I initially had my heart set on a MBP 14 with 32GB RAM and the M1 Max with 24-cores. I had decided that my normal usage consistenlty uses 25-30GB RAM so would need the 32GB. Considering the switch from M1 Pro to M1 Max is only $200 beyond this point, it sounded like a good deal.
However, recent videos from MaxTech (
), The Tech Chap (
), and another guy using his MBP14 for music (
), plus reviews from The Verge, Wall Street Journal and Mobile Tech Review, have shown that the MBP14 with M1 Max seems to consistently have higher temperature, high fan speeds (& noise) and poor battery life (maybe only 6-8 hours of "web + youtube + video conferencing" and maybe only 3-4 hours under heavy load.
It does look like Apple has taken the approach of making the 14" M1 Max almost equal to the 16" M1 Max in peformance (which is good if you need it) but at the cost of really high temperatures (MaxTech measured 106C processor cores), fan noise and a subsequent hit on the battery, maybe losing 2-3 hours to the 16" model.
I'm now wondering whether running the M1 Max in the 14" is turning the computer into a niche model for people who want the power, and the small form-factor, but don't need to do much work unplugged. It looks like that they sacrified the "general purpose small laptop" approach of the MBA and MBP13 and have gone for brute power, by compromising on qualities that distinguish Macs for their competitors (i.e. quiet with good battery life).
One of the main reasons for wanting to move from my current MBP16 would be to get better battery life (I often only get 5-6 hours and much less when editing video) and to have something that runs cooler and quieter. It doesn't look like the MBP 14 with M1 Max would really be that much of an improvement, apart from being smaller and faster. Perhaps I'm just being greedy!
Do you think apple went too far by cramming the M1 Max into a 14" body?
I have a 24 Core MBO 14 with 32 GB of RAM.
I’ll tell you that in the close to a week I’ve had it, I haven’t heard the fans go on once.
I haven’t felt uncomfortable touching it.
Why did I go Max? I occasionally can make a MBP 13 Pro with M1 and 16GB stall. It doesn’t happen often.
I wanted the headroom. Plus the M1 Max has faster memory speeds than the M1 Pro, and considering I’m thinking about getting the Pro XDR I figured the extra GPU cores would come in handy.
I can’t speak to the others specifically, but I’ll tell you that Max Tech does things to test limits that most people don’t do every day.
I’ve never heard the fans on my M1 MBP 13 that I’m selling to Apple, even when I stressed it.
The M1 Pro Max (24 core GPU) with 32GB of memory so far seems to have no thermal wall as far as I can tell. I haven’t “tested” it by playing a movie over and over again, or running high stress tests that leaves an NVIDIA laptop with 20% batter life after 5 runs (or whatever Max Tech does this time) but it’s been better than literally better than any Intel device in terms of thermal headroom and fan noise.
I sold my Intel MBP 16 in less than a year because there was a very sharp drop off in performance after like a minute or two. Simply starting a Microsoft Teams call would sound like the Intel MBP 16 was trying to take off for San Fran.
The MacBook Air M1 has more thermal headroom than the MBP 16. I know because while my BTO MBP 13 M1 was being built I used my wife’s base level MacBook Air M1. You can run it for I’d say 45 min to 1 hour of “heavy” Intel MBP 16 use with 20 people on a call with Microsoft Teams and there isn’t a perceivable drop in performance.
Sure, we can make arguments over “well thats a Proton app, that doesn’t count”. But I’m telling you that simply joining a meeting would slow everything down and the MacBook Air with no fan just smiled and kept working.
If you are thinking these new M1 variants are going to be loud like the Intel versions, I can tell you they aren’t.
But lets be real real here. Unless I’ve missed something, at least on the thorough review with Max Tech, which in my opinion was pretty extreme, unless you are doing something that takes a long extended amount of time the difference between the 14 and 16 inch model is negligible. The primary difference I saw can be accounted for by battery life considerations given the advertised rate, or minor thermal throttling over long periods of time.
The “stress tests” done by many of these sites if done over multiple hours would probably show a rough ~10% difference between the two. I’m happy to be wrong, but heat needs to go somewhere, and over a long timeline but ~10% difference when there’s two different sized chassis is in a margin of error.
If you bought the 14 MBP with an M1 Max (24 core) you did it for specific reasons. For me, I wanted something closer to a larger laptop with room to grow.
Get your order in, and test it out.
If you don’t like it, Apple has a great return policy last I checked.
I’ll be keeping mine. During my crazy days at work (more than meetings) I’ve haven’t really had very many slowdowns that drive me crazy.
The extra channels of memory, extra media block for encode/decode, 50% more GPUs for when you need it. If you don’t need it, this isn’t a personal dig by any means, but don’t get it.
My wife tried to talk me into getting the 32 GPU core and 64 GB model for $400 more. The UMA on the M1 very rarely saw me hitting memory walls. The M1 had issues, but nothing that having 3x more GPU cores and extra thunderbolt controllers, vs having 4x more GPU cores would really benefit me.
I hope you are happy with whatever it is you decide on.
