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MacBook Pro M1 Initial Review: The Almost Perfect Laptop

There is so much I want to talk about but at that point, I’d be writing a novel. So I’ll try to keep it as short as I can and post additional tests and such on a different day. But it will still be a long one so buckle up!

The last time I used an Apple computer was back in 2010 which was the year I graduated. As my school only had iMacs, didn’t have much of a choice. Since then I didn’t bother with MacBooks because regardless of what Apple fans may think, they were just glorified laptops that you can get on Windows Space.

They had some advantages that were subjectively better like build quality (until you bring up Butterfly keyboards) and somethings that were objectively better such as speakers. But you can get 90-95% of the way there in build quality with a Windows laptop such as the Dell XPS line while having significantly better performance with less cost because on Windows, you had the choice of going Nvidia. And with Nvidia, you had significantly better encoders and CUDA acceleration for third party apps. While Apple specific (and some third party) apps certainly performed well with AMD GPUs on MacOS, majority of the third party apps (even now) performed much better on Nvidia hardware.


But the main claim to fame was the fact that on a MacBook, other than if you liked MacOS/Apple Software better than/on Windows, you could run full tilt on battery where as on Windows, you got heavily nerfed when you were on battery. But what Apple fans forget to tell you (which now they are doing with M1 vs Intel MacBooks comparison) is that running full tilt would net you shit battery life because again, Windows and MacBooks used the same hardware.

So all this brings us to where we are now with the M1. Apple ditched Intel and AMD and made their own CPU and GPU. Then they fixed the shitty Butterfly keyboards, brought back many of the ports, got rid of dual booting to Windows and with Pro 14/16, added a horrifying ugly notch and included an incredible Mini-LED screen with 10,000 dimming zones + 1600 nits peak brightness. So how is it?

Performance:

Shadow of Tomb Raider - Highest Setting

Plugged In:

Dell XPS 17 i7 10th gen 8 core 16 thread + 2060 Max Q: 68fps

MacBook Pro M1: 47fps

The PC gamer in me:

Me who spent $2700 on Macbook Pro:

But the MacBook Pro has a trick up its sleeve…


On battery:


Dell XPS: 18fps

MacBook Pro M1: 46fps

I wasn't expecting my XPS to get shat on that badly on battery. I installed the latest drivers and put it on max performance mode and everything. I'll test my sister's laptop with Ryzen and 3070 and see how that fairs on a separate review.

PS: SoTR is running through a translation layer called Rosetta which has a performance hit on M1. If it was Native, it probably could hit 60fps but I doubt that will happen cause Apple hates progress and got rid of Vulkan a long time ago.

Battery Life:

It’s insane… I charged it to 96% at 9AM yesterday and at 7AM today, it was at 38%. Now I wasn’t doing full tilt heavy usage stuff and I also didn’t use it the entire day. It was mostly just doing things such as web browsing, watching YouTube, Watching the Boys, installing things like Parallels, Crossover and doing tests. But for comparison, I would have had to recharge by Dell XPS 17 2-3 times doing similar things. The MacBook Pro is 100 WHr vs Dell XPS 17 is 97 WHr but the efficiency of the M1 is crazy.

RAM:

If you watch reviews of the M1 Pro 16, you would get the impression that Apple has some sort of a magical RAM management system where you don’t need more than 16GB. I’ll tell you right now that it’s BS unless all you do is web browsing and light tasks. For reference, I am consistently at 13/16GB of ram usage. On a few of the benchmark runs, I ran out of RAM on SoTR and lost 20fps. The tech iterate YouTubers ignore the fact that unlike before, the RAM you get is shared between the CPU and GPU instead of the GPU having it’s own RAM pool. So you run out of RAM very fast if you do things that are intensive.

OS:

There are so many dumb things about MacOS that it needs a separate review. The file management system has to be one of the most facepalm worthy shit ever. You want to view a specific folder? Good luck lmao! Thank god Steam can open the game folder through it’s launcher. It also doesn’t have default write support for NTFS or allow bitlocker. You will essentially have to buy third party software to add in various functionality that Windows has out of the box. I suggest Parallels which is VM software for Mac. Then you install Windows on Arm on it and it’s very seamless experience from then.

Screen:

You will not find another laptop screen that is this fap worthy. You will want to rewatch all your shit on it.

Speakers:

These can legit, sound like desktop speakers with a sub. Insanely good.

Notch:

Apple fans and reviewers are like, you won’t notice it. Uh no. It’s big and ugly. You absolutely will notice it. Its main purpose is nothing else but to let people know you own a newer MacBook. I tried watching porn and it felt like Tim cook was watching me jerk off.

Steam Remote Play:

I tried on Steam’s remote play from my Desktop to my MacBook Pro. First round, yikes… Then I went into the settings and enabled all the Nvidia features for host and hardware acceleration for client and boom. It’s actually pretty good and the black levels on the MacBook screen shit on my 4k PC monitor.

App Store integration…

Apple claims you will be able to run iOS/iPad apps seamlessly on it… Except the devs will have to opt into it… Which 90% of them don’t as far as I can tell. Banking apps? Nope… Netflix app? Naw… Crypto Apps? Nah… Genshin Impact? Not a chance…

And there’s a lot more to talk about which I will save for another time.

So overall, there is not another laptop that has gotten so many things right. Its biggest downfall is Apple themselves. My biggest problem is going to be 16GB of RAM but Costco doesn’t sell the 32GB otherwise I would have picked that up. If I returned this and get the 32GB instead, due to discounts and Costco including Apple Care, I would be spending around $1400sh for that 32GB of RAM. So I think I’ll just deal with the 16GB and trade it in eventually with a newer model.

Last edited by Jizz_Beard_thePirate - on 04 June 2022