Apple's M3 MacBook Pro Models: Performance, Price, and Practicality Examined

I have been obsessed with benchmark videos of these new Macs

M3 Macs and M3 Pro MacBook Pros, man. We told you last week there's pretty much

only two MacBook Pros, M3 MacBook Pros you should get. One is the base M3 and one is the M3 Max

Don't even bother with the M3 Pro, it's essentially as powerful as the M2 Pro

And in some tests, it's not even as fast as that. So save your money, in my opinion, get the M2

Get the M2 Max or the M2 Pro, don't go with the M2 Pro

Well, we've got some more benchmarking here and hats off to Max Tech

I mean, dude, they're doing so much benchmarking. They must be spending massive amounts of time

doing this benchmarking, testing absolutely everything that you would want to know about the different models

And this week they released the video that I have been waiting for, right

Because my go-to play was let's save money on the M3 Max 16-inch because they raised the price

And let's see if we can get away with going with the 14-inch with the same specs because it's cheaper

But historically, the problem has been that the 14-inch is not able to actually keep up

performance-wise with the 16-inch, even if they're spec'd exactly the same because it doesn't have the same level of cooling

that the larger 16-inch has. So they start off this video, and I'll link to this in the show notes

with just showing you the bottom of the two machines so that you could see their fans

And as soon as they opened up the bottom, I was like, this is not gonna go well. Like the fans on the 14-inch are, I would say

half the size of the 16-inch version. And I was like, okay, you know

like maybe it will still be able to keep up. And then they did a thickness comparison

and they held the two up. Let me see if I can find this. And you can see that the 16-inch MacBook Pro

is significantly thicker than, oh, here we go, than the 14-inch. So if you're watching the live stream

the 16-inch is on the left, the 14-inch is on the right. And you can see the 16-inch is significantly thicker

And then that sealed it for me. I'm like, I wouldn't even have to watch any more of the video

to tell you that the 14-inch is not gonna be able to keep up because if they built in the larger fans

and the extra thickness into the 16-inch, they did that for cooling reasons

There's no other reason why they would do that. And then they didn't do that in the 14-inch

It's not gonna be able to keep up. And sure enough, the 14-inch MacBook Pro

with the same specs as the 16-inch is slower across all the tests

It thermal throttles like crazy. It can't deliver the same wattage to the SoC

because it just can't keep itself cool. And in virtually all the tests

sometimes it lagged behind a lot. So there's your answer. I'm not gonna go through all the benchmarks

I'll just leave you to watch this video if you wanna go check it out. It's a great video

And the 14-inch can't keep up. And they also released another video

which I'll talk about here in a sec. But Griffin, were you about to say something

I was just going to say, well, maybe my counterpoint before you revealed the answer would be that

the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro have similar degrees of performance with the same chip

But I think the answer there is that the Mac Pro is overkill

The Mac Studio is designed to handle the Macs and ultra chips without any thermal throttling

The Mac Pro is just unnecessary because it was designed around an Intel Xeon chip

And it's now just sitting there with all of the space and free airflow in the world that it does not need

Yeah, that's true. I mean, it just seems like an option to give people who don't wanna spend the money

on the Macs chips at this point. And then, so the other video they released

which I thought was interesting, was they compared the base level M3 MacBook Pros

with different amounts of RAM. So the base M3 MacBook Pro with the M3 chip

comes with eight gigabytes of RAM. People on the internet have been bashing Apple

saying that that's ridiculous for a pro-level machine. And Apple came out and said, well, it's like

you know, we use it so efficiently that you don't even need 16. It's, you know, it's like having eight gigabytes of RAM

on a MacBook Pro is like having 16 gigabytes on a Windows machine

So Max Tech did the tests. And sure enough, the 16 gigabyte model

absolutely destroys the eight gigabyte model. It's actually surprising how much worse

the eight gigabyte model did. It is not able to keep up in any of the tests

And in some of the tests, the 16 gigabyte model was like 400% faster

in the Final Cut Pro export test. So it only confirms what I surmised last week

And that is the, I'm on the wrong screen. And that is the base level M3 MacBook Pro

is effectively a MacBook Pro or a MacBook Air Pro. It is a MacBook Air with a better screen, better speakers

but from a performance perspective, it really suffers because of the eight gigabytes of RAM

Now you could upgrade for $200 and get 16 gigabytes of RAM

But at that point you're at 1799. Well, the M2 Pro base MacBook Pro

which comes with 18 gigabytes of RAM instead of 16 is only $200 more

And you get 11 CPU cores instead of eight on the base MacBook Pro

And 14 GPU cores instead of 11 on the base MacBook Pro

So it's like for an extra 200 bucks, it's like Apple does such a good job

luring you up that feature ladder, right? It's like, oh, well, I don't really want to spend that much money

but if I only spend an extra $200, I'm going to get all these extra features

Well, then if I only spend another extra $200 and then you're in my territory

you're like, I'm going to just, you know, spend 40, I might as well just spend 4,400 and get the M3

Max it out. Yeah. So after watching these tests, do you feel as though you have reached a finale

a definitive decision on your upgrade path? That's a great question. So I'm either, I haven't decided what I'm going to do

but I do know what my decision is. So at this point

I'm either going to just stick with my M1 Max MacBook Pro

for another year, or I'm going to go with the 16 inch and just, you know

swallow it and get the machine. But here's the thing. I think I'm

So the answer is no, you haven't made a decision. No, but at least I've narrowed it down to what my decision is

So I have made that step, but here's what I would say

Here's what I have landed. So when we talk about how insanely powerful the M3 Max

that the top spec chip is, and it is, I mean, it competes with the M1 Ultra and even beats the M1 Ultra in many tests

But in real life usage, right? If you get double the performance in Final Cut Pro exports

and I don't even know if that's true, but let's just say you're exporting a video

It goes from, it would take you normally four minutes. Now it takes you like seven minutes

Is that the kind of extra time savings that's worth the cost

For most normal people, even if the M3 Max MacBook Pro is double the speed of the M1 Max

you're talking about the savings of minutes in most tasks. And for most people, they could spare a few minutes

They don't really care. You're not sitting in front of your computer waiting for a video to export

You'll go do something different. The only people that I think it really makes sense for

are companies that are paying developers, people who are doing really intense tasks

where, and they do them day in, day out, right? So that time savings really adds up

And then people who have the cash, they don't care. So if you're in one of those categories

it's probably worth upgrading. For everyone else, I think it actually might be worth to wait for the M4 generation

because the M1 Max is such an incredible chip, even though it lags behind in all the tests, obviously

except for maybe some of the SSD tests. I think in the SSD write test

it actually might be faster than the M3 Max for some weird reason

But it's still fast enough to do everything that you want to do

Like I opened up, I have iStat menus, which has a host of different monitors across my computer

And I was looking at my memory pressure to see if I'm using a lot of memory

and maybe that would be a reason to upgrade. No, I'm not. I never even sweat my machine

My M1 Max doesn't even break a light perspiration. It is always, I'm way under utilizing

the power I already have. So when you think about it, now I don't like thinking about it that way because I have an emotional need

to have the best that Apple offers at all times. But I don't have a practical need

which I think is more the space that Griffin operates in. He's like, do I have a practical need for this thing

Whereas I, looking at it from an emotional perspective, I'm like, I just need to have the best that they have

But I really actually don't have a practical need to do this

because I'm not even sweating the equipment I already have. It's just, it's so good that I'm

I could probably make another three years if I wanted to. So that's where I'm at

And I'll link to both of these tests in the show notes

You can check them out. Max Tech does