The M1 Max has up to 400GB/sec of memory bandwidth, which is twice as fast as the M1 Pro and six times faster than the M1. Apple’s SOC shares its RAM between the CPU and GPU, which removes the bottleneck of moving data between physical components, and thus speeds up almost every kind of operation. Our review model was pretty much a top-end machine with the M1 Max chip and 64GB of unified memory. This will receive mixed reactions – it was undoubtedly helpful for some, particularly when well-integrated into DAWs like Logic Pro for using faders and buttons, but other users found they rarely bothered with it. The Touch Bar is now gone and replaced with physical function keys. The SDXC card slot returns – photographers rejoice!– and there’s an HDMI out, as well as a 3.4mm headphone port that supports high-impedance headphones. There’s a MagSafe 3 charging port and three USB-C ports, any one of which can also be used for charging, as well as DisplayPort, Thunderbolt 4 and USB4 at up to 40GB/s ports. For general media playback, they’re excellent.Īpple has finally listened to its pro users’ demands when it comes to ports. You won’t be mixing on them, but they are wide, rich and capable of going very loud indeed. The six-speaker array with support for spatial audio sounds better than any laptop speakers have a right to sound.
The 14- and 16-inch models finally have 1080p FaceTime cameras, which is handy for broadcasting yourself. ProMotion allows adaptive refresh rates up to 120Hz for beautifully smooth scrolling and this can be locked if required when working with video. The Liquid Retina XDR display is stunning, and though there’s now a camera notch on the top of the screen, you stop noticing it almost immediately. The new MacBook Pro’s build quality is superb, even for a premium Apple product. Apple has re-engineered the MacBook Pro around its new SOC, and in the process made it slightly thicker and heavier, though not to a point that’s in any way inconvenient. We’re going to look at performance for pro audio momentarily, but first, a word on the build. Gone are the days of Intel’s hyperthreading and the supremacy of clock speeds – it’s all about efficiency and memory bandwidth these days (but if you’re interested, the M1 runs at up to 3.2GHz). There are various permutations of hardware but the major differences are that the M1 Max is available with up to 32 GPU cores and can go up to 64GB of RAM, whereas the Pro tops out at 32GB.Īll but the lowest-spec M1 Pro models feature a 10-core CPU: two efficiency cores and eight high performance cores.
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