I've seen a lot of people on here talking about returning the M3 Max or going with the M3 Pro over the M3 Max because they want improved battery life or quieter fans. If that is the only thing holding you back—don't do it. What if I told you that you could have the best of both worlds? I was speculating about this the other day, based on a video where I saw some numbers that caught my eye about battery usage and render times and I'm glad to see a confirmation here. 3nm is legit.
This video was posted by Max Tech the other day and has everything you need to know:
TL;DW is that by enabling low-power mode when on battery, you get a significant performance bump over the M2 Max while using significantly less power—all with hardly any fan noise and at a lower temperature. In previous M-series Macs, low-power mode didn't seem to do as much as it does on these newer 3nm chips. He didn't mention exact battery figures in the video itself, but wrote and pinned this comment at the top:
That is pretty freaking cool and great to know, especially when traveling and 6 hours of extra battery life means everything. I'm definitely going to enable this on mine for battery usage. It's not often that when I'm using my Mac on battery that I would be doing some kind of render or huge LR export or be tinkering with some AI model. It's mainly to just do regular work tasks or some lighter design work, photo editing, or website development and project management so I can get out of my studio and get some fresh air and sunlight. And a primary reason I got the Max over the Pro anyway is more memory for multitasking. When I connect to my TB dock and displays in my studio—that is when I'm doing serious work and therefore more likely to need those P-cores to top 4 GHz. So now I can have my cake and eat it too, and so can you!
Will definitely be testing this more once my MBP finally arrives.
This video was posted by Max Tech the other day and has everything you need to know:
TL;DW is that by enabling low-power mode when on battery, you get a significant performance bump over the M2 Max while using significantly less power—all with hardly any fan noise and at a lower temperature. In previous M-series Macs, low-power mode didn't seem to do as much as it does on these newer 3nm chips. He didn't mention exact battery figures in the video itself, but wrote and pinned this comment at the top:
As far as battery life, it totally depends on what you're doing. When you are doing simple tasks its just sipping power because of the e-cores, but the display still uses the same. If you don't have the screen maxed out at 600 nits you can get up to 24 hours of battery life. For mixed use you will get about 6 additional hours of battery life. Going from 10-12 up to 16-18 hours.
That is pretty freaking cool and great to know, especially when traveling and 6 hours of extra battery life means everything. I'm definitely going to enable this on mine for battery usage. It's not often that when I'm using my Mac on battery that I would be doing some kind of render or huge LR export or be tinkering with some AI model. It's mainly to just do regular work tasks or some lighter design work, photo editing, or website development and project management so I can get out of my studio and get some fresh air and sunlight. And a primary reason I got the Max over the Pro anyway is more memory for multitasking. When I connect to my TB dock and displays in my studio—that is when I'm doing serious work and therefore more likely to need those P-cores to top 4 GHz. So now I can have my cake and eat it too, and so can you!
Will definitely be testing this more once my MBP finally arrives.