which is this off the shelf maxed out 16 inch MacBook Pro against the base variant of the new M1 Macbook Air. And see which one does better when I put it through my workflow. I got this off the shelf maxed out MacBook Pro for little less than 2.5lakh rs. and the base M1 MacBook Air for little shy of 1 lakh rs. Since I had both these laptops with me, I really want to see if the enormous price difference between these 2 really made sense. If we look at some of the bench mark scores, M1 MacBook Air is absolutely crushing the 16 inch MacBook Pro in single core scores, and is almost on the same level with its multi core scores. Now this is the base variant Macbook Air with 8 core M1 Processor, 7 Core GPU and just 8 GB of Unified RAM and 256GB of built in storage.
The Macbook Pro on the other hand packs in a 8 core i9 processor, dedicated Readeon pro 5500M graphics processor, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. This is not a full on review or in depth comparison between these 2 laptops I will leave that for other experts. With this video I just want to check how both of them perform for the apps I use for my workflow. And more importantly if the Macbook Pro can justify its high price for my specific case scenarios. When we put them head to head, For almost all of the day to day optimised apps, M1 Macbook Air is faster at opening them, which should be no surprise as they are optimised for the new silicon. Everything from opening apps like safari, chrome, Final Cut Pro, and navigating through them is faster on the M1 MacBook Air. Most of what I do is create and edit videos, so what I wanted to test most is this Mac’s video editing performance. Now some of you might know that I have shifted to the new Sony A7Siii as my main camera, and the 16 inch MacBook Pro has tough time keeping up with the footage from that camera.
But the M1 MacBook Air cuts through this footage like butter. So the overall video editing process is much smoother on this new Macbook Air. Well I had to adapt or change my workflow a bit to suit this laptop. I first started editing videos on the 2015 Macbook Pro, and when I started editing 4K videos, I needed optimising media on import, and that made editing smoother for me. I had since moved to faster Mac’s but I never changed my workflow. So on this MacBook Air when I first edited videos the import times were too long. I then talked with some other guys like Sandeep from RevAtlas and Harsh from Technolobe, found that I can skip the optimising media part. And once I did that, my editing and exporting has improved a lot. Now I have a same 11 min 53 second 4k 30fps project (that is the right frame rate by the way) open in Final Cut Pro on both the 16 inch Macbook Pro and the the M1 Macbook Air. This is how my typical project looks like. It’s a 4K timeline, multiple 4K files stacked at some places, some colour correction and grading, and a lot of text layers stacked on top of each other.
With the Sony A7siii footage, playback or scrubbing on the M1 MacBook Air is much smoother than it is on the 16 inch Macbook Pro. 30fps footage is fine, but if there is 60 or 120fps footage on the timeline, that is when MacBook pro really struggles. I have left background rendering on both these laptops, because that is how I normally edit my videos, and I wanted to see which one is faster for my everyday workflow. I am exporting this 4K 30fps project to H.264 and the 16 inch MacBook Pro exported it first in 8 min 50 seconds, and the MacBook Air did it in 9 min 39 seconds. So the 8 core i9 Macbook Pro with a dedicated GPU and 16 GB RAM was just under 50 seconds faster than the base variant of the 1st generation Apple Silicon Macbook Air. And not to mention that the Macbook Air has no fans to keep it cool, while the Macbook Pro had its fans spinning on full throttle, pretty much from the 1st minute of the export. I cleared the cache files, and tried this export multiple times to find similar results. When I exported the file in Pro Res instead of H.264 the Macbook pro was able to export it in 5 min 15 seconds and the Air did it in 5 min 54 seconds, so just 39 seconds behind the 16 inch Macbook Pro.
I was shocked with these results. Yes the MacBook Pro is still faster and finished first there’s no doubt about that, but the margin was not that much. Not to mention that other than in RAM and SSD, it is pretty much maxed out, where as the Air is running on base variant specs. Pro also gets really hot while editing, has its fans running most of the time, and its battery has never lasted me over 2 and half or 3 hours while editing. Macbook Air on the other hands gets a little warm but it is still comfortable to place it on your lap, it doesn’t have fans so it is quite all the time, and I was able to complete an edit on its battery and still had about 23% remaining. Given the price of these 2, I would any day take a few extra seconds to export the video, if it is helping me save almost 1.5 Lakh Rs. Video editing, watching a few Youtube videos, researching for a video, some light photo editing and scripting is all I do on my laptop, and for all these things this Macbook Air is serving my purpose really well. Now everyone might have a different workflow, and might use different apps than the ones I do, so I can’t say wether or not the M1 Macbook Air would suit their workflow and perform just as good for them.
But for my video editing workflow, it has been a wonderful machine. After having used the 27inch Imac and 16Inch Macbook pro, 13 inch display definitely feels small, but I can just as easily buy an external display with the money that I get after selling my 16 inch Macbook Pro. Something else that I miss coming to this laptop is the extra USB C ports. Now I don’t always use more than 2 USB C ports at a time. Actually I don’t remember ever using more than 2 USB C ports even on the 16 inch MacBook Pro. But what I miss is their placement. I don’t mind having just 2 USB C ports, but I would have loved to have them on either side. Right now both the ports on this laptop are on the left side, so it is a bit inconvenient if I have to use both ports at the same time. I got this M1 Air for my wife, so we went with the base variant, because 256GB of storage and 8 GB of RAM is plenty for her work for years to come. But if I was going to get it for myself, I would definitely go for 16GB RAM and 512GB Internal SSD. For any more storage I would get a fast external SSD like this Samsung T7. So there you have it, my thoughts about both these laptops. I can’t wait for next generation Apple Silicon iMac, because whenever that comes, it will be my new editing machine. Am I getting rid of this 16 inch Macbook Pro?Most probably yes. And unit the iMac arrives, I might keep using this MacBook Air for editing my videos. That means my wife will be stuck with her 2015 13 inch MacBook Pro for a little longer.
I borrowed this one from her for 2 weeks, I hope she doesn’t mind if I extend those 2 weeks to a few months. Well that is it for this video guys.
By Take Care ❤️