MacBook Air M1 base, Im not impressed.

[Sledneck52]

Ive been using my M1 MacBook Air base with 8GB for almost 5 months and to be honest... I am not impressed with its speed.
I have an 24" LG 4K monitor as my main display. Once booted its only marginally faster then my late 2013 21.5" I7 with 16GB and two - 1GB SSD's installed. Actually, the boot time is almost identical to my 2013 running High Sierra.
I have them sitting side by side and if I run the same tasks the M1 barely beats my old iMac.
I am not doing video editing. Ive seen the benchmarks for the new M1 all over the place. I know its more powerful then my 2013. I probably should have waited for better implementation of compatible iPad and iPhone apps.
Anyone else?

 

[Apple_Robert]

If your complaint is because (side loaded) iPhone and iPad apps aren't loading and functioning like you think they should on your M1, the problem isn't the M1. The problem is your particular use of the M1

 

[jerryk]

I am pretty happy with mine. On many of my tasks, it feels faster than my 16" MBP with 32 GB of memory and 1 TB of SSD was. The M1 Air starts immediately, is responsive, runs most tasks quickly, and does not sound like a jet when it gets warm.

I have desktop systems so do not run my M1 Air with external monitors. I use it purely as a laptop.

I also do not run IOS apps on the device. I have numerous iPads available for that.

 

[jdb8167]

Ive been using my M1 MacBook Air base with 8GB for almost 5 months and to be honest... I am not impressed with its speed.
I have an 24" LG 4K monitor as my main display. Once booted its only marginally faster then my late 2013 21.5" I7 with 16GB and two - 1GB SSD's installed. Actually, the boot time is almost identical to my 2013 running High Sierra.
I have them sitting side by side and if I run the same tasks the M1 barely beats my old iMac.
I am not doing video editing. Ive seen the benchmarks for the new M1 all over the place. I know its more powerful then my 2013. I probably should have waited for better implementation of compatible iPad and iPhone apps.
Anyone else?

I guess it depends on what you use your computer for. If you are heavily gated by your internet speed for example, you won’t perceive much difference. As you noted, many tasks show a tremendous speed improvement.

For my use my M1 MacBook Air is faster at most things I do than my 2013 Mac Pro. Only on the most intense multi-core tasks does the 6-core/12-thread Mac Pro win and it is always by a small margin. This probably because many of my tasks are disk-bound and the M1 MBA has a much faster SSD.

 

[Juicy Box]

Anyone else?

Not the MBA, but M1 Mac Mini.

It is a really great computer, and probably the best value of any Mac ever.

That said, I was expecting a bigger increase in performance over my Late 2012 27" iMac, i7, 24GB RAM, 2Gb 680MX.

The M1 is faster, but when I encode video, the difference isn't that impressive considering the iMac is a 9 year old device.

I did some encoding tests, comparing the differences between the M1, the third gen i7 in my Late 2012 iMac and the 2nd gen i7 in my Late 2011 17" MBP, using the same source file.

For shorter encodes, the M1 was over 200% faster than the MBP and almost exactly 100% faster than the iMac.

For longer encodes, the M1 becomes even less impressive, at about 120% faster than the MBP and only 50% faster than the iMac in my tests.

So, the M1 is definitely faster, but I was really hoping for a bigger difference in performance versus my Macs that are a decade old.

 

[jdb8167]

Not the MBA, but M1 Mac Mini.

It is a really great computer, and probably the best value of any Mac ever.

That said, I was expecting a bigger increase in performance over my Late 2012 27" iMac, i7, 24GB RAM, 2Gb 680MX.

The M1 is faster, but when I encode video, the difference isn't that impressive considering the iMac is a 9 year old device.

I did some encoding tests, comparing the differences between the M1, the third gen i7 in my Late 2012 iMac and the 2nd gen i7 in my Late 2011 17" MBP, using the same source file.

For shorter encodes, the M1 was over 200% faster than the MBP and almost exactly 100% faster than the iMac.

For longer encodes, the M1 becomes even less impressive, at about 120% faster than the MBP and only 50% faster than the iMac in my tests.

So, the M1 is definitely faster, but I was really hoping for a bigger difference in performance versus my Macs that are a decade old.

What are you using to encode? If it is Handbrake or FFMPEG, are you using the hardware encoders or software. Is your encoder software M1 native?

 

[Juicy Box]

What are you using to encode? If it is Handbrake or FFMPEG, are you using the hardware encoders or software. Is your encoder software M1 native?

