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00:00Okay, look at this.
00:03This is my little setup.
00:04I want to kick the video off with a quick benchmark.
00:06This is Blender running the Ripple demo.
00:09I'm just going to go with first one to 500 frames of this render wins.
00:13And we have the MacBook Pro 16 from earlier this year with the M2 Max.
00:16We've got the new M3 Max 14 and the new M3 Max 16.
00:20And then behind this guy, we've got a pretty much top spec Max Studio with the M2 Ultra
00:27outputting to this studio display up here.
00:29And I think it's going to be close.
00:30We've got the 16 on 460 frames, 14 on a little bit less, 450-ish.
00:37The studio on 470.
00:38It's going to be close.
00:42Not much in it, which is ridiculous.
00:43So let's go with which one I think is going to win.
00:46MacBook Pro 16, three minutes on the dot, bang.
00:49The Max Studio, three minutes, four seconds.
00:57MacBook Pro 14, and we've got somewhere to go on the M2 Max 16 from literally January.
01:04In fact, no, that's not even the craziest thing.
01:06This guy came out in June with the M2 Ultra, which is essentially two M2 Maxes, two of
01:11these chips inside.
01:12And obviously, it doesn't have any of the thermal constraints that you'd have on a laptop
01:17like this.
01:18And this has more RAM.
01:19Now, sadly, I don't have the M1 Max MacBook Pro 16 there from a couple of years ago, although
01:23I did run the same test a few months ago with that, so I'll bring that in later with
01:27those results.
01:28There we go.
01:29Five minutes, 31 seconds.
01:32Holy moly.
01:34So by just a few seconds, the 16 beats the M2 Ultra, the 14's right on its tail, and
01:40then a couple minutes later, the M2 Max.
01:43Problem is, as impressive as this performance is, I would be very annoyed if I bought one
01:47of these earlier in the year.
01:48I don't know about you.
01:50So I've spent pretty much my whole weekend testing these guys out, and the results are
01:53really interesting.
01:54But I do want to caveat this video and kind of call it a first review, because there's
01:58a lot more I want to test.
01:59Firstly, these are both M3 Maxes.
02:02A big thanks to Apple for actually providing two review samples for me to test and benchmark,
02:06but they are like the top spec variants.
02:08So I don't yet know how it compares to the M3 or the M3 Pro.
02:12Those are big questions, especially as the range of these MacBook Pros go from like £1,600
02:18up to like £1,200.
02:20So obviously big questions about how the M3 family compare, particularly with the M3 Pro
02:25looking like perhaps it's been slightly downgraded this year, and it's more like now we have
02:29a M3 low-end, M3 Pro middle-end, and M3 Max high-end.
02:33So make sure you hit that subscribe button, as I'll have a full MacBook Pro buying guide
02:36coming very soon.
02:37But for now, for this video, it's all about seeing just what these top spec M3 Max Pros
02:43are actually capable of.
02:45But first, before we fully nerd out over some test results and benchmarks, let's just take
02:50a moment to appreciate this new Space Black colour, which really is a bit tasty.
02:56Because now, for whatever reason, only the cheapest 14-inch with the M3 is still available
03:01in Space Grey.
03:02Otherwise, it's Space Black or good old Silver.
03:05And it's just nice to have something a little bit different, because it's actually the first
03:09visual difference we've had in the MacBook Pro lineup in, well, three generations now,
03:13and I genuinely think it's the best colour.
03:15It looks really, really nice, although I am already starting to pick up some fingerprints.
03:19Now, this new anti-fingerprint anodization coating is only on the outside of the laptop,
03:24the bottom and the top, the lid here.
03:26It's not on the inside, and so be careful of your greasy paw prints getting all over
03:31this, which I can see on the keyboard is already getting a bit smudged.
03:35Even after just like four days of use, I swear I cleaned my hands.
03:37I'm not that dirty as a person, I promise, but I'm already getting a little bit of sort
03:42of grease stains on the keyboard.
03:43I wish they'd do something about that.
03:45Is it just me?
03:46Apple have also increased the screen's brightness, so if I bring in what was my current working
03:51laptop, the MacBook Pro 16 with M2 Max, pop the brightness on all three to the max level.
