heat away from the SoC itself. So heap pipe, vapor chamber, doesn’t matter, it’s already good enough. The 14“ simply does not have enough cooling capacity to dissipate the power of a full M1 Max.