Apple MacBook Pro 14 2021 M1 Pro Laptop in Review: How much "Pro" do you get with the base model?

[Redaktion]

Apple launched the new MacBook Pro 14 with its own M1 CPUs as well as the new Mini-LED display with 120 Hz. After some rather unsuccessful experiments like the touch bar and the butterfly keyboard, Apple reintroduces other features like the SD-card reader and MagSafe.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-14-2021-M1-Pro-Laptop-in-Review-How-much-Pro-do-you-get-with-the-base-model.576665.0.html

[etny]

Agreed with the conclusion. Macbook Air is a lighter, better designed (Steve...) more comfortable (tapered), fanless, no ugly notch, nice black on metal keyboard (not this all black slab) etc... and much cheaper. Same single core performance. Apple is taking huge steps backwards design-wise. And the next macbook air is like the new iMac... silly toy looking. This is unfortunate. I don't care about the extra ports. For a laptop, I preferred slim-downed with dongles when needed (rarely), than ugly and heavy with ports.

[jok]

There is a typo in the specs section. The M1 Pro and Max uses LPDDR5 6400 MHz RAM. They do not use LPDDR4X 4266 MHz.

[Sorwis]

While there are areas of improvement, it's hard to fault this sort of package. Cons are relatively minor. I don't mind the notch given the display's tall form factor and I would think it would be even less of an issue with the larger 16,2" screen size. Camera is better than most laptops but still just okay. Lack of face ID seems odd given how large the notched area is but at least there's touch ID. Display peak brightness in SDR could be better as the battery life is more than adequate for working