so this is the brand new macbook pro 16. and usually with my laptop reviews i like to talk about the design and the new features it comes with and i’m going to do that but today we’re starting off with the performance because that to me is the craziest thing i’ve ever witnessed on a laptop before and it’s weird because when i first got this laptop i set it up i started downloading cinebench the standard synthetic benchmarks you test on any normal laptop and it performed well you know when it came to multi-core performance it was right in line with the ryzen 7 5800h the i7 the 11800h on intel it was right up there and same with single core performance it wasn’t the fastest thing i’ve tested but it was at the top it was holding neck and neck compared to other powerful pc laptops on the market which was remarkable to me considering how low power these chips truly are but it wasn’t until i did the actual true benchmarks the one where it incorporates a workflow that i was blown away when i loaded up puget bench adobe premiere pro and i ran the test and got that score back i almost had a heart attack it literally destroyed the fastest laptop i have in the studio which is the msi ge76 this bad boy right here has 11980 hk processor which is overclockable paired with a very powerful rtx 3080 and this laptop completely laughed at it to make matters even worse i compared it to a desktop computer my 11900k which is a desktop computer using thousands of watts okay not thousands but a lot of wattage compared to this scored lower even my previous 3900x from amd with a 12 core cpu got beat out by this low wattage computer like that is not normal i’ve never seen a laptop do this before especially with the amount of power that this thing is putting out now here’s the kicker this is not even the m1 max okay this is not the m1 max this is a 16 inch macbook pro with the m1 pro with a 10 core cpu and a 16 core gpu 16 cores the most powerful macbook pro that apple sells right now has 32.
On top of that if you’re a developer i was shocked as well this scored as the fastest computer to compile mozilla firefox it did it in 14 minutes the fastest computer i have here at the studio can do it in 15 minutes that alone is absolutely insane now some of you are probably asking why didn’t i test this against any amd ryzen 5000 series cpus from the desktop manufacturers and the simple answer is i just don’t have anything here at the studio but it beat out any amd ryzen processor in a laptop and the same holds true for intel now apple showcased a demo on stage of four ak clips playing at the exact same time and i thought it was impressive you know any ak clip you play regardless of the codec is still impressive but it was recorded in prores and let’s be honest here prores is super efficient it doesn’t really compress a lot so it’s going to run fine on a lot slower computers than this i decided to record a clip in 4k 10 bit 422 on the sony a7s3 okay and if anyone knows about sony’s codec you know it’s an awful codec it’s super compressed it brings down a lot of computers to its knees but i was shocked i played back five screens at the exact same time or five video clips of the same footage at the same time and it did it perfectly in fact it also did it perfectly in davinci resolve i think you guys are starting to understand the message here anything that’s been designed and recreated for apple silicon runs smoothly like take gaming for example right you can’t game on this this is still not a gaming computer nor will it probably ever be you run shout out to the tomb raider or even deus ex mankind and you’re getting like 50 frames per second at 1920 by 1200 but you take a game like world of warcraft
which has been optimized for m1 and you see a big difference in terms of performance now some of you out there are saying man world of warcraft is a little old and you’re right it is but once you start kicking on those settings it starts to slow things down and even the most powerful computers need a good gpu to run it in fact it did all of this without breaking a sweat like i didn’t even hear the fans i was like tapping on this thing like hello fans are you in there and the only time they come on and i mean only time is if you’re really doing something for over 10 minutes straight like if you run cinebench r23 for 10 minutes straight you might hear the fans but if you’re just doing quick bursts of stuff these fans never kick on if i was to try that on my windows laptop the fans would kick on as soon as i load up chrome like there’s just so much power being pushed there this is especially true if you’re doing anything on battery right you can’t do this kind of stuff on a windows laptop when it’s not plugged in it just has to power throttle the gpu and cpu because if it gets too hot you could literally blow up the battery regardless of whether you have this guy plugged into the wall or it unplugged it performs exactly the same performance is definitely a big piece of the puzzle but it’s the total package that really completes a laptop and they really did it this year they brought back ports apple’s way of saying we made a mistake on the left hand side we have the famous magsafe it clicks on very nicely there’s a beautiful sound it lights up orange when it’s charging it lights up green when it’s fully charged if you
accidentally kick it it comes off and your laptop doesn’t fly off the table you have two thunderbolt 4 ports which offer 40 gigabytes a second of bandwidth you have a headphone jack which has a better preamp than the previous macbook pro and then on the right side you have that hdmi port so you can connect it to other displays unfortunately it’s not 2.1 so you can’t use 120hz refresh display but you can still do that through thunderbolt 4 which they add a third one on the right hand side now the sd card slot i love this thing because i still shoot on sd for a lot of my stuff it’s sdxc so you don’t get those super fast read and write speeds of the express version which is newer but i’m just thankful they do have an sd card slot on it it does stick out a little bit when you insert a card but at least you can insert a card period now it is a bit heavy at 4.7 pounds 4.
