M1 MacBook Air VS M1 MacBook Pro 13! REAL WORLD Comparison!

the question i've got most often over the past few weeks besides 8 gigabytes of ram versus 16 gigabytes of ram if the performance is so close on the new series of m1 macbooks which would i recommend i mean the macbook pro 13 comes from one of my favorite series of computers ever made this line has produced computers that i've used successfully for years leading up to today the macbook air though it's a tad different prior to this model the air was never really a computer that i'd recommended or used but this version with the m1 processor has really changed my opinion my opinion has been drastically changed by this computer but when we put them head to head which one comes out on top let's find out i did that first take what's up everyone i'm the everday dad and if i can figure it out you can figure it out also really quickly thanks everybody for 250 000 subscribers we hit it today so this is the first video post that milestone this is to be a tough video to make because when you look at the spec sheet both of these computers are very very similar and when you use them they feel very very similar so gary if they're so darn similar how are you how can you even make a decision between the two uh that's a that's a really good question so what we're gonna stumble through this today together first off let's quickly lay out those specs similarities and the differences as we get into this comparison the macbook air and the macbook pro 13 were very recently updated with the newest of the apple m1 processors apple used to use intel these do not have intel chips these have apple chips the macbook pro comes standard with the full 8 core cpu 8 core gpu and the 16 core neural processor while the base model macbook air has the same 8 core cpu but only has a 7 core gpu probably is the exact same chip that just has one gpu core disabled however this does also have the machine learning friendly 16 core neural processor both computers at their base come with 8 gigabytes of unified memory and a 256 gigabyte solid state drive at that very base the very base model the cheapest you can go the macbook pro will come in at 12.99 while the macbook air will run you 9.99 300 bucks seems kind of like a pretty big difference for one more gpu core right yes but like i said a few moments ago on the spec sheet these two seem very similar but there are some additional differences under the hood and we'll get to those in just a second when we're talking still about the specs you can upsell yourself a little bit and take both of these to 16 gigabytes of unified memory and a two terabyte solid state drive the difference in the upgrade paths though is the macbook pro you'll get the same processor no matter what the macbook air though has a chassis that will give you the full eight core gpu okay specs out of the way thank goodness how long have we we've only been going for a couple of minutes especially the most boring part but we got there they're important got to talk about the specs i like getting them out as quickly as possible so let's talk about those other things under the hood that differentiate the two computers the two that i want to talk about today is the macbook pro has both a brighter 500 display and it has an active cooling system which i mean active cooling system is just a fancy way to say fan the macbook air has a 400 display and most impressive of all this thing doesn't have a fan inside of it at all the 2020 intel model did have a fan this doesn't have any active cooling so let's first physically dive into the two laptops the macbook pro and the macbook air are in the exact same bodies as the intel based versions of these computers that was released earlier this year the macbook air is shaped a little differently that the rear of the laptop is a little wider than the front of the laptop giving it more of like a wedge shape while the macbook pro is more unified across it's the same width from the back to the front if you keep this in a dock all the time who cares nobody the answer is nobody cares but if you're using the computers to directly work from i do prefer the wedge shape of the macbook air it makes it far more comfortable for me to type on from both a desk like right here or even what more likely with the macbook air is i'll do a lot of my work from my lap which means i'll be sitting on a couch i'll be sitting in a comfy chair or i'll even be like playing some games before bed yes i know you're not supposed to look at screens before bed there isn't anything wrong with the shape of the macbook pros 13 again i've used one for years if you're not directly typing on this thing on a desk you will get some discomfort and maybe even a little bite from the edge of the laptop on your forearm i mean this is pretty it's kind of an intense edge but as we're talking about it let's get into the keyboards and typing on the laptops both are fantastic you've heard me say this many i'm not gonna say hundreds of times but you have heard me say this many times that the apple magic keyboard on the 13-inch bodies is absolutely my favorite typing experience on planet earth i actually look forward to having the opportunity to type a long project out on these things because it never ever gets old i get that that sounds a little over dramatic sure gary you spend all day long typing and you just love typing so much on these laptops and i'm a typing nerd so yes i actually do normally i work with the macbook pro in a doc and work on a