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00:00Hey guys, I'm Tom the Tech Chap and the other day I made a bit of a mistake actually.
00:05I posted my performance comparison video with the new MacBooks and near the end I mentioned
00:10that after a couple hours of benchmarks both the M1 Pro and M1 Max versions of the Pro
00:1616 had a similar 75% of their battery left.
00:19So from that I extrapolated and assumed that they were pretty similar so you weren't
00:56and I guess which is best if battery is important to you.
00:59So here's the lineup, we've got the MacBook Pro 13 with the M1, we've got the 14 with
01:04the M1 Pro, the 16 with the M1 Pro and another 16 with the M1 Max.
01:10This was quite an expensive video to make, only one of these is a review unit so if you
01:14do enjoy the video a little like and subscribe would be very much appreciated.
01:18So let's start with a heavy use rundown test.
01:21All laptops have been set to the same brightness around 50% but using a lux meter, fresh restarts,
01:27all background apps closed to start with and I want to kick off with this Ripple project
01:31in Blender because as I mentioned in my performance test video this is actually a really good
01:36visualizer of the power difference between them and really only the M1 Max can play this
01:41smoothly.
01:42This is the top spec Max by the way with the 32 core GPU and 64 gigs of RAM.
01:47So one hour later and wow yes, there is definitely a trade off here.
01:52The 16 Max is down to just 41% whereas the 16 Pro is still at 73%, the 14 Pro is at 58%
01:59and the 13 is at 73%.
02:02So not a great start for the Max but I was also curious about the temperatures so I grabbed
02:06my trusty thermometer laser gun which I've put somewhere and so right at the end of the
02:11Blender test I measured a peak 37.8 on the 13, 43.3 on the 14, 36.5 on the 16 with the
02:19Pro and 43.2 degrees on the 16 with the Max.
02:24So the 14 inch M1 Pro and the 16 inch Max were the hottest although I would hazard a
02:29guess that the worst offender would probably be a 14 inch M1 Max although sadly I don't
02:34have that one with me here.
02:36So let's now do an hour of YouTube in Chrome with 1440p playback, not as demanding as Blender
02:41of course but it's a bit of variety and so two hours in we're now down to 63, 44, 64
02:48and 30% respectively.
02:51But let's move on to video editing and while Final Cut Pro is of course the best optimised
02:55for Max, I use Premiere Pro, it's still kind of the industry standard so I loaded up a
02:59recent edit I've been working on with multiple 4K 10-bit 422 video tracks, colour corrections,
03:05transitions, the usual stuff and I extended it to an hour in length in the timeline and
03:10with full resolution previews I played it back.
03:12They can all be a bit choppy sometimes depending on what's playing but certainly the M1 Max
03:17does perform the best here.
03:19Although it is also the only model on test with 64GB of unified memory, you can see it's
03:24using up to 42GB with the others bottlenecked to around 12 or 13.
03:30But just before the 3 hour mark at 2.58, the MacBook Pro 16 with the M1 Max kicks the bucket.
03:36It's done.
03:37Leaving the 16-inch M1 Pro with 46% of its battery left.
03:42The 14 is down to 20% and the 13 still on an impressive 44.
03:47And then we were down to 3.
03:48And so from here I rinsed and repeated those three tests but just for 15 minutes each to
03:52keep things fair and in the end we're looking at 5 hours 20, 3 hours 44, 5 hours 35 and
03:59as we saw 2 hours 58.
04:02Of course your mileage may vary but it is a bit concerning that we only just about got
04:073 hours of moderate to heavy use out of the Pro and in fact an hour of that was YouTube
04:12as well, although in Chrome, although it is the M1 optimized version of Chrome.
04:16But still, the fact that this still had 46% of its battery left when this died goes to
04:21show that under load that Max has a massive impact on the battery.
04:26Although to be fair, older MacBook Pros or indeed any Windows laptop with a dedicated
04:30GPU this powerful would probably give you half of that and crucially you wouldn't get
04:34the same performance on battery.
04:37Although the good news is that both the 14 and the 16 support fast charging now, although
04:41you have to spend the extra 20 quid to get the more powerful 97 watt charger with this
04:46guy and also fast charging only works through the MagSafe port on the 16 so bear that in
04:51mind.
04:52But there is another device here that also supports fast charging and it is this guy.