Handbrake, M1 native version for the M1 Mac Mini.

I am using SW encoders.

I tried using HW encodes, but the quality of the HW encodes by the M1 was horrible and I could not get it right.

 

[senttoschool]

I'm a developer. My compiler (webpack) finishes compilation up 5-10x faster on my M1 than my old 2015 Macbook Pro 15" 16GB.

I'm certainly impressed with the speed.

 

[jdb8167]

Handbrake, M1 native version for the M1 Mac Mini.

I am using SW encoders.

I tried using HW encodes, but the quality of the HW encodes by the M1 was horrible and I could not get it right.

Off topic but you can get pretty good quality with the hardware encoders at the expense of less compression. Useful if you are doing something you don’t consider archival.

 

[Juicy Box]

Off topic but you can get pretty good quality with the hardware encoders at the expense of less compression.

Yeah, when trying to get about the same quality using the HW encoder I discovered this.

HW encoding is super fast, but when compared to an SW encode with similar quality, the file size of the HW encode was huge.

This could be due to Handbrake, so other maybe other apps might have a different result.

 

[jdb8167]

Yeah, when trying to get about the same quality using the HW encoder I discovered this.

HW encoding is super fast, but when compared to an SW encode with similar quality, the file size of the HW encode was huge.

This could be due to Handbrake, so other maybe other apps might have a different result.

No I don’t think so. The hardware videotoolbox encoders are not from Handbrake as far as I know. I think it is probably just a limitation of the hardware favoring quick encodes over compression size.

 

[Juicy Box]

Not the MBA, but M1 Mac Mini.

It is a really great computer, and probably the best value of any Mac ever.

That said, I was expecting a bigger increase in performance over my Late 2012 27" iMac, i7, 24GB RAM, 2Gb 680MX.

The M1 is faster, but when I encode video, the difference isn't that impressive considering the iMac is a 9 year old device.

I did some encoding tests, comparing the differences between the M1, the third gen i7 in my Late 2012 iMac and the 2nd gen i7 in my Late 2011 17" MBP, using the same source file.

For shorter encodes, the M1 was over 200% faster than the MBP and almost exactly 100% faster than the iMac.

For longer encodes, the M1 becomes even less impressive, at about 120% faster than the MBP and only 50% faster than the iMac in my tests.

So, the M1 is definitely faster, but I was really hoping for a bigger difference in performance versus my Macs that are a decade old.

I should probably add that during these test the M1's fans were completely silent. I sure they were making noise, but I couldn't hear it over the ambient noise.

The iMac had a low, but audible fan noise, and the MBP sounded like a small vacuum cleaner.

 

[Juicy Box]

No I don’t think so. The hardware videotoolbox encoders are not from Handbrake as far as I know. I think it is probably just a limitation of the hardware favoring quick encodes over compression size.

Good to know, I wish it could be configured more.

I will just stick with SW encodes due to having similar quality while keeping the file size relatively small. I still use multiple Macs when encoding, so I can just use the preset with some minor tweaks, and have an almost identical end result.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Not the MBA, but M1 Mac Mini.

It is a really great computer, and probably the best value of any Mac ever.

That said, I was expecting a bigger increase in performance over my Late 2012 27" iMac, i7, 24GB RAM, 2Gb 680MX.

The M1 is faster, but when I encode video, the difference isn't that impressive considering the iMac is a 9 year old device.

I did some encoding tests, comparing the differences between the M1, the third gen i7 in my Late 2012 iMac and the 2nd gen i7 in my Late 2011 17" MBP, using the same source file.

For shorter encodes, the M1 was over 200% faster than the MBP and almost exactly 100% faster than the iMac.

For longer encodes, the M1 becomes even less impressive, at about 120% faster than the MBP and only 50% faster than the iMac in my tests.

So, the M1 is definitely faster, but I was really hoping for a bigger difference in performance versus my Macs that are a decade old.

Looks to me like the M1 has excelled with your workflow. Maybe your expectations were a little too high for real use and need to be adjusted?

 

[leman]

It all of course depends on the workflow. If one is using a computer for basic office work only, there won’t be any practical difference between the slowest and the fastest CPUs. What yiu get with M1 machines for this case however is much better battery life and smoother UI. Startup times are unaffected because they don’t depend on the processor speed, and frankly who cares. Those machines are optimized for always on operation and can wake up from sleep in a fraction of a second.

