Macbook Pro 14 - A Game Changer OR an EXPENSIVE Beta Product?

welcome to my josh style review of the macbook pro 14. now i know i'm a bit late compared to other reviewers with my review of this laptop that's because i ordered a custom config which took longer to build and ship the reason is i have a sinking suspicion that this might be a laptop i keep for myself so i wanted to make sure it was configured according to my needs the second reason is honestly i just needed to spend proper time with it i'm not saying other laptop reviewers didn't spend proper time with it but for me from the day it arrived i needed to give it the proper amount of days to bring you this detailed review in this video i'm first going to talk about the pros then the cons and at the end i'll wrap by talking about who should buy this laptop the model i have here has the m1 max chip with the 24 gpu cores 32 gig of ram and a 2 terabyte ssd by the way the reason i got the 24 core model not the 32 is because i noticed that the 14 inch comes with a substantially smaller power supply than the 16 inch model so my hypothesis is that the smaller model is power limited and therefore unlikely to be able to fully utilize those extra eight gpu cores that the 32 core model has we'll see how that plays out later in the video now i wanted to get this out in the open to avoid as many stupid comments as possible you could not be watching a less biased reviewer if you've been a subscriber of my channel for a while you'll know i use whatever laptop is best for the task i switch freely between macs and pcs just last year i was editing videos on the macbook pro 16. this year i haven't been using apple laptops at all as windows and linux laptops have been better for me with that out of the way let's get into it here are the pros firstly the performance this laptop is a giant leap forward i'm only going to go over a couple of quick benchmarks to paint a picture and then get straight into real world performance and of course my observations in geekbench which tests a variety of common performance tasks this laptop simply mops the floor with much larger windows gaming laptops in cinebench r23 which maxes out the cpu's performance we see that the only laptop that can beat it is the much larger and certainly louder alienware x15 talking about fan noise when under load this laptop is very quiet compared to the competition even if you do hear the fans they aren't loud nor high pitched so not really disturbing at all which is a relief the macbook metal chassis though does conduct heat so when under full load you will feel warmth however if you install the max fan control app you can bump up the fan speed and it will be cool to the touch i'll place a link to that in the description below and when i maxed out the laptop cpu by the way for 10 minutes i saw no degradation in performance that's what happens if you have a highly powerful chip like this one in a laptop with adequate cooling now i know many of you are bored of hearing youtubers talk about video editing performance but as someone who used to be a performance focused software developer for many years video creation really is one of the most intensive tasks that you can run on a laptop to edit and render the kind of videos you're watching right now i use a very powerful laptop my hp omen with amd's ryzen 5800 hcpu and an nvidia rtx 3070 well i thought it was a very powerful laptop until i got this one in fact i've used a number of high performance intel and amd laptops to edit and render my videos on the alienware x15 with intel's 11th gen cpu the razer blade advance with rtx 3080 etc etc all are substantially larger and heavier laptops than this one but this little macbook pro 14 makes a mockery of them this laptop was the fastest laptop i've ever tested to render one of my complex 4k videos now check this out when i ran the puget premiere pro benchmark which tests more than just rendering you'll see that this is by far the most powerful laptop i've ever run this benchmark on i was also interested to see whether i made the right choice to get the m1 max with the 24 core gpu rather than the 32 core one so i added matt score at monus that is that he got with his 32 core gpu version of the macbook pro 14. you can see their scores are almost identical so i do feel that my hypothesis that the 32 core gpu may not be fed enough power on the 14-inch macbook pro could be correct i'd like to do more testing on it though i do want to say compared to the other high powered windows laptops i definitely noticed that when editing videos on this one it was noticeably smoother it also ran cooler to the touch and it was almost dead silent even when rendering you do hear the fans but they are so much quieter than the windows pc laptops that i've been using i mean heck i used to wear headphones when editing my videos in order to block out the fan noise i no longer need to do this because this laptop is so quiet this is the kind of technology innovation that really makes a difference this is a bit of an extreme example but when i personally travel i've been bringing two laptops with me a larger high powered one for video editing and then a smaller everyday carry not anymore this one is faster than those larger ones so i only need to bring one laptop with me which is a relief let's switch to software development when developing software you're typing on the keyboard a lot the last thing you want is for the laptop to feel uncomfortably warm to the touch this was the main reason i loved coding on my surface book too it had all the heat generating parts like the processor behind the screen not only is this laptop very fast for coding but when performing intensive tasks like compiling code debugging app