04:57You may have noticed I've been wearing the new Fossil Gen 6 smartwatch because they sent
05:01one over for me to have a bit of a play with and also kindly sponsored this video.
05:05And it's got a stunning design and also like the MacBooks we've got faster charging.
05:09You can top up to 80% in just half an hour and that's along with a solid battery life,
05:14although it depends on how you use it.
05:16We get the brand new Snapdragon 4100 chip which is 30% faster than the previous Gen
05:215 as well as Bluetooth 5, we've got Google's Wear OS software and of course access to more
05:26apps and health tracking features than you could shake a sticker.
05:30Now of course a lot of Mac users will have iPhones and then they'll want to pair it
05:32with an Apple Watch which is great but I think the Fossil Gen 6 is a genuinely good alternative.
05:37It comes in a range of finishes with your choice of band.
05:40I've got the very classy gunmetal stainless steel one here although I did have to take
05:44a couple of the links out to fit my pretty small wrists but I must admit it does look
05:48good.
05:49So if you fancy yourself a new watch then click the link below and take a look at the
05:53new Fossil Gen 6.
05:56Okay back to the MacBooks and not everyone is blender-ing and Premiere Pro-ing all day
06:01long.
06:02What about a more general light use run down test?
06:05How long do these last?
06:07Well I tested them with a bit of YouTube and Safari, some FaceTime and Zoom calls, less
06:11demanding Apple Arcade games, Spotify, Google Docs, you know normal people stuff.
06:16And after 2 hours of YouTube and Netflix we're down to 88, 73, 87 and 83% respectively.
06:24Now instead of boring you all to death let's just jump ahead to the final results.
06:28There's a far less significant difference between the two 16-inch models now, the 14-inch
06:32Pro is in last place and throughout the 13 and the 16 M1 Pro have been neck and neck.
06:39The extra performance and the bigger screen must be quite evenly offset by that bigger
06:42100-watt battery.
06:44Interesting, upgrading to the M1 Max with just light general everyday kind of use only
06:49takes off about 10-15% of the battery compared to the M1 Pro whereas under load and using
06:55heavy demanding applications it's close to 40-45% less compared to this guy.
07:01But actually I think my biggest concern would be speccing an M1 Max in a 14-inch because
07:07not only did this have the worst battery life outside of the M1 Max when it was under load,
07:13it also got equally as hot.
07:15I can't confirm this because I don't have one with me but I don't think speccing a 14-inch
07:20with a Max would be the best idea.
07:22I would stick with the M1 Pro and only really consider the Max in the 16.
07:26But you know how at the beginning of the video I said that I was wrong with my previous test
07:31results in the other video but not necessarily due to my own stupidity?
07:35There's another aspect to this because the lovely people over at The Verge, Nilay Patel
07:39asked Apple for a comment on the difference in battery between the Pro and the Max and
07:43the response was that both when idle and under load the Max does draw more power than the
07:48Pro.
07:49So as we've seen we do get worse battery life in all situations although to a lesser extent.
07:54But what's really interesting is that if you were to just run say Blender for 10 hours,
07:58not that they would be able to do that, but you would obviously see about a 40-45% worse
08:03battery on this compared to this.
08:06But if you were just to do say 5 or 10 Premiere Pro exports, the fact that this in Premiere
08:12Pro actually in my tests was about 40% faster than the M1 Pro in here means that it will
08:17complete those tasks faster than this, it'll be under load for less time and therefore
08:21less taxing on the battery.
08:23So the impact of the Max on the battery comes down to how you use it and to some extent
08:28whether it can complete the task that you're doing faster than this and therefore then
08:33the differential between them won't be as significant.
08:36If that makes sense.
08:39But all of that is completely a moot point if you just, you know, plug it into the charger.
08:44But my takeaway is the best performance to battery ratio is the 16-inch with the M1 Pro.
08:50That's my pick.
08:51So I hope that was useful and if you do have any other thoughts or feedback then do let
08:55me know in the comments below and also let me know which one of these would be your pick
08:59if you, well, maybe you've already bought one, if you want one, which one would you
09:02go for?
09:03Thank you so much for watching guys.
09:05If you enjoyed the video, as I say, a little cheeky like and subscribe would be very much
09:08appreciated and I'll see you next time right here on the Tech Channel.
09:11Thanks for watching.
09:12That was aggressive.