The Engine Room
The M1 already had support for video encoding and decoding, providing dedicated hardware acceleration for H.264 and HEVC (H.265) codecs. In the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, these features are part of a newly dubbed Media Engine, which also adds hardware acceleration for Apple’s own ProRes and ProRes RAW codecs, along with an additional ProRes encode/decode engine. This is reminiscent of Apple’s add‑on Afterburner card for the Mac Pro, which utilised an FPGA to accelerate workflows involving Apple’s ProRes and ProRes RAW codecs. Since FPGAs are programmed with logic defined by a hardware description language, it seemed possible this work could be reborn into fixed hardware within an M‑series SoC. Apple wouldn’t confirm or deny this speculation, although I got the distinct impression I saw a brief, dry grin from someone on the engineering side.
How, then, does the new MacBook perform? I think it’s fair to say that modern high‑end computers of all types are now so powerful that it’s no longer useful to count the number of plug‑in instances that can run simultaneously. If anyone is making real‑world projects that require 1500 instances of Amp Designer then I probably don’t want to hear them! I hope to be able to update our Mac content in future with a new and more relevant music‑based benchmarking system, but in the meantime, Primate Labs’ Geekbench remains the most universal way of comparing the overall performance of different machines. On the 16‑inch MacBook Pro, its CPU tests reported a single‑core score of 1778 and a multicore score of 12,738.
The first of these represents only a small improvement over existing M1 models, which typically score just over 1700 in the single‑core tests — but that nevertheless makes it the highest single‑core score recorded for any Mac, including the Mac Pro. And the multicore score leaves the other M1 models far behind. The M1 iMac and Mac mini turn in numbers around 7400, suggesting that Apple’s claims of a 1.7x performance gain are accurate. To put that into context, the 16‑inch Macbook Pro outperforms most configurations of the Intel iMac Pro, as well as base Mac Pro configurations. To gain substantially better performance, you’d need at least 16 cores in a Mac Pro, and that is not cheap!
Finally, one of the new MacBook Pro’s greatest attributes for musicians and audio engineers is that, while the cooling system has a fan, you rarely hear any fan noise. During most recording tasks, the notebook will remain completely cool and therefore silent. This means it’s perfectly possible to use the MacBook Pro in the same live room as the musician or musicians you’re recording.
I can confidently say the new MacBook Pro is quite simply the best laptop I have ever used... this thing is a beast!
Closing The Books
The new MacBook Pro is, in many ways, everything you want it to be, although it’s also fair to say this might come at a price you’d rather it not be. As ever, the starting prices for the base models are not unreasonable, but there’s a fairly steep cost gradient as you add more memory and storage, and the fully loaded 16‑inch 2021 model with an M1 Pro, 64MB memory and 8TB of storage tips the scales at $6099£5899. However, as you might have been able to infer from the general tenor of this review, I can confidently say the new MacBook Pro is quite simply the best laptop I have ever used. In everything from its raffiné‑yet‑utilitarian design to the stunning display, and the pure potential of mobile performance, this thing is a beast!
Not The Notch?
If you’re an iPhone user, you’ll already be familiar with the notch: an intrusive, small black rectangle that makes an unwelcome appearance in the top of the display. This is how Apple have incorporated the new 1080p FaceTime HD camera in the MacBooks. It’s a big improvement over the previous 720p equivalents from the Mesozoic era, although still not as stunning as, say, the iPhone Pro’s front‑facing TrueDepth camera. As has become the norm, the video from the built‑in camera is enhanced via Computational Video courtesy of the M1 Pro or Max’s Image Signal Processor. But why Apple don’t just bring the ‘Pro’ camera from the iPhone Pro to the MacBook Pro remains something of a mystery.
Much like iOS on the iPhone, Mac OS Monterey adapts its user interface to accommodate the notch within the menu bar to give the illusion of seamlessness. This means that the size of the menu bar remains consistent, no matter which display scaling mode might be selected, but it also means that if an application’s menu bar titles can’t be accommodated to the left of the notch, Mac OS interrupts the menu bar before continuing to display the remaining titles to the right of this area.