servers etc etc this laptop only gets a little warm to the touch and if you install the max fan control app that i spoke about earlier you can simply just bump up the fans a little bit and the chassis will feel cool again now i did try the game on this laptop and had zero expectations of it being a good experience but again i was impressed i was able to play league of legends which although it's not normally an intensive title i set it to run at the displays native 3024 by 1964 resolution on higher settings at those settings it does make the game pretty intensive i got well above 60 frames per second for a very enjoyable gaming experience and as i understand league of legends is still running via rosetta 2 emulation i can't imagine how good the performance will be for games running native on apple silicon for the first time ever i think there could be a future for gaming on apple's computers if game developers build natively for them let's talk about the display i love the 14 inch form factor it is my favorite size for a laptop large enough to get real work done but keeping the laptop small and light enough to be portable the screen is an absolute pleasure to look at it's insanely bright so much so that for the first time ever i almost always used it with the brightness turned down a couple of notches the color reproduction was outstanding due to its excellent brightness contrast and high resolution everything looked super crisp so much so that i was comfortable running the display on the more space setting for the entire time i used the laptop this allowed me to see an insane amount of information on screen i use excel to measure how much vertical information i can see the combination of the more space setting and the screens close to 3x2 aspect ratio enable me to see more rows of excel than on any other laptop i've ever tested even laptops far larger than this one this is a phenomenal result and something that will really help people like software developers or those using office applications who benefit from seeing more information vertically on a screen the display also allows you to dim it till it goes completely black which i like say you are downloading something while watching a movie in a dark room you can essentially turn off the screen so it's not distracting lastly the fast resolution 120hz kept moving things on screen looking very smooth the trackpad is excellent as always and it's a relief to be back using a max trackpad seriously even today so few pc laptops have decent track pads they are either way too slippery or they aren't slippery enough and your finger gets stuck as you are trying to glide apple is still the best in the business here the keyboard's feel has improved over prior models honestly they're magic keyboards that came in laptops prior to this one i did not like at all they felt noticeably low travel and no i'm not referring to their awful butterfly keyboards which were horrendous i mean the ones that came after that in laptops like their macbook pro 16 from 2019 i have literally avoided using macs for my everyday laptop since 2015 because of their uncomfortable keyboards i'm glad to say this keyboard is finally comfortable enough it's no hp spectre or omens keyboard but it's good enough it's also nice to see that there is no silliness with the keyboard where light-colored keys are combined with a light-colored backlight making the keys hard to make out in certain lighting conditions a lot of pc laptop makers seem to have taken this stupid approach in 2021 here we've correctly got black colored keys with a white backlight the build quality is excellent it looks gorgeous on the desk it just feels like every part of this device is high quality even the keys have a nice quality feel to them plus the small bezels make it look super modern the laptop is also very rigid yet it still opens with one hand i was a bit worried that it would feel a little heavy to walk around with but it really doesn't it's very portable the ports are really good i love the return of magsafe with that satisfying magnetic click when you attach the power to the laptop and since all its thunderbolt 4 ports on both sides of the laptop support charging you do not have to run a power cable around the back if your power outlet is on the other side of the charging capable port which can really be annoying and plagues other laptops it's also great as a video creator to have a fast full-sized sd card reader and for some people i'm sure it's welcome to have an hdmi port the speakers are absolutely fantastic the sound is crisp they get super loud and they do not distort at loud volumes in addition to dominating the trackpad space for the last couple of years apple has also dominated the laptop speaker space here's how the webcam looks and sounds in excellent lighting additions finally apple has put a decent webcam in this laptop lastly these laptops can be purchased with applecare plus which i personally believe offers the best warranty coverage of any laptop in the industry it even offers accidental damage protection several other manufacturers do offer something similar but honestly i don't find using their warranty as easy as apples where you can literally walk into stores all over the world for help alright here are the cons let's talk about that notch it's annoying as hell firstly it's really big on this 14-inch laptop it definitely feels like they were trying to fit in something extra here like face id but pulled it at the last minute there is no reason it should be this large and it really creates issues when using the laptop i know reviewers have said that it doesn't bother them because it blends in with the menu bar but i completely disagree firstly a lot of power users hide the menu