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00:00Hey guys, I'm Tom of Tech Chap, and the question is, MacBook Pro 14 or 16?
00:05Is bigger always better?
00:10I'm not doing it.
00:10I'm not doing it.
00:11So the new 2023 Pros take what was already pretty much the best laptop in the market
00:15for most of us and adds the faster M2 Pro and Max chips, better connectivity with Wi-Fi 6E
00:21and HDMI 2.1, plus an extra hour of battery life and some minor optimizations to the webcam.
00:26Good stuff.
00:27The only problem is, outside the US at least, these are also a good deal more expensive,
00:32like £300-400 more.
00:34And also, they're not that much of an upgrade.
00:36There's nothing you can really do with these that you couldn't with the old ones.
00:39They're just a bit faster and a little bit more refined.
00:41They're not going to be for everyone.
00:42But if you do have deep pockets and you do fancy upgrading your laptop, whether it's
00:45to these new models or the older 2021s, which size should you go for?
00:50If I bring up the specs of the 14 and the 16 side by side, you can see there are four
00:54main differences.
00:55The M2 Pro chip on the base models is a little bit different.
00:58The size and the weight.
01:00Battery life.
01:00And of course, the price.
01:02So the new MacBook Pro 14 starts at $2,000 or £2,150, whereas the 16 starts at $2,500
01:10or £2,700.
01:12Regardless of how eye-wateringly expensive these things are anyway, paying £550 more
01:17for this guy seems like an awful lot of money, but it's not that straightforward.
01:21Because you do also get a faster 140-watt power adapter thrown in for free with the
01:2616, whereas it will cost you a whole £10 to bump the 14's basic 67-watter to a 96
01:32for faster charging speeds.
01:34OK, that may not be a deciding factor.
01:35What is more important is there is a difference in performance.
01:38Because the M2 Pro in the base 16-inch gets a 12-core CPU and a 19-core GPU, whereas the
01:44entry-level 14 gets 10 and 16 cores, respectively.
01:47And it'll cost you £350 to upgrade it to bring them in line.
01:51Does it make much of a difference?
01:53Well, I have the entry-level model of both sizes here, and the answer is yes, actually.
01:57Either way, you're getting a solid step up over the older M1 Pros, and so performance
02:01isn't exactly in short supply here, but the extra two CPU and three GPU cores average
02:06out to be a 14% boost, which is more significant than I had expected, particularly for the
02:11CPU.
02:12If you do bump up the 14's M2 Pro to the same level as the 16, then the price difference
02:16then becomes just £200, and then all the way up to the same max spec.
02:21They can both go all the way up to an M2 Max with 96GB of their fancy unified memory and
02:26a whopping 8TB of storage, which will cost you somewhere in the region of a 2015 Ford
02:31Fiesta, which is nuts.
02:32To be honest though, these guys are already incredibly fast, and so for my money I would
02:36just go with the base model.
02:38The M2 Pro with 16GB of RAM and 512GB storage, which is what you get with the entry-level,
02:42I think is probably the perfect spec.
02:44Which means the price difference then does go back to £550, which is quite a lot.
02:49Quick side note though, actually, while I've got you and we're talking about performance,
02:52how does the M2 Pro compare with the M2 Max?
02:56Well, let me bring over this guy, which, uh, little behind-the-scenes scripting action
03:03going on there, but this is my review sample from Apple.
03:06This has the M2 Max.
03:07I bought these two myself, so we've got the two M2 Pros with the slightly different core
03:11counts, and then the basically top-spec M2 Max.
03:15There are other variables, like I have more RAM with the Max, but this gives you a rough
03:19idea.
03:19And you can see the big difference is in graphics power, with a whopping 65% boost.
03:24Plus, the Max has a faster media encoder, you can output to more external displays,
03:28and specifically, if you do spec the 16-inch with the Max, you get this high performance
03:33mode, which is hidden away in the battery settings.
03:35And this lets the fan wear up a little bit more to give you slightly better sustained
03:38performance.
03:39And again, this is exclusive to the 16-inch Max.
03:43What did surprise me, though, is that the heat and the cooling and the fan noise were
03:46pretty much the same between them, which is kind of impressive given how much less volume
03:50the 14-inch has, and therefore less space for heat dissipation.
03:53In my testing so far, I haven't found any significant difference there.
03:56Where there is a significant difference is the battery life.
03:59Apple claim the 16-inch will give you 22 hours of movie playback and 15 hours of web browsing,
04:04while the 14 gets you 18 and 12 hours, respectively.
04:07Roughly a 20% shorter battery life.
04:10And that actually does tally with my experience.
04:12All those benchmarks I just showed you, I started with 100% battery life, ran the tests,
04:16this was then down to 70%, this was down to 81%.