normal keyboard and mouse which are fine i mean i wouldn't do it if i didn't get work done or it wasn't efficient but i love i love working on the keyboard on both of these computers when it comes to the physical keyboard difference the biggest difference between the two besides that slope that we already talked about is the macbook air does have a physical row of function keys on the top like row of the keyboard the macbook pro has the touch bar and this part i can't tell you which to pick the touch bar is hyper subjective people either love it or hate it yes you do get more roth functionality out of the touch bar than the fixed function keys i mean you can set this up to do a lot of cool stuff but i actually prefer the function keys i just give me an actual key as often as possible and all these computers have the little emoji key big fan both computers do have top firing speakers right next to their keyboards and both are they're pretty okay i do like how this generation of apple laptops has the speakers on top and i do think they are on the top rung of all laptops for audio quality i would say the macbook pro probably has the technically better speaker but i can't tell the difference between the two and if somebody were to tell me they were totally different or if somebody were telling me they were the exact same i still wouldn't be able to tell the difference i'm definitely not an audiophile in any way shape or form i just need my hamilton and my team's meetings to sound good enough and how good do you need hamilton and teams meetings to sound the bar is not that high moving up on the body of the laptop the screen of the laptops is the exact same as the earlier models meaning both have very sharp and very color accurate retina panels when it comes to resolution and color accuracy both are 2560 by 1600 panels with true tone options and with the p3 color gamut like we said in the intro the only difference here is the macbook pro will go to 500 nits while the macbook air is stuck at 400 nits is that a big difference if you're going to be using these laptops in a variety of situations then the knits will start making a difference if you're going to be inside or you're going to be in like a dank office in your basement all day long it's not that big of a deal but i have noticed that the macbook air can be a little more difficult to see if i'm sitting at my kitchen table in the morning or evening as that bright sun starts to show through both of these have the exact same 720p web camera the new m1 computers are running a new image sensor processor which should give a little bit better sharpness and look to the built-in webcam and yeah it looks a little bit better still a 720p webcam though and when it comes to ports both of these computers do have two thunderbolt 3 ports and a headphone jack and one of the unfortunate parts about this whole series is no matter how much money you spend you cannot change this the two port situation doesn't bother me as much on the macbook air because it's cheaper it's 300 cheaper and the macbook air is more of an ultrabook that is supposed to be as light and nimble as possible but it does bother me on the macbook pro 13 because it does fetch a higher price and it should be a more capable machine with as versatile as thunderbolt 3 is the way to increase versatility on these computers is to give them more ports and so i just i just wish this was the four port model i know these are the low end and i know there's going to be higher end versions coming out but even then i wish this had four ports so that's enough about the physical differences of the two computers and we've seen this before not that big of a deal you could have made this video on the 2020 i5 versions so how is the performance difference here's where it gets awkward i haven't seen that much real difference between the two yes i know that technically with its extra core and with the fan the macbook pro is the more competent computer especially if you're doing bigger tasks over a longer period of time personally i do not care about numbers numbers don't get work done nor do numbers push my purchasing decision the two types of work that i do are video processing and editing and office clerical work powerpoint excel stuff like that we've had the computer power for word powerpoint all those standard things for the past 30 years you do not need anything fancy to run that but just as a note with these new m1 processors all these programs especially the iwork software from apple it loads almost instantly something that both of these m1 macbooks will ruin you on forever is having instantaneous access to all of your applications and programs it's not that the intel macs are slower okay it is that they are slower in some ways but the way the unified memory and the arm architecture works it makes everything else once you start using these and the the programs are like instantly open everything else feels like it's lagging so clerical work office workers all of us productivity people hooray we're handled we could have been handled on a computer from 2010 but how do these computers compare for tougher tasks like video editing i've already made a couple of videos showing how both of these function for video editing when using final cut pro which is my editor of choice so you can see exactly how these work in those videos after having made those videos i haven't seen that big of a difference i personally do have the higher end spec model of the macbook pro so everything is a