Poll: *** The official 2021 14" and 16" Macbook Pro thread (it has an SD slot and everything!) ***

Will you be buying a new MacBook Pro

  • Yes, 14"

    Votes: 43 31.9%

  • Yes, 16"

    Votes: 28 20.7%

  • No

    Votes: 64 47.4%
  • Total voters
    135
Cinebench R23 scores roughly:

M1 (4 performance, 4 efficiency)
SC: 1512
MC:7758

M1 Pro (8 core variant, 6 performance, 2 efficiency)
SC: 1527
MC: 8773

M1 Pro/Max (10 core variant, 8 performance, 2 efficiency)
SC: 1521
MC: 12380

Pretty decent looking numbers! Is a bit strange that the difference between 8 core Pro and regular M1 isnt that big in the CPU front though, single core seems the same for all of them.


Other R23 comparison numbers just for reference:

AMD 5600U (10-25w)
SC: 1372
MC: 7582

AMD 5800U (10-25w)
SC: 1478
MC: 11203

AMD 5800H (Upto 45w)
SC: 1445
MC: 12788
 
It's still your VRAM requirement are shared with the system requirements. For example on my MBP my VRAM is constantly in use, so that's -4 to the 16 base already, down to 12GB for the system. Some argue the unified is so much faster its irrelevant but we will see what really happens under load....
 
Reviews all seem to be very positive so far. TBH, the main thing I'm looking forward to is the 120Hz display. My iPad and gaming PC have spoiled me.
I am wondering whether I made the right choice by going for the base 16" though. Trouble is, if I return it for a Max with 32GB I'll be waiting until next year to get it at this rate.
 
AdamM6 said:
This is my worry, given the memory is unified I should have gone 32GB in hindsight.
Click to expand...

I worked on a 16GB M1 for the last 8 months and it barely skipped a beat. That was with a fairly heavy web developer load mixed with some photoshop. 16GB will be fine for most people.

What do you use your mac for?
 
From what I’ve heard 16Gb is fine but several people I know have commented that they tried the 8gb M1 model and it’s noticeably worse than the 16Gb when multitasking with loads of browser tabs. Haven’t tried either personally though.

The folks who complained are what I’d call power users though so the base air was never really aimed at them.
 
The 16" reminds me of the old 2012 17" MacBook Pro's, the 16" looks good as a desktop only machine, I would not want to drag that thing around.
 
fez said:
I worked on a 16GB M1 for the last 8 months and it barely skipped a beat. That was with a fairly heavy web developer load mixed with some photoshop. 16GB will be fine for most people.

What do you use your mac for?
Click to expand...

Just MS office, web and a bit of YT, I use my desktop for all the power hungry stuff.

I should be OK with 16GB.
 
A lot of confusion over unified memory here.

Benchmarks show how comparable chips are but real world usage will expose what happens to unified memory under any load.
 
JGBR said:
A lot of confusion over unified memory here.

Benchmarks show how comparable chips are but real world usage will expose what happens to unified memory under any load.
Click to expand...
I know I touched on this above but can you explain why such a big deal is being made out of this now? Considering M1 chips have been around for a year with only 8gb of unified memory and with no widespread issues (that I’m aware of). Is it down to the extra GPU cores?
 
If 16GB is fine on the M1 for your workload then it will be fine on M1Pro or M1Max.
When mine turns up today I’ll load it up with some games, cad, lightroom, photoshop, and a load of chrome tabs and see how it does.
 
fez said:
So you think that despite a lower powered M1 being absolutely brilliant with 16gb that these will for some reason be rubbish. The 8gb models are fine for most people.
Click to expand...

These machines arent for "most people"

Only very strange people who like to show off will buy these laptops just to scroll through social media and watch netflix, most people buying these will use it for some kind of pro workflow where a lot of the time more ram = better
 
silvagti said:
From what I’ve heard 16Gb is fine but several people I know have commented that they tried the 8gb M1 model and it’s noticeably worse than the 16Gb when multitasking with loads of browser tabs. Haven’t tried either personally though.

The folks who complained are what I’d call power users though so the base air was never really aimed at them.
Click to expand...

Of course it is. I am running a base model M1 mac mini here while I wait for my new macbook and its struggling quite often. Thats not apples fault or the unified memorys fault, thats purely a limitation of 8GB ram for memory heavy tasks. Honestly I'm surprised at how well its holding up. My previous was an M1 macbook pro with 16GB ram and that suffered almost 0 issues.

It feels at times like people just want a stick to beat apple with. "I want to be able to process 8K video on a base spec machine with 8GB ram". If you need more then you need more. Most people browsing and using youtube can get away fine with 8GB. Chrome is a memory hog and if you are using computationally intense websites then yes, it will still struggle with that. Thats not an apple issue, thats an 8GB of ram issue.

ZP9 said:
These machines arent for "most people"

Only very strange people who like to show off will buy these laptops just to scroll through social media and watch netflix, most people buying these will use it for some kind of pro workflow where a lot of the time more ram = better
Click to expand...

Well yes, if you need more memory and it will benefit your work then... buy more memory. These machines are beasts. There is 0 suggestion from anywhere so far that 16GB on these doesn't perform as well or better than 16GB on anything else. Buy the computer you need but the people complaining about complete made up issues with unified memory are baffling me.

Very very few people will need more than 64GB and you can get 64GB. These won't satisfy 100% of people but they have a spec for 99%.
 
ZP9 said:
These machines arent for "most people"

Only very strange people who like to show off will buy these laptops just to scroll through social media and watch netflix, most people buying these will use it for some kind of pro workflow where a lot of the time more ram = better
Click to expand...

They are just MacBook Pros. From what I've seen many people with little interest in cutting edge tech have had MacBook Pros in the past. Just because Apple have released a new CPU doesn't change that.

In terms of memory this has been tested to death on Youtube when the M1 first came out.
There have been production based tests on M1 16gb vs 8gb. The 16gb was of course faster but not by much. No difference in Logic Pro processing 90 tracks, 11% faster in Xcode benchmarks, 17 seconds faster in Lightroom classic exporting 50 42mp raw files. No difference in FCPX in 4k 10bit exporting, but really came into its own in 8k video processing the 8gb model was miserable there.
 
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