bar for more screen real estate secondly the menu bar often has important icons in them with access to key functionality this reduces the space for those icons and lastly it's full of bugs for example if i hide the menu bar i still can't move windows up to that area of the screen i get it you don't want to move windows up when a portion of the window can be hidden by that notch but there are some applications that will be fine with the notch i would like the ability to choose that or disable the ability to hide the menu bar plus those important icons i mentioned if they don't fit in the available space they just seem to disappear off to nowhere and i can't access them or the functionality in them speaking of bugs i did notice some artifacts when rendering a video on this mac in premiere pro it seems like other software companies in addition to apple really need to iron out some bugs next battery life really isn't great doing standard work tasks on this laptop using things like zoom citrix browsing the web office etc i only got around five to six hours i thought i might be an outlier here but daniel from zone of tech confirmed that his macbook pro 14 with the m1 max had similar battery life hopefully when more apps switch to running native of apple silicon and not rosetta 2 we'll see an improvement but right now this is not a laptop to get if you want long battery life next and this is an apple os thing if you're switching from windows you'll notice that this operating system has an insane number of pop-ups it's really annoying and disruptive plus why do i need a separate username and password for the computer and one for my itunes account seriously apple get your together the laptop is also crazy expensive starting at 2 000 us dollars but very quickly getting close to 3 000 if you add in a couple of upgrades and add apple care plus which i recommend heck it cost me 400 us dollars to upgrade to 32 gig of ram that's an extra 16 gig that pricing is just rubbery plus i kind of feel with the issues around the notch that i mentioned i'm left feeling like i'm paying top dollar for a late stage beta product what's awful of course is the laptop's not upgradable so you're faced with the choice of buying a lower end config and not sleeping at night hoping it's good enough or spending more money on a higher end config and hoping you didn't waste money on components you don't need and why at that premium price does it only support some older tech standards wi-fi 6 rather than the newer much faster wi-fi 6e which allows you to use the 6 gigahertz band moving large files on and off your laptop is often very important for power users as you'll see in my wi-fi 6e video which i'll link below wi-fi 6e is much faster than wi-fi 6. the same goes for an hdmi 2.0 port not the newer 2.1 and a uhs 2 card reader not the faster uh s3 one on that note let's wrap this is a fantastic high quality laptop that pushes the entire laptop industry forward it has raised the baseline of what we expect a laptop to be in a very meaningful and positive way this laptop has shown us that we no longer have to accept jet engine fan noise and uncomfortable heat when running high performance tasks there are three main groups of people i believe should buy this laptop one professional creators such as video editors this macbook pro 14 or especially the 16-inch will be a game changer for you two professional programmers this is an excellent laptop for you you'll benefit from the large amount of code you'll see on screen and the powerful components inside which won't make the laptop feel uncomfortably warm while coding these also finally have comfortable keyboards and the 14-inch is super portable if you travel to meet a client or walk around the office to code third if you're just thinking rich for everyone else you just don't need this laptop and shouldn't be envious of those who have it there are tons of good laptops right now for half the price or less of this apple's own macbook air and pro 13 with their m1 chips are great especially for students and casual users just browsing the web responding to emails working from home etc if you want to do a variety of more powerful tasks including some gaming you've got lenovo's legion slim 7 which i like a lot it's super portable and has amd's excellent ryzen 5000 series processor inside paired with up to an nvidia rtx 3060. if you need even more power you've got the hp omen 15 which is the laptop i've used to make most of the videos on this channel it's super powerful can be configured with an excellent 1440 screen it's upgradable and it's quite light for what it is yes those pc laptops are going to sound louder under load and in the hp omens case won't feel as high quality but they are a hell of a lot cheaper i'll post links to all my alternate recommendations to this laptop in the description below well that's all for today folks if you like this video you know what to do smash that like button and get subscribed make sure to follow me on instagram twitter and especially tick tock as i've started posting earlier mini reviews of upcoming tech there until next time go do something awesome with your day and i will catch you later

Channel: Just Josh

Views: 71,029

Keywords: Apple, Lenovo, HP, Dell, Framework, Asus, Acer, Microsoft, Macos, Macbook Pro, Macbook Pro 13, Macbook Pro 14, Macbook Pro 16, Macbook Air, Gaming Laptop, Best Programming Laptop, Programming Laptop, Software Development, Video Editing, Premier Pro, Final Cut, Java, Android Studio, Xcode, Best Laptop, Dell XPS, Razer, Razer Blade Advanced, Windows vs Mac, Mac vs PC, Laptop, Laptop Review, Best Laptop for DJ'ing

Id: LBxskZOsrYk

Length: 16min 47sec (1007 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 12 2021