RIP Touch Bar, 2016‑21
The Touch Bar is gone, replaced by physical function keys.Apple have had a bit of a hit‑and‑miss relationship with notebook keyboards over the last few years, persisting with the loathsome Butterfly mechanism for much longer than most would have wished. With the new MacBook Pro, they have finally put the Touch Bar out of our misery and returned to physical function keys with a wider Escape key.
While the Touch Bar looked neat, it seemed like a solution in search of a problem, and although there were a few clever uses for it, such as QuickTime presenting transport controls or GarageBand and Logic Pro offering a virtual piano keyboard, ultimately there weren’t enough of these to make you overlook the omission of physical function keys.
Power & Charging
The 14‑inch MacBook Pro is powered by a 67W or 96W power adaptor depending on the configuration, whereas the 16‑inch comes with a larger 140W adaptor. The adaptor itself has a USB‑C connection and attaches to the MacBook Pro’s dedicated MagSafe 3 power connector via a supplied 2m cable. The key feature of MagSafe is magnetic quick release, meaning that your laptop doesn’t fly off the table if someone trips over the cable. USB‑C connectors can also power and charge the MacBook Pro.
MagSafe is back!The 14‑inch MacBook Pro has a 74W/h (Watt‑hour) lithium‑polymer battery rated at 69.6W/h, while the 16‑inch model has a 100W/h lithium‑polymer battery rated at 99.6W/h. This is especially relevant if you intend to take your MacBook Pro on a plane; both the TSA (Transport Security Administration) in the US, and the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) in Britain specify 100W/h as the maximum battery capacity for portable electronic devices that can be taken on board as carry‑on luggage.
A new feature is Fast Charging, which makes it possible to go from zero to 50 percent in just 30 minutes. However, this only works if you have the right combination of power sources and cables. For those with a 16‑inch MacBook Pro, you’ll need to be powered via MagSafe 3 and the included 140W power adaptor, while Fast Charging is possible on the 14‑inch with a 140W or 96W power adaptor via MagSafe 3, the 96W adaptor with a USB‑C charge cable, or, alternatively, with a Pro Display XDR with a Thunderbolt 3 cable, or a third‑party external display capable of delivering 94W with either a Thunderbolt 3 or USB‑C cable. The new 24‑inch, M1‑based iMac offers support for wired Ethernet in the power supply, but sadly that’s not an option here.
Storage Scores
The 16‑inch MacBook Pro offers the fastest storage system yet seen on any Mac. In their tests, using the Flexible I/O tester (FIO 3.27), which is a comprehensive tool for performing simulated I/O workloads, Apple report a result of 7.4GB/s for pre‑production 14‑ and 16‑inch MacBook Pros powered by M1 Max chips with 64GB memory and an 8TB SSD. The small print specifies the test used a 150GB file, accessed via eight active (in‑flight), 1024kB blocks. This is obviously rather impressive performance. And even running a slightly more mundane test — the ever‑trusty AJA System Lite for consistency with tests from other reviews — the new 16‑inch MacBook Pro yields read and write scores of 4198MB/s and 3675MB/s respectively. Both results are around 800‑1000MB/s faster than the previous leading Macs, the Mac Pro and the last Intel‑based MacBook Pro. AJA System Lite is still Intel‑native, but given the nature of these tests, I don’t think Rosetta 2 impeded the results in any significant way.
In order to achieve these results, the M1 Pro and Max feature a new, “advanced” storage controller that accesses fast NAND for the SSD, and you’ll notice this gives notably better write speeds than the original M1‑based Macs. Unified Memory is greatly helped by the speed of the internal storage system when paging blocks of memory in and out of the available RAM.
