It’s been almost six months since Apple launched a redesigned pair of MacBook Pros. I’ve been using the 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M1 Max processor day-in and day-out. It’s surprised me at how well it’s adapted to my workflow.
As a refresher, the 16-inch MacBook Pro comes with two processor options, as does the 14-inch. Users can choose between the M1 Pro and the M1 Max SoC on the inside. I chose the latter.
These new chips boast a 10-core CPU with a 16-core Neural Engine, with memory bandwidth increased to 200GB/s on the M1 Pro and 400GB/s on the M1 Max.
Each also incorporates a new Media Engine as part of the SoC design, enabling hardware-accelerated H.264, HEVC, ProRes, and ProRes RAW decoding and encoding. On the M1 Max, the Media Engine has been improved further to include two video encode engines and two ProRes encode and decode engines, making it even better for video production.
All of these improvements are is before the built-in GPU power is taken into account. The M1 Pro is available with the 16-core GPU option only, but the M1 Max starts with a 24-core GPU and rises to a 32-core option — which is what I’ve been using here.
The new chips also bring in extra memory options beyond what the M1 supports. Instead of capping at 16GB, the M1 Pro starts at that level of Unified Memory, with an option for 32GB.
Read more at AppleInsider.com