03:58I've turned off that Vivid app I use, which unlocks the HDR brightness across them, because
04:02this is just for the SDR, but let's put it to the test.
04:04I've got my little lux meter here.
04:06Apple Display P3 500 nits, and then over here on the new one, you've got P3 600 nits.
04:12About 440?
04:13Look at that, 567.
04:15So that should only be 100 nits brighter, but it's actually more like 120, so definitely
04:19brighter on the new guy.
04:22This now is 600 nits, so it will match that guy, the studio display, although obviously
04:26that's still 60 hertz and these are ProMotion.
04:28I would have very much liked it if Apple had updated the displays to maybe a ProMotion,
04:32and also if they'd updated the peripherals.
04:34The keyboard, the mouse, that magic mouse, still lightning, still that ridiculous underneath
04:39charging system.
04:40I don't know why they didn't update it.
04:42Now design-wise, no change at all this year.
04:43Same weight, same form factor, and they're still both lovely-looking laptops, although
04:47the 16 is quite heavy, it is quite a dense laptop.
04:50Between the two in terms of size, I know it's personal preference, I think most people actually
04:53prefer the 14.
04:54It is noticeably lighter and smaller, you can see there, versus the 16, and a lot of
04:58people take this out and about and then come home and plug it into their display, which
05:02is a great setup.
05:03For me, because I'm regularly traveling and editing videos, I do appreciate the 16-inch.
05:07Even though it is more expensive, roughly £300-ish more expensive once you start going
05:12up the specs, and it is bigger and heavier, I do like the extra screen space.
05:16So space black, and a slightly brighter screen with SDR use.
05:20That's pretty much it on the outside, now let's talk about the good stuff on the inside.
05:23I have a policy here, speed and power.
05:27It is pretty exciting that the M3 family are the first 3nm chips that we've seen in a desktop
05:32or laptop like this, beating Intel, AMD, MediaTek, Qualcomm, as Apple very much are
05:37at the front in terms of their architecture for their chips.
05:40And that gives you better efficiency, better performance, and the M3s also give us AV1
05:44hardware decoding for the first time, which is great.
05:46But a couple of things to bear in mind, firstly, all the memory bandwidths are a little bit
05:50lower for some reason this year, versus the M2 series across the board, not just with
05:54the M3 Max.
05:55Also, if you want more than 36GB of their memory, you're going to have to spec up to
05:59the M3 Max, which feels a bit limiting.
06:01Now as I say, I've got the 14 and the 16 here, both very high-end M3 Max specs, although
06:06this 16-inch is the absolute tip-top £7,300-ish monster.
06:12It's a bit ridiculous frankly, although I doubt most people would be opting for 8TB
06:15of storage, and also the new highest-end 128GB memory option.
06:20And let's kick off with Geekbench.
06:22Side by side, you can see there isn't really that much difference between the M3 Max 14
06:26and 16, versus the M2 Max, we're looking at about a 13% boost in single, 42% in multi
06:31core, and averaging the two graphics tests, a fairly modest 8% uptick.
06:36But then, if I bring in the two-year-old M1 Max, we're seeing a much more significant
06:4033% single core, 75% multi core, and 36% graphics boost.
06:45Versus the current Max studio with M2 Ultra, impressively the M3 Max's beat it in single
06:50core, roughly match it in multi, but they do seem to fall significantly behind in the
06:54graphics department.
06:56But then again, we are looking at nearly double the GPU cores on the M2 Ultra.
07:00And also I ran that same 500 frame Blender Ripple demo, and if I bring up those results
07:05again, so with the M1 Max, M2 Max, M2 Ultra, and M3 Max side by side, we're actually seeing
07:11the new chips match or even slightly beat the Max studio's M2 Ultra.
07:16However, in the Blender benchmark, which is comprised of three tests for the overall system,
07:20the CPU and the GPU, the Max studio is actually still 15 to 20% faster than the M3 Max.
07:26Okay, so let's jump over to the new Cinebench 2024 test, which has been significantly overhauled
07:31versus the older R23 version, and also now has a dedicated graphics test, which uses
07:35the same rendering engine as Cinema 4D.
07:38And here, the M3 Max absolutely dominates.
07:41Single core performance hasn't changed significantly, but multi core is 53% higher than the M2 Max,
07:47although the M2 Ultra still wins here.
