M3 Max MacBook Pro 14 & 16 Review - OVERKILL!?

okay look at this this is my little setup I want to kick the video off with a quick Benchmark this is blender running the Ripple demo I'm just going to go with first one to 500 frames of this render wins and we have the mbook pro 16 from earlier this year with the M2 Max we've got the new M3 Max 14 and the new M3 Max 16 and then behind this guy we've got a pretty much top spec Max studio with the M2 Ultra outputting to this studio display up here and I think it's going be close we've got the 16 on 460 frames 14 on a little bit less 450 is the studio on 470 it's going to be close not much in it which is ridiculous so let's go with which one I think it's going to win M Pro 16 3 minutes on the dot bang the Mac Studio 3 minutes 4 seconds uh 3 minutes 9 seconds from map Pro 14 and we've got somewhere to go on the M2 Max 16 from literally January in fact no that's not even the craziest thing this guy came out in June with the M2 Ultra which is essentially two M2 Maxes two of these chips inside and obviously doesn't have any of the thermal constraints that you'd have on a laptop like this and this has more RAM now sadly I don't have the M1 Max MacBook Pro 16 there from a couple of years ago although I did run the same test a few months ago with that so I'll bring that in later with those results there we go 5 minutes 31 seconds holy moly so by just a few seconds the 16 beats the M2 Ultra the 14's right on its tail and then a couple minutes later the M2 Max problem is as impressive as this performance is I would be very annoyed if i' bought one of these earli in the year I don't know about you so I've spent pretty much my whole weekend testing these guys out and the results are really interesting but I do want to caveat this video and kind of call it a first review because there's a lot more I want to test first ly these are both M3 Maxes a big thanks to Apple for actually providing two review samples for me to test and Benchmark but they are like the top spec variants so I don't yet know how it compares to the M3 or the M3 Pro those are big questions especially as the range of these mapbook Pros go from like 16 or 1,700 up to like 7200 so obviously big questions about how the M3 family compare particularly where the M3 Pro looking like perhaps it's been slightly downgraded this year and it's more like now we have a M3 lowend M3 Pro middle end and M3 Max high end so make sure you hit that subscribe Button as I'll have a full MacBook Pro buying guide coming very soon but for now for this video it's all about seeing just what these top speec M3 Max Pros are actually capable of but first before we fully node out over some test results and benchmarks let's just take a moment to appreciate this new space black color which really is a bit tasty because now for whatever reason only the cheapest $1 in with the M3 is still available in space gray otherwise it's space black or good old silver and it's just nice to have something a little bit different because it's actually the first visual difference we've had in the MacBook Pro lineup in well three generations now and I genuinely think it's the best color it looks really really nice although I am already starting to pick up some fingerprints now this new anti-fingerprint analization coating is only on the outside of the laptop the bottom and the top the lid here it's not on the inside and so uh be careful of your greasy point prints getting all over this which I can see on the keyboard is already getting a bit smudged even after just like 4 days of use I swear I clean my hands I'm not that dirty as a person I promise but I'm already getting a little bit of sort of grease stains on the keyboard I wish they do something about that is it just me Apple have also increased the screen's brightness so if I bring in uh what was my current working laptop the uh mapbook Pro 16 with M2 Max pop the brightness on all three to the max level I've turned off that app I use which unlocks the HDR brights across them because this is just for the SDR but let's put it to the test I've got my little Lux meter here Apple display p3500 nits and then over here on the new one you've got P3 600 nits about 440 look at that 567 so that should only be 100 nits brighter but it's actually more like 120 so definitely brighter on the new guy this now is 600 nits so it will match that guy the studio display although obviously that's still 60 HZ and these are promotion I would have very much liked it if uh Apple had updated the displays to maybe a promotion and also if they' updated the peripherals the keyboard the mouse that magic mouse still lightning still that ridiculous underneath charging system I don't know why they didn't update it but design wise no change at all this year the same weight same form factor and they're still both lovely looking laptops although the 16 is quite heavy is quite a dense laptop between the two in terms of size and know it personal preference I think most people actually prefer the 14 it is noticeably lighter and smaller you can see there versus the 16 and a lot of people you know take this out and about and then come home and plug it into their display which is a great setup for me because I'm regularly traveling and editing videos I do appreciate the 16-in even though it is more expensive roughly 300ish more expensive once you start going up the specs and it is bigger and heavier I do like the extra screen space so space black and a slightly brighter screen with SDR use that's pretty much it on the outside now let's talk about the good stuff on the inside I have a policy here speed and power it is pretty