- What if I told you that even though the 14 and
the 16-inch MacBook Pros can be specked out with the same chip, there's an actual difference in how they manage sustained performance. Ever since I published my first video about these two laptops, I've been getting the same
questions over and over again. "Should I get the 14 or the 16?" "Is the 16-inch too big?" "Are they worth the money?" "What's the right combination of specs?" And all of those are
really good questions. There was one unexpected result
when I tested performance. I have the base models of both right now, and I also have fully
specked-out versions on the way, so you'll see some comparisons very soon. When I first saw these two and I was trying to
choose which one I wanted, I thought 14-inch all the way. I mean, the 16 inch, it's a
monster, it's just too much. When I want a laptop, I want
something that's more portable. And I just wasn't sure that I would want to carry this big and
heavy laptop with me. But being the good little
tech person that I am, I wanted to be able to provide
you with some more insight, and I decided to take a look at both. So from a design standpoint,
they are virtually identical. Obviously the 16-inch is bigger and it's actually slightly thicker. But if I showed them
to you without context, you wouldn't be able
to tell which is which. Both have a much more boxy design than the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro. Both are heavier, and you're definitely gonna
notice that if you're upgrading. So the 14-inch weighs 3.5
pounds or 1.6 kilograms. And the 16-inch, it's 4.7
pounds or 2.1 kilograms. So they pretty much make the
three-pound M1 MacBook Pro feel like a MacBook Air. But the point of these laptops isn't to prioritize convenience,
it's to pack as much power and efficiency as possible, into a laptop. And to that end, I would
say Apple crushed it. Look, one of the things that
absolutely drove me crazy about the 13-inch MacBook
Pro, were the ports. Having a Pro device with
only two Thunderbolt 3 ports and a headphone jack, just wasn't good enough, in my opinion. Especially when you had to use one of them to charge the laptop. Well, all of that is a
thing of the past now. And both of these models have
three Thunderbolt 4 ports, two on the left, one on the right. And each one of them has
a maximum transfer speed of 40 gigabits per second. On top of getting an extra port, we can now charge these laptops and connect accessories from both sides, which is something that
I wasn't able to do with the 13-inch MacBook Pro. On the right side, we're
also getting an SD card slot, which a ton of creators are gonna like. And there's an HDMI
port that you could use to easily connect to a
monitor, projector or a TV. The port is HDMI 2.0 and not 2.1, but for how I use it, I still
haven't thought of any way where that would be a
practical limitation. And speaking of external displays, if you get either of
these with an M1 Pro chip, you can connect up to
two 60 Hertz 6K displays. And if you get them with an M1 Max chip, then you can connect up to
three 60 Hertz 6K displays, and then a fourth 60 Hertz 4K display. Now, I was super happy about this upgrade because I can see a lot
of users taking advantage of a dual or a triple display set up. We're not quite getting as crazy as my seven-monitor main
workstation, but for a laptop, considering that you can still
use the built-in display, you can get up to five displays total, right out of the box, which is awesome. Or you can close it up,
use it in clamshell mode and then virtually repurpose
all this processing power with a dedicated desktop setup. Now, besides the 3.5
millimeter headphone jack that we're still getting
on the left-hand side, there was one other port that
I haven't mentioned, MagSafe. Like to me again, this
is a sign of a Pro device because it means that we have options. If you have a charger with you, you have access to super
fast MagSafe charging. You have protection against
a sudden pull on the cable because the MagSafe safe will disconnect. And you're not having to use
one of the ports for charging. If you're in a bind and you
don't have the power adapter with you, then you can still use any of the three Thunderbolt ports to charge. Now, speaking of power adapters, here we actually see a hardware
difference between the two. So starting with the 16-inch, you're getting a 140
Watt USB-C power adapter, which is an absolute monster. With the 14-inch, if you get
the 8-core CPU based model, the one that I have, then it comes with a
67 Watt power adapter. And if you go with a 10-core CPU model, then you get a 96 Watt adapter. And for some reason, if you
still want the larger adapter with the base model, you
can upgrade for 20 bucks. Now I'll come back to
battery life in a minute, but let's talk about these displays. So clearly one of the main reasons to get the 16-inch model is the display. It's not the only advantage,