04:19So there is a definite advantage of battery life going with the 16-inch,
04:23but I don't think it's a deal-breaker.
04:24The 14 still offers one of the best battery lives you can get on a laptop,
04:27and considering the performance you get with this, not least the performance on battery,
04:31which is like the same thing which you just can't get with any kind of Windows equivalent,
04:34this is still very, very good.
04:35It'll last you all day.
04:36But if you are away from the charger a lot,
04:38and you particularly run a lot of demanding workloads,
04:40then the 16 is definitely worth considering.
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05:27Now the biggest advantage,
05:29aside from the cheaper starting price of the 14,
05:31is of course its size.
05:32If you're a regular on the channel,
05:34you know that I've been using the 16-inch as my main work
05:36and everyday laptop for well over a year now,
05:39since the 2021 models came out,
05:40and now I've upgraded to the M2 Max.
05:43And the bigger screen does come in handy for watching movies in hotel rooms,
05:47or editing a complex video in Premiere Pro,
05:49or just having a couple of tabs side by side.
05:51You do get quite a lot more desktop screen space with this.
05:55But I also travel a lot,
05:56and every time I put this in my backpack or my suitcase,
05:59I think,
06:00oh, I wouldn't mind having the 14-inch instead.
06:02It is noticeably lighter.
06:04We're talking 1.6 kilograms versus 2.1.
06:07And actually, overall, we're looking at a 28% smaller footprint.
06:11And it's also 1.3 millimeters thinner,
06:13although you'd be hard-pressed to tell unless you had them side by side.
06:16But the 14 is a lot easier to lug around all day.
06:19And to be honest, with the 16,
06:20I have sometimes struggled to fit it on an economy plane seat tray table.
06:24I've had to put it on my lap and bring it out in a coffee shop.
06:27You definitely get a few looks,
06:28because it is a pretty big laptop.
06:31So for subtlety, the 14 is definitely nicer.
06:34This is more of a desktop replacement.
06:36Plus, because these new models have the improved connectivity with HDMI 2.1,
06:40in addition to the three Thunderbolt 4 ports,
06:42you can now output via HDMI to a 4K 240 or an 8K 60 display.
06:47Thunderbolt is still better in most ways,
06:48and it can charge the laptop that way.
06:50HDMI can't.
06:51But because you can output to more displays now,
06:53which may not have Thunderbolt or DisplayPorts like these guys,
06:57it means you have a whole lot more options for outputting to an external monitor.
07:01Which means if you are working in a studio or your office or at home with a second screen,
07:05the screen size on your laptop becomes a little bit less important
07:08and portability becomes more of a priority.
07:10And considering how you get the exact same performance on batteries you do plugged in,
07:15which is one of the biggest selling points of MacBooks for me,
07:17the mobility of MacBooks, I think, lends itself to the smaller and lighter 14-inch.
07:22One tip, though, for either size,
07:24but particularly on the 14,
07:25is enabling the Auto Show and Hide Dock setting,
07:28which frees up a decent chunk of space on the screen.
07:31So let's wrap this up.
07:32And the 16 gives you more desktop screen space, obviously.
07:36Roughly a 20% longer battery life.
07:38The more powerful M2 Pro you get with the base model compared to this
07:42is roughly sort of 14, 15% faster.
07:45And if you spec the 16 with an M2 Max,
07:47then you unlock that high performance mode.
07:49Whereas the 14-inch is a whole lot more portable.
07:52It's half a kilogram lighter.
07:54Nearly a third smaller in terms of overall volume.
07:56And since we have better connectivity now and full performance on battery life,
08:00arguably it makes more sense to have the smaller 14.
08:02Plus, it's a lot cheaper.
08:04And again, going back to the comparison of the base spec,
08:08£550 more for the 16.
08:11Definitely stings.
08:12But if I was going to go out and buy one of these for myself right now,
08:16I would go with the 14.
08:19I think I would.
08:20I'd save the money.
08:20And I would go with the cheapest model as well.
08:22Or actually, you know what I would do?
08:23I'd try and get an M1 Pro 2021 14-inch instead and save a whole lot of money.
08:28But the truth is, these are both absolutely incredible laptops
08:31and as close to the perfect laptop, in my opinion,
08:34unless you want to do some proper gaming,
08:36in which case you need Windows,
08:37that you can get right now.
08:38The only problem is they're really bloody expensive.
08:41But what about you?
08:4214, 16 or neither?
08:44Let me know in the comments below.
08:45Also, check out my full 16-inch M2 Max review by clicking here.
08:49And stay tuned for lots more comparisons.
08:51Thank you so much for watching, guys.
08:52I'll see you next time right here on The Tech Chap.