little bit smoother with that 16 gigabytes of ram i've done a lot of work and have had no problems with the eight gigabytes of memory and the one less gpu core on the macbook air which you could actually upgrade with the higher end air if you really wanted to so this the differences that i've seen are more of a self-imposed limitation on my part and it's not really any indication of the macbook air as a whole it's really just not there unless you are really stressing the systems to bring the active cooling in as a significant factor and if you are doing that you are really pushing these computers to the max in real normal daily use either as an office worker or a final cut video editor or a content creator on other platforms you likely won't see a difference and i do mean that in performance in both how powerful each computer is but also and what's really impressed me how long each computer lasts the battery life on both of these machines is downright ludicrous the macbook air is reported to have a screen on video watching time of 18 hours of battery life while the macbook pro gets slated at over 20. what at those kind of numbers the two hour difference sure could be a big deal if you find yourself in some kind of a weird window where in 18 hours of use not 18 actual hours 18 hours of use which could be stretched over a few days in that time you weren't able to plug it into the wall or you couldn't find some kind of external battery that's a really edge case scenario the battery life on both is outstanding in a normal tech video like in a normal video would not talk about the m1 macbooks i normally give a thumbs up or down if the gizmo can last longer than a standard workday and when i say that i assume you'll be on and off the machine going to and from meetings in back or maybe you'll be on phone calls not actively using that device for that whole eight hours and these these two laptops blow that metric away handily these are so good i might have to come up with a new metric for how good battery life on technology can be we've already seen all the shock face tweets and videos about the battery life in my opinion of it so we won't go much farther than this but from actual personal use as i was typing out the script for this video i hadn't charged the macbook air in about 20 hours and i'd used it pretty seriously over the course of that day and i'd only charged when i charged it i only charged it to 75-ish percent and the power that we reached as we were finishing the script was 14 that's unreal battery life and it's a great indicator of how much these m1 computers change the game for how laptops will operate in the future and yes because we did the video the way we did it you get to see all the typos and spelling mistakes i make when writing these scripts he's taken off a long time to make but at the end of the day so what right the real question of this video isn't what's different it's not what's different about these laptops it's which one should you get or to phrase it a little bit better which one would i recommend the problem with making a recommendation though is there isn't just one thing that i can point to and say aha there's the deal breaker the macbook air is actually full of air and we all know this look i'm a tech youtuber pretty sure you can't use a computer made of air the macbook pro wins we can't we can't do that right the performance in my experience again i don't care about artificial benchmarks i care about real world use it's just not that different between the two the battery life is also not that different between the two computers ports are pretty similar the keyboards are pretty similar the overall use is pretty similar the real actual differences to make your decision are the hundred nits of brightness between the displays touch bar versus physical function keys active cooling versus no cooling and the price we already said that on the base models you'll save about three hundred dollars and if you start specking these out you'll save about 200 on an equivalently spec macbook air as opposed to the pro in the past few weeks i've personally been using the macbook pro 13 as my do everything computer now this set into my dock plugged into my ultrawide monitor it's where i've done all of my video and social media work but but i use the macbook air for literally everything else this has kind of replaced my ipad and i always have this on me and if we're being honest with each other if we're being honest i do kind of wish that i bought the version with the 8 core gpu and 16 gigabytes of ram and a bigger hard drive because this is because i personally really like the macbook air better and this might be the best computer released of this year it might be the best computer released this year or in recent memory this is a fantastic computer but the pro is probably the more practical choice and if you like this video and you're on board you're like okay gary i've seen your video i'm on board with the m1 mac good news i've got some videos right here that will show you all of my favorite accessories for these two computers and you can find those by clicking right here normally it's just one we're gonna do two today click click click click click click click thanks for watching

Channel: The Everyday Dad

Views: 530,627

Keywords: the everyday dad, MacBook, m1 MacBook Air, m1 MacBook Pro, which MacBook should you buy, apple MacBook, new MacBook

Id: e6IhGNC70WY

Length: 14min 37sec (877 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 02 2020