but it's a big one. I do my best to read all of your comments. And I got a lot of questions
about whether the 16 feels that much bigger than the 14. And the answer is, absolutely. The moment you sit in front
of it, it's so close to you, and it's such a beautiful display that you just can't help but smile. Now, when we look at the numbers, we're getting a 16.2 inch display versus a 14.2 inch display, a resolution of 3456 x 2234 versus 3024 x 1964. So again, it's a meaningful difference. If you're watching content, of course, everything is bigger, but to me, that's just a bonus. So when I'm multitasking
and I have two apps open at the same time, there's a
lot more room for each app. If I'm on the web, I don't
have to scroll as much. When I'm editing videos,
the timeline is a lot wider and I can see more of
the content in each bin. And if I'm editing photos, I always love having as much
screen real estate as possible. Now to be completely fair, coming from the 13-inch MacBook Pro, even the 14-inch feels bigger, but the 16-inch just takes
things to a whole new level. And I honestly didn't
think that I would like it, because even seeing it at the store, I remember chuckling at the size. But after using this display, I miss it when I go back
to the smaller devices. Now as far as the types of screens, both our liquid retina XDR displays. So it's the same mini LED technology that we saw on the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Both have a maximum sustained
brightness of 1,000 nits, and a peak brightness
of 1600 for HDR content, which looks absolutely spectacular. Both are also ProMotion displays, which is Apple's adaptive
refresh rate of up to 120 Hertz. So depending on what you're doing, the display can go from 24 Hertz all the way up to 120 Hertz, in order to optimize the user experience and maximize battery life. And since we're talking about the battery, the 14-inch has a 70 Watt-hour battery, which is rated for 17
hours of video playback. Now the 16-inch model comes
with a 100 Watt-hour battery, it's rated for 21 hours, which makes it the highest rated MacBook. And this title used to belong to the 13-inch M1 MacBook
Pro with 20 hours. But with a much larger battery,
the 16-inch is now king. What's great there is
that with the 13-inch, I already felt like I
never had to charge it. So I'm super excited to see
how both of these perform. And I'll definitely
include more information in my longterm reviews. Now, I had certain expectations of the keyboard and trackpad, but there was something
there that surprised me. Both keyboards are the same size and they have a black
anodized aluminum well, which I really like because
it visually separates the keyboard from the rest of the frame. We also now have a full row
of function keys at the top rather than the touch bar
on the previous version. And I know that a lot of users are extremely happy about that. Now the keys themselves
feel exactly the same, and this is one of my favorite
keyboards on any laptop. But I actually prefer
typing on the 16-inch because the entire
palmrest assembly is so big that I feel much more supported. I was not expecting this,
I thought that the 16-inch might feel a little bit
awkward because of the size, but for me, it's actually better. Now, the trackpad is also
bigger on the 16-inch, it's kind of crazy, it's like
the size of my entire hand. And I think Apple makes
my favorite trackpads. You can click anywhere on them, they have pressure sensing capabilities, and these have been super
responsive and accurate for me. Now, on the top right of both keyboards, we see the new implementation
of Touch ID with a larger key. There's also a divot in
the center of the key, which guides your finger
to the right spot. Now, I really wish that
we could get Face ID just for unlocking, but it looks like we're
gonna need to keep waiting because the necessary
components aren't included. I'm so curious about
the width of this notch, other than the camera
and the True Tone sensor, I wonder what else is back there to make the notch this wide. Very quickly, speaking
of the camera system, I'm finally happy with
the MacBook Pro camera. The one on the M1 MacBooks was fine, and with the image signal
processor on the M1 chip, it helped, but it was still 720p, and with so many people
having to do video calls, it was time for an upgrade. Now, both of these have
the same new 1080p camera, and with a new ISP, it's supposed to deliver even
better low-light performance. And if you want to see a comparison of the current and previous cameras, check out my comparison of
the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro and the 14-inch MacBook Pro. The speakers were also upgraded. And even though they both have the same high-fidelity six-speaker system when you look at the specs,
they don't sound the same. So the 14-inch sounds very good. Like even better than the
13-inch M1 MacBook Pro, which was already the best
sounding laptop that I owned. Having said that, the 16-inch