 

[Bug-Creator]

Once booted its only marginally faster then my late 2013 21.5" I7 with 16GB and two - 1GB SSD's installed.

That said, I was expecting a bigger increase in performance over my Late 2012 27" iMac, i7, 24GB RAM, 2Gb 680MX.

The M1 is faster, but when I encode video, the difference isn't that impressive considering the iMac is a 9 year old device.

This shows 2 things:

Intel hasn't improved that much over the past 10 years.

A superthin fanless 20+ hour battery laptop is as fast as something uses 10-20x the power.

-> impressive indeed

 

[leman]

That said, I was expecting a bigger increase in performance over my Late 2012 27" iMac, i7, 24GB RAM, 2Gb 680MX.

You are comparing a top of the line desktop with combined component power consumption of over 200W to a low-power silicon with power consumption of 25W if you push it very hard. I’d say that reducing the power consumption by 8 times while improving the performance by 50% is not bad at all for 8 years of progress.

 

[senttoschool]

A superthin fanless 20+ hour battery laptop is as fast as something uses 10-20x the power.

According to vertical smile, the M1 is 50% - 100% faster depending on the length of the encoding.

And possibly even faster if he used the hardware encoder.

 

[Bug-Creator]

According to vertical smile, the M1 is 50% - 100% faster depending on the length of the encoding.

Sure in some tasks it is in some it is even and some it might even fall slightly behind.

Thats one of the reasons why I haven't replaced this 2010 MacPro (32GB, 6 cores) with a M1-Mini even if that would do all the things and some even better.

 

[TrueBlou]

I’m over the moon with mine (not quite entry level, but close to. It’s the 512 with 8 GPU cores), significantly faster than my Late 2015 5K iMac with 32GB RAM and SSD.

I suppose it depends what you’re using it for of course. Mine is primarily Xcode, video, photo and vector creation/editing, 3D modelling, and then the less demanding general computing tasks, which could be done in an ancient system.

I’m actually so impressed by the low-power, entry level M1 hardware, that today I took delivery of a M1 Mac Mini. Primarily to serve as a second media server (my WinTel system is struggling with demand when 6 people are streaming media). But I’ll also use it for Xcode and so on, save me docking the laptop every time I go into the office I suppose.

Really impressed with Plex, even though it’s running under Rosetta 2, so not optimised for the M1 in any way shape or form. It still manages to blow the ass off my i7 8700 based Windows server. Especially transcoding 4K to, well anything, I gave up trying at 4 on the go. While Plex was indexing and the Mac was download software and doing all of the initial iCloud syncing one does with a new system.

My jaw dropped when Plex finished indexing the whole library (which is huge) in less time than it takes my i7 just to index my 4K movie collection.

Looking forward to tomorrow when I play with it some more, although I expect it to be only marginally better than my MBA.

 

[Juicy Box]

Looks to me like the M1 has excelled with your workflow.

A superthin fanless 20+ hour battery laptop is as fast as something uses 10-20x the power.

-> impressive indeed

You are comparing a top of the line desktop with combined component power consumption of over 200W to a low-power silicon with power consumption of 25W if you push it very hard. I’d say that reducing the power consumption by 8 times while improving the performance by 50% is not bad at all for 8 years of progress.

I will address your comments by first quoting myself:

M1 Mac Mini.

It is a really great computer, and probably the best value of any Mac ever.

I love my M1 Mac Mini, and I really think it is the best value of any Mac. The power that it provides for the price is amazing.

I am just responding to the OP by saying that while the M1 Macs have been impressive for the value, I am disappointed in the performance when compared to my much older Macs. I was just expecting more of an improvement.

Yes, my iMac is a top of the line, BTO Mac, and it cost 3 times the price of my M1 Mac mini, but it is still going on 9 years old, with 9 year old thermal paste, 9 years of dust built up inside, and it is able to keep up with a modern device.

I have two Mid 2011 27" iMacs, one has the 2nd gen i7 with the top of the line GPU, 32GB RAM, so an "apples to apples" comparison to my Late 2012 iMac, and the Late 2012 is very noticeable faster than the Mid 2011. A friend is using the Mid 2011 with a i7, so I cannot do the exact encoding test that I mentioned earlier, but back when using it to encode, the Late 2012 was probably about 30% faster on average.

The performance difference was very noticeable between the two iMacs with just one year difference in age.

This might be more of a problem with Macs in the past 9 years, that there hasn't been much improvements in performance like there used to be. Maybe this is due to Intel, or the industry in general, but we just don't see the performance gains that we once got from one year to the next.