07:49But in the graphics test, the M3 Max is 120% faster than the M2 Max, over two times faster.
07:56And also 42% faster than the M2 Ultra.
07:59Now in Premiere Pro, I loaded up my video.
08:02This is the first impressions video from that Apple Scary Fast event in New York a few days
08:05ago, and I tested how long it took to export on the new laptops.
08:09In H.264, 4K, 60 FPS, maximum render, maximum depth settings checked.
08:16And it took 11 minutes 55 with my Pro 16 with the M2 Max, nine minutes 33 on the Max studio,
08:21nine minutes 17 on the new M3 Max Pro 14.
08:25And then the clear winner is the new Pro 16 with M3 Max.
08:28And running a quick warp stabilize test on a 10 second clip, we're looking at 32 seconds,
08:3229 seconds, 27 seconds, and then just 20 seconds on the Pro 16.
08:38However, once again, my real world results seem to go against my synthetic benchmark
08:43results because I ran the Premiere Pro Puget Test benchmark, try saying that three times
08:48very quickly.
08:49And in both the standard and the extended benchmark, the Max studio does actually win
08:52here.
08:53Unfortunately, the Puget Test only runs on the older 23.6 Premiere Pro software version.
08:58My real world tests were on version 24, so maybe there's a difference there.
09:02Now, it's really interesting that Apple are pushing gaming on these new laptops.
09:05We've got hardware ray tracing supported by the M3 series, mesh shading, which helps
09:08developers improve frame rates.
09:10Obviously, the problem is there still isn't very many games that you can play on Mac.
09:14It is getting better.
09:15I mean, I was hoping to play Cities Skyline 2 on this.
09:18The first one's on Mac, but the second one, not yet available.
09:23I ran Shadow of the Tomb Raider and the new Total War Pharaohs game because those are
09:27two games with benchmarking tools.
09:29You can see the Mac studio does actually win here, which perhaps fair enough.
09:32It does have 76 GPU cores compared to 40 on the M3 maxes and 38 on the M2 max.
09:37And also just for fun, the MacBook Air 2, the 15 inch with the M2 chip.
09:41And of course, this is a fanless design, so the performance is significantly lower.
09:46Now I know what you're thinking.
09:47Yes, these are a little bit faster, but just wait until you play a ray traced game.
09:50And I will wait because right now there really isn't anything to show off.
09:54So really right now, I think it's more about game developers having access to the tools
09:58than actually be able to play them yourself.
10:00What's interesting, though, is if we go by Apple's numbers with the M3 Pro versus the
10:03M2 Pro, Apple say we're looking at about a 20% CPU boost and about a 10% graphics boost.
10:09Not too significant, but the M3 max versus the M2 max, they say up to a 45% faster CPU
10:15and a 20% faster GPU.
10:17So it does seem the upgrade from the M2 max to the M3 max will be more significant than
10:21the M2 Pro to the M3 Pro.
10:23Now what's interesting here as I'm running this Cinebench test is I can definitely hear
10:27the fan on the 14 much louder than the 16.
10:30They're both wearing up.
10:31I'm testing the multicore benchmark currently, but the 14 is louder and the fans kicked in
10:37sooner.
10:38But what's interesting is if I switch to this temperature monitor, we're looking at a pretty
10:44high.
10:45We're looking at 99 Celsius average, 104 peak on the 14, 95 average, 100 peak, 101.
10:53So four degrees-ish.
10:56And this is with high performance mode on both.
10:58I suspect if I kept that in automatic mode, it wouldn't get as high, but I want the best
11:02sort of performance for these benchmarks.
11:04In terms of external temperature, let me grab my laser thermometer here.
11:08Okay, 38.5 on the 14 versus 35 so far.
11:14So about three degrees cooler on the inside and on the outside with the 16 over the 14,
11:18both with the M3 max.
11:20I am also finding the new M3 max a couple of degrees cooler than the M2 max.
11:25The hottest point I've recorded is roughly where the fan exhaust is here.
11:30And I've got a peak of 42.4 there versus 40.4 so a couple of degrees cooler.
11:35But for me, I want to see how they compare in the lap burning test because I use these
11:41to edit my videos.