exciting that the M3 family are the first 3 nanometer chips that we've seen in a desktop or laptop like this beating Intel AMD mediatech qualcom as Apple very much are at the front in terms of their architecture for the chips and that gives you better efficiency better performance uh and the M3s also give us av1 Hardware decoding for the first time which is great but a couple of things to bear in mind firstly all the memory bandwidths are a little bit lower for some reason this year versus the M2 series across the board not just with the M3 Max also if you want more than 36 gigs of their memory you're going to have to spec up to the M3 Max Max which feels a bit limiting now as I say I've got the 14 and the 16 here both very high-end M3 Max specs although this 16in is the absolute tiptop 7300 Lish monster it's a bit ridiculous frankly although I doubt most people would be opting for a terab of storage and also the new highest end 128 gig memory option and let's kick off with geekbench side by side you can see there isn't really that much difference between the M3 Max 14 and 16 versus the M2 Max we're looking at about a 133% % boost in single 42% in multicore and averaging the two Graphics tests a fairly modest 8% optic but then if I bring in the 2-year-old M1 Max we're seeing a much more significant 33% single core 75% multi-core and 36% Graphics boost versus the current Max studio with M2 Ultra impressively the M3 Maxes beat it in single core roughly match it in multi but they do seem to fall significantly behind in the graphics department but then again we are looking at nearly double the GPU cores on the M2 Ultra and also I ran that same 500 frame blender Ripple demo and if I bring up those results again so with the M1 Max M2 Max M2 Ultra and M3 Max side by side we're actually seeing the new Chips match or even slightly beat the max Studios M2 Ultra however in the blender Benchmark which is comprised of three tests for the overall system the CPU and the GPU the Mac Studio is actually still 15 to 20% faster than the M3 Max okay so let's jump over to the new cinebench 2024 test which has been significantly overhauled versus the older R23 version and also now has a dedicated graphics test which uses the same rendering engine as Cinema 4D and here the M3 Max absolutely dominates single core performance hasn't changed significantly but multi-core is 53% higher than the M2 Max although the M2 Ultra still wins here but in the graphics test the M3 Max is 120% faster than the M2 Max over two times faster and also 42% faster than the M2 Ultra now in premere Pro I loaded up my video This is the first impressions video from that Apple scary fast event in New York a few days ago and I tested how long it took to export on the new laptops in h264 4k 60 FPS maximum render maximum death set death depth settings checked and it took 11 minutes 55 with my Pro 16 with the M2 Max 9 Minutes 33 on the max Studio 9 minutes 17 on the new M3 Max Pro 14 but then the clear winner is the new Pro 16 with M3 Max and running a quick w stabilized test on a 10-second clip we're looking at 32 seconds 29 seconds 27 seconds and then just 20 seconds on the pro 16 however once again my real world results seemed to go against my synthetic Benchmark results because I ran the Premier Pro Puget test Benchmark try saying that three times very quickly and in both the standard and the extended Benchmark the Mac Studio does actually win here although currently the pure test only runs on the older 23.6 premere pro software version my real world test T were on version 24 so maybe there's a difference there now it's really interesting that Apple are pushing gaming on these new laptops we've got Hardware rate tracing supported by the M3 series mesh shading which helps developers improve frame rates obviously the problem is there still isn't very many games that you can play on Mac it is getting better I mean I was hoping to play City skyline 2 on this the first one's on Mac but the second one not yet available I ran shadow of the Tomb Raider and the new Total War Pharaoh game because those are two games with benchmarking tools you you can see the Max studio does actually win here which perhaps fair enough it does have 76 GPU cores compared to 40 on the M3 Maxes and 38 on the M2 Max and also just for fun the MacBook air2 the 15-in with the M2 Chip and of course this is a fanless design so the performance is significantly lower now I know what you're thinking yes these are a little bit faster but just wait until you play a rate Trace game and I will wait because right now there really isn't anything to show off so really right now I think it's more about game developers uh having access to the tools than actually be able to play them yourself what's interesting though is that if we go by Apple's numbers with the M3 Pro versus the M2 Pro Apple say we're looking at about a 20% CPU boost and about a 10% Graphics boost not too significant but the M3 Max versus the M2 Max they say up to a 45% faster CPU and a 20% faster GPU so it does seem the upgrade from the M2 Max to the M3 Max will be more significant than the M2 Pro to the M3 Pro now what's interesting here as I'm running this cinebench test is I can definitely hear the fan on the 14 much louder than the 16 they're both wearing up I'm testing the uh multicore Benchmark currently but the 14 is louder and the fans kicked in sooner but what's interesting if I switch to this temperature monitor we're looking at a pretty high we look at 99 Celsius average 104 Peak on the 14 95 average 100 Peak 101 so sort of four de is and this is with high performance mode on both I suspect if I kept that in