is even better than that. So the sound is warmer, it's fuller, and this is now the best
sounding laptop that I've tested. Before we talk about processing power and the differences between the two, I want to talk about the notch because it's been the
focus of so many people. So let me start off by
saying that the notch is clearly there and
you can clearly see it unless you have a dark menu
bar or a dark wallpaper. So if you think it looks
ugly and that that's somehow gonna ruin the user experience for you, don't buy one of these. On the other hand, for
how I use these laptops, it's always over the menu bar or a black background
if I'm watching content. So it simply hasn't been
a real-life issue for me. So would I rather have it not be there? Sure, if I didn't have
to give up anything, just like with my iPhone, but does it actually
matter for how I use these? No. The one potential issue I noticed is that if you have enough
menu items to reach the notch, then the notch would actually
hide active menu items. The closest that I got
was with Premier Pro, so it hasn't actually been
an issue, and I'm curious to see how Apple handles
this moving forward. Now let's get to processing power, and the differences I noticed in how these two models
handled the heat buildup. Now, because I have the base
models of the 14 and the 16, they both come with the M1 Pro and 16 gigabytes of unified memory. The 14-inch comes with an
8-core CPU and a 14-core GPU. And the 16-inch comes with a
10-core CPU and a 16-core GPU. So I expected the 16 to
outperform the 14 head-on, and it does. A Geekbench scores for both
were just what I expected, very similar for single-core performance, and then the 16-inch coming out ahead for multi-core performance because of the additional CPU cores. For GPU performance in Geekbench, again, the 16-inch comes out ahead because of the two additional GPU cores. What I wanted to know was how well these two can handle an
even more demanding task. So I use Cinebench R23, and I first got these baseline scores. What's absolutely crazy is that
I then ran a 30-minute test. So that's running at 100% CPU capacity for 30 minutes straight. And the results were very interesting. So on the 14-inch, the fans turned on after one minute and 40
seconds of running at 100%, and then they ramped
up to about 3,300 RPM. On the 16-inch, even with
the two additional CPU cores, the fans only turned on after
two minutes and 40 seconds of running at 100%, and then they never went
up above about 1700 RPM. So with the extra heat that's generated by the two additional
high-performance cores, the 16-inch still remained cooler. What's super impressive
is that both were able to sustain the same level of performance, even after 30 minutes of running
at 100% on battery power. All right, so now let's
pick the right model based on what you're looking to do. And remember that I have
links in the description, which a lot of times have lower
prices than the Apple Store. If you're still thinking of getting the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro, I would highly recommend
that you watch my 14-inch versus 13-inch comparison
before you make that purchase. If you've already decided
that you need more performance or one of the other
reasons that I mentioned, to go with the 14, here's what I would do. The 16-inch M1 Pro model already comes with a 10-core CPU and a 16-core GPU. And that will be an absolute monster for the vast majority of users. If for your very specific workflow, you're going to gain some performance from the additional GPU cores, then I think the additional 400 bucks to double them from 16 to 32
with the M1 Max, is worth it. Now this is going to
be in very rare cases, and those users should already
know that they need it, basically, if you're not sure whether or not you need the M1
Max, you don't need it. Where you may want to put your money is into additional unified memory, and then upgrade to 32 gigs. This chip is so powerful that this laptop should last you for a very long time, and you'll never regret
having more unified memory. With the 14-inch, you have more options. So if the M1 on the 13-inch
is powerful enough for you, but you're getting the 14-inch
because of the larger display or the additional ports
or the better camera or the external display support, then the base model is just fine. And again, I would consider
adding unified memory, only because I can't imagine you needing to upgrade this laptop for so many years. If you have the 200 bucks and you want the additional performance, upgrade to the 10-core CPU, which as we saw, improves
the performance by about 33%, since you're going from six
high-performance cores to eight. Now that you've watched this comparison, you should watch this video right here. Click on my face to subscribe. Hopefully this video was helpful. You know what I always say,
buy it nice or buy it twice. Good luck and see you soon.