8 if you go for the m1 max my gut feeling is with the m1 max they have slightly better cooling on it due to the high power mode that comes with the m1 max chips so they probably have slightly better cooling inside which added a little bit of weight but you’re not really going to notice the difference between 4.7 and 4.8 in typical mac fashion you can open it up with one hand i love the rounded edges it’s a little sharp on the bottom of the deck it doesn’t really bother your wrists but something i do want to point out you still get that beautiful big touchpad and it feels just as good to use as a macbook pro 13 or the previous macbook pro 16.
Now one thing i don’t like well i don’t like but didn’t appreciate was apple calling this a keyboard that feels like a mechanical keyboard it doesn’t feel like a mechanical keyboard at all it feels very similar to the macbook pro 13. if anything it’s slightly more tactile and enjoyable to type on i love this black look it just separates the keyboard from the computer and gives it its own unique design feel thank god for the function row it’s back i wasn’t a person who despised the touch bar but i feel like it didn’t really offer any true benefits overall you have your touch id button embedded with the power button and a beautiful beautiful sounding six speakers the second best thing about this laptop is hands down the display the first time you turn this thing on and the screen brightens up you’re literally getting two shades darker that’s how bright this display is it’s also the best laptop display i’ve laid my eyes on and i’ve reviewed a lot of laptops okay usually the best displays are ips or oled i know there are some mini leds on laptops i haven’t reviewed those but the problem with oled on laptops are two things one there’s pwm flickr and people with sensitive eyes will get headaches from it number two the color accuracy shifts depending on the screen brightness now this is being solved with the second generation of oled panels that are going on laptops but it’s still very prevalent today you have to recalibrate the display every time you change the brightness on top of that it just doesn’t get as bright as this like four to six hundred nits if you’re lucky this goes up to 1 000 600 peak brightness if you’re working with hdr or watching hdr content if you’re doing that type of stuff you have to see this laptop on top of all this you get promotion which is 120 hertz refresh display every laptop every phone should have a high refresh display because it just makes the experience feel smoother even simple things like scrolling up and down a web page feels faster on a laptop with lower specs than a laptop that doesn’t have a high refresh display
because the smoothness is just there if you’re working with 120 fps footage you can watch it exactly how it should be ask for the notch i know it’s ugly but i’d rather have it than not have it let me explain why if there was no notch there they’d have to build a black bar going across the top because of the location of the camera this would cause you the user to have less screen real estate to use or they’d have to increase the size of the laptop to keep it at 16 inches i would rather have this format than less screen real estate or a bigger laptop the battery life though wow like this is the best battery life i’ve gotten on a 16 inch laptop period like i can work through the entire day 8 to 10 hours comfortably getting stuff done and not having to worry about to charge it and if i just forget to use a laptop for a while it only drains like a couple percent it has such good standby time that it’s just not normal the other thing is fast charging the 140 watt charging brick that comes in the box can charge this laptop to 50 in just 30 minutes and before i wrap this up quick mention about heat management i gotta wait for the tools like i stats to be updated so i can check out how hot the cpus are getting but i did do a surface test and it’s just significantly lower than what the pc laptops are doing like a good gaming laptop usually hovers around 50 degrees celsius this guy is just laughing in the 30s not even with the fans on which again is remarkable so this is what the webcam looks like the fact that it’s not completely blowing out that light and is doing a good job with my skin tones while smoothing my face a little bit i think is exceptional definitely one of the better webcams on a laptop i’ve used also this is the microphone coming from the macbook pro 16.
You guys let me know how it sounds straight up it’s products like this that truly make me appreciate my job hearing about it for years the rumors and then seeing the tech come together and being placed on my desk and then get blown away by what it can do it’s something that feels amazing and if you’re a creator and the app you’re using has been optimized for apple silicon that’s the important part it has to be optimized for apple silicon the performance on this will blow all those other laptops away and then you combine that with the battery life the the speakers the amazing display the microphones everything it becomes the total package the only thing i would say is if you’re a windows user you’re still going to want a windows laptop if you game like you’re just not buying this for gaming and if you’re thinking about buying the m1 max i’d probably hold off like the m1 pro is so good like a youtuber like me doesn’t need any more power you’d have to be some sort of crazy film producer or editor rather editing like 12 lines of video footage and you have all these different effects going on where it requires the utmost processing power or if you’re like a 3d artist we need to render stuff and you need as much power as possible but if you’re not m1 pro is the way to go if you have any more questions i’ll also be reviewing the m1 max so stay tuned for that let me know your questions in the comment section down below like the video if you liked it subscribe if you haven’t already and i’ll see you guys in the next one