For musicians and audio engineers, it’s not even worth considering the number of audio files or streaming sample voices that can be played. Trust me, whatever real‑world number you’re aiming for, the new MacBook Pros will be able to deliver the required I/O. The bottleneck now, as it’s probably been for some time, is the software hosts and plug‑ins themselves. Apple showed me a Logic Project as a demonstration which was loaded with many, many instances of Spitfire Audio’s BBC Symphony Orchestra library playing back, and I don’t think the MacBook Pro even started up the fans in the cooling system!
The new MacBook Pro starts with a 512GB SSD, which is rapidly becoming the new, comfortable minimum amount of storage you’d want in such a system. Some of the more expensive standard configurations are equipped with 1TB of storage, and any of the new MacBook Pros can be ordered with 1TB, 2TB, 4TB and 8TB SSD options, though the last of these will set you back another £2000$2000, approximately.
It Had To Be GPU
Compared to applications such as AutoCAD, Cinema 4D, Da Vinci Resolve or Apple’s own Final Cut Pro, the daily needs of music and audio software regarding graphics processing are relatively modest. Therefore, any of Apple’s GPU configurations used in the M1 Pro and Max chips are likely to be more than enough for your needs, especially since video playback is handled by the Media Engine rather than burdening the GPU (or CPU).
Unlike the ARM architecture, which is licensed to implement Apple Silicon’s CPU cores, the GPU architecture is of Apple’s own design and thus relatively little is known officially about its specifications beyond a handful of performance claims made by Apple. However, what is clear, is that in order to take advantage of the graphics processing available to the M1 family, an application must embrace Apple’s Metal. This essentially combines the functionality for OpenGL (for graphics) and OpenCL (for running domain‑specific code on heterogenous systems, where more than one type of processor is used).
By utilising the Metal graphics API (application programming interface), users can enjoy faster rendering of user interface and data, and a good example of this was seen when Steinberg adopted the use of Metal in Cubase 11. The interface became significantly faster and smoother; prior to this, vertically scrolling the Project window with a large number of tracks to find just one was much like trying to find the dry bit in a bathroom’s rotating towel dispenser.
To balance the differing visual needs of users, Apple differentiate M1 Pro and Max‑based systems by including a different number of GPU cores. The M1 Pro that’s used in the base 14‑inch MacBook Pro models offers either 14 or 16 GPU cores, with 16 being the maximum in this member of the M1 family. For the ultimate in graphics performance, the M1 Max is the chip for you (if you haven’t already come to that conclusion based on memory needs), with a choice of 16, 24 or 32 GPU cores.
Test Spec
- 16‑inch MacBook Pro with an M1 Max, 64GB memory and 8TB storage.
- 14‑inch MacBook Pro (base model) with an M1 Pro, 16GB memory and 512GB storage.
- Mac OS 12 Monterey, as installed by Apple.
- The 16‑inch model was preloaded with Logic Pro 10.7 as well as many tools for video and 3D rendering, such as Final Cut Pro, Affinity and Cinema 4D.
Pros
- A serious piece of kit, engineered to perfection with a display to die for.
- The M1 Pro and Max chips are designed for peak notebook performance.
- Physical function keys are back!
- Some will welcome the return of the MagSafe connector, as well as the HDMI output and SDXC card reader.
Cons
- The System‑in‑Package nature of the M1 family’s design means memory and processing capabilities can’t be configured separately, which can have an impact on the cost.
- The camera notch isn’t exactly a welcome inclusion in a Mac.
- Wired Ethernet in the PSU would have been nice.
Summary
The highly anticipated, next‑generation MacBook Pros, featuring the new Pro and Max iterations of Apple’s custom M1 chip, are pretty much everything you could wish for in a notebook. Available with the same specifications in either a 14‑ or 16‑inch design, the new MacBook Pros offer a gorgeous screen, fast storage, improved battery life, and re‑implementation of certain older keyboard facilities and connections that had previously been deprecated.
Information
From £1899 (14‑inch) or £2399 (16‑inch) including VAT.
From $1999 (14‑inch) or $2499 (16‑inch).