I originally planned on replacing my main Mac (Late 2012 iMac) after about 3 years, but after that time, the performance of the Late 2012 iMac was still really good and not worth the investment of a new Mac.

The old year-to-year performance increases pretty much went away since I purchased my Late 2012 iMac.

Maybe your expectations were a little too high for real use and need to be adjusted?

Yes, this was pretty much the case.

I am not saying that the M1 isn't impressive with what it does especially for the cost, or how much power it uses, but I was expecting a little more considering my much older Mac can still hang with the brand new M1.

Intel hasn't improved that much over the past 10 years.

I think this is true, and probably plays a part in my disappointment mentioned above.

I’d say that reducing the power consumption by 8 times while improving the performance by 50% is not bad at all for 8 years of progress.

I am not saying that this bad at all, in fact very impressive, but I can be both impressed by the power-per-watt and disappointed in the overall performance compared to my older Macs.

A superthin fanless 20+ hour battery laptop is as fast as something uses 10-20x the power.

Also, my comparison was with the M1 Mac Mini, not the MBA. I suspect that the performance difference between the Late 2012 iMac and M1 MBA would be even less.

But, considering the MBA is passively cooled, the performance is pretty amazing on it.

 

[TrueBlou]

I will address your comments by first quoting myself:

I love my M1 Mac Mini, and I really think it is the best value of any Mac. The power that it provides for the price is amazing.

I am just responding to the OP by saying that while the M1 Macs have been impressive for the value, I am disappointed in the performance when compared to my much older Macs. I was just expecting more of an improvement.

Yes, my iMac is a top of the line, BTO Mac, and it cost 3 times the price of my M1 Mac mini, but it is still going on 9 years old, with 9 year old thermal paste, 9 years of dust built up inside, and it is able to keep up with a modern device.

I have two Mid 2011 27" iMacs, one has the 2nd gen i7 with the top of the line GPU, 32GB RAM, so an "apples to apples" comparison to my Late 2012 iMac, and the Late 2012 is very noticeable faster than the Mid 2011. A friend is using the Mid 2011 with a i7, so I cannot do the exact encoding test that I mentioned earlier, but back when using it to encode, the Late 2012 was probably about 30% faster on average.

The performance difference was very noticeable between the two iMacs with just one year difference in age.

This might be more of a problem with Macs in the past 9 years, that there hasn't been much improvements in performance like there used to be. Maybe this is due to Intel, or the industry in general, but we just don't see the performance gains that we once got from one year to the next.

I originally planned on replacing my main Mac (Late 2012 iMac) after about 3 years, but after that time, the performance of the Late 2012 iMac was still really good and not worth the investment of a new Mac.

The old year-to-year performance increases pretty much went away since I purchased my Late 2012 iMac.


Yes, this was pretty much the case.

I am not saying that the M1 isn't impressive with what it does especially for the cost, or how much power it uses, but I was expecting a little more considering my much older Mac can still hang with the brand new M1.


I think this is true, and probably plays a part in my disappointment mentioned above.



I am not saying that this bad at all, in fact very impressive, but I can be both impressed by the power-per-watt and disappointed in the overall performance compared to my older Macs.


Also, my comparison was with the M1 Mac Mini, not the MBA. I suspect that the performance difference between the Late 2012 iMac and M1 MBA would be even less.

But, considering the MBA is passively cooled, the performance is pretty amazing on it.

Perhaps once the 27” (32? Whatever) iMac comes along it will be different and a more realistic comparison to your existing iMacs.

I fully expect that the upcoming MacBook Pro’s and the larger 27” iMac, being targeted at more demanding users than the existing lineup of entry level M1 systems, will have quite a performance boot.

 

[Juicy Box]

Perhaps once the 27” (32? Whatever) iMac comes along it will be different and a more realistic comparison to your existing iMacs.

I fully expect that the upcoming MacBook Pro’s and the larger 27” iMac, being targeted at more demanding users than the existing lineup of entry level M1 systems, will have quite a performance boot.

I expect this as well, and expect (or hope?) that AS will improve things greatly in the future. Maybe we will see the more dramatic year-to-year performance increases that we use to have with PPC and early Intels Macs.

 

[dieselm]

How much memory do you have in it? I have an MBA w/external 5k monitor.

The difference between 8GB and 16GB is like night and day.

 

[thatsthequy]

I love my M1 Air for what it doesn't have, a noisy fan, poor battery life, and a big price tag.