automatic modee it wouldn't get as high but I want the best sort of performance for these benchmarks in terms of external temperature let me grab my laser thermometer here okay 38.5 on the 14 versus 35 so far so about 3° cooler on the inside and on the outside with the 16 over the 14 both with the M3 Max I am also finding the new M3 Max a couple of degrees cooler than the M2 Max the hottest point I've recorded is roughly where the fan exhaust is here and I've got a peak of 42.4 there versus 40.4 so a couple of degrees cooler but for me I want to see how they compare in the lap burning test because I use these in my videos I have found the M2 Max gets quite toasty underneath so flipping these over let's have a little look how the surface temperature Compares 38.8 on the M2 Max versus oo look at that 34 that's a significant difference 3 38.8 versus 34 and you can feel it actually you can feel that difference this is significantly warmer than this guy so that's definitely a plus for me but of course the best bit is that you'll get nearly almost the same performance on battery as you do plugged in and honestly that for me is one of the main reasons I still go for a Macbook however that doesn't seem to be the case when it comes to gaming in Total War pharoh running the battle Benchmark on battery alone I was getting a pretty stuty 26 frames per second plugged in and we're getting about a six times boost up to the mid High 120s so for gaming it seems like your Windows laptops you definitely want this connected to the power in terms of battery life they should be pretty similar to the M2 series although actually it's worth bearing in mind that the bass M3 14in and also I believe the Bas 16in with the M3 Pro will last longer than the highest spec Pro and Max variants because they use more power uh so there is a bit of a compromise there if you do spend more to get the higher performance you will lose about 3 to four hours of battery versus the base level model so that could be another reason to go for the entry level m34 in my only issue with that is that it only comes with 8 gigs of RAM definitely pay the extra 200 to double it to 16 and I just still think it's a bit unforgivable that Apple give us a Pro laptop with only 8 gigs of ram in 2024 as for the webcams well there shouldn't be that much difference it's the same TTP Hardware same sensor but what is different is we have the m three chip which has a new ISP and better neural network stuff so Apple say it should improve the white balance Den noise quality things like that and I'm also noticing my tech chap neon sign there is actually flickering on the M2 Max but it's not on the M3 which is nice what do you reckon looking at the two can you see much of a difference so that's my first review obviously you have loads more questions I do as well but I need more time to Benchmark more applications I also need more devices to get a better broader understanding of how the M3 the pro and the max compare that's the crucial question but first impressions of the M3 maxes at least is that the performance is incredible it easily trades blows with the M2 Ultra in the Mac Studio which is incredible in its own right and a pretty healthy upgrade over the M2 Max it also begs the question why anyone would buy a Max studio anymore at least until we see a M3 Ultra refresh perhaps middle of next year I mean if we can get similar performance for less money in a you know portable laptop then why wouldn't you there is still an argument for the Mac Pro because you got the expandability but for the studio unless you need that stupidly High 192 gigs of RAM and those extra GPU cores are specifically useful for what you're using for most of us I'd say a MacBook Pro is the better option would I rush out and buy one of these if I already own a MacBook Pro with a M1 Max or M2 Max probably not but it all depends on what you're using it for if you're running Medical Imaging or you know 3D rendering CAD design game development and perhaps your company's paying for uh these laptops then yeah maybe is worth the upgrade if you can save a few minutes or a few hours on a render over time perhaps but for people like me people who are certainly not pushing these to their maximum you know performance then you know the M1 Max from a couple years ago is still incredibly powerful and except for perhaps R tracing there's nothing that you can't do on that that you can on this that just doesn't take a little bit longer but certainly these are very impressive laptops and if you are running an older Intel power device then what are you doing you know get one of these immediately but they are very expensive I'm very keen to see how the M3 performs particularly in the smaller 14in but hopefully you still found that somewhat helpful uh don't forget to hit that subscribe button and also give me a thumbs up if you liked it and I'll be back with a full review and comparison very very soon and I'll see you next time right here on the tech chat

Channel: The Tech Chap

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Keywords: macbook pro, macbook pro m3, macbook pro m3 max, m3 pro macbook pro, apple m3 chip, macbook pro 14, macbook pro 2023, m3 pro vs m3 max, m2 vs m3, m2 max vs m3 max, macbook pro 14 vs 16, macbook pro space black, m3 macbook pro, m3 max, macbook pro 16 review, macbook pro 14 review, macbook pro 16 m3 max, macbook pro 14 m3 max, top spec macbook, top spec macbook pro 16, m3 max benchmarks, new macbook pro, macbook pro 16, m3 max macbook pro, m3 max macbook, m3 max 14 vs 16

Id: P0sVCUWJ6VU

Length: 15min 42sec (942 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 06 2023