11:42I have found the M2 max gets quite toasty underneath.
11:46So flipping these over, let's have a little look how the surface temperature compares.
11:5138.8 on the M2 max versus, ooh, look at that, 34.
11:58That's a significant difference, 38.8 versus 34.
12:01And you can feel it actually, you can feel that difference.
12:04This is significantly warmer than this guy.
12:07So that's definitely a plus for me.
12:09But of course, the best bit is that you'll get nearly almost the same performance on
12:14battery as you do plugged in.
12:17And honestly, that for me is one of the main reasons I still go for a MacBook.
12:21However, that doesn't seem to be the case when it comes to gaming.
12:24In Total War Pharaohs, running the battle benchmark, on battery alone, I was getting
12:28a pretty stuttery 26 frames per second plugged in and we're getting about a six times boost
12:34up to the mid high 120s.
12:36So for gaming, it seems like your Windows laptops, you definitely want this connected
12:40to the power.
12:41In terms of battery life, they should be pretty similar to the M2 series, although actually
12:45it's worth bearing in mind that the base M3 14-inch and also I believe the base 16-inch
12:50with the M3 Pro will last longer than the higher spec Pro and Max variants because they
12:55use more power.
12:56So there is a bit of a compromise there.
12:58If you do spend more to get the higher performance, you will lose about three to four hours of
13:01battery versus the base level model.
13:04So that could be another reason to go for the entry-level M3 14-inch.
13:08My only issue with that is that it only comes with eight gigs of RAM.
13:11Definitely pay the extra $200 to double it to $16 and I just still think it's a bit unforgivable
13:15that Apple give us a Pro laptop with only eight gigs of RAM in 2024.
13:21As for the webcams, well, there shouldn't be that much difference.
13:25It's the same TDP hardware, same sensor, but what is different is we have the M3 chip which
13:30has a new ISP and better neural network-y stuff.
13:34So Apple say it should improve the white balance, de-noise, quality, things like that and I'm
13:38also noticing my TechJab neon sign there is actually flickering on the M2 Max but it's
13:44not on the M3 which is nice, but what do you reckon looking at the two?
13:48Can you see much of a difference?
13:52So that's my first review.
13:53Obviously you have loads more questions, I do as well, but I need more time to benchmark
13:57more applications.
13:58I also need more devices to get a better, broader understanding of how the M3, the Pro
14:02and the Max compare.
14:03So that's the crucial question, but first impressions of the M3 Maxes at least is that
14:07the performance is incredible.
14:09It easily trades blows with the M2 Ultra in the Max Studio which is incredible in its
14:13own right and a pretty healthy upgrade over the M2 Max.
14:17It also begs the question why anyone would buy a Max Studio anymore, at least until we
14:21see a M3 Ultra refresh perhaps middle of next year.
14:25I mean if we can get similar performance for less money in a portable laptop then why wouldn't
14:30you?
14:31It's great for the Mac Pro because you've got the expandability but for the Studio,
14:35unless you need that stupidly high 192GB of RAM and those extra GPU cores are specifically
14:40useful for what you're using, for most of us I'd say a MacBook Pro is the better option.
14:45Would I rush out and buy one of these if I already own a MacBook Pro with a M1 Max or
14:49M2 Max?
14:50Probably not, but it all depends on what you're using it for.
14:52If you're running medical imaging or 3D rendering, CAD design, game development and perhaps your
14:57company is paying for these laptops then yeah, maybe it is worth the upgrade if you can save
15:01a few minutes or a few hours on a render over time, perhaps.
15:04But for people like me, people who are certainly not pushing these to their maximum performance
15:09then the M1 Max from a couple of years ago is still incredibly powerful and except for
15:13perhaps ray tracing there's nothing that you can't do on that that you can on this that
15:18just doesn't take a little bit longer.
15:19But certainly these are very impressive laptops and if you are running an older Intel powered
15:23device then what are you doing?
15:25Get one of these immediately.
15:26But they are very expensive, I'm very keen to see how the M3 performs particularly in
15:30the smaller 14-inch but hopefully you still found that somewhat helpful.
15:33Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and also give me a thumbs up if you liked
15:36it and I'll be back with a full review and comparison very very soon.
15:40And I'll see you next time right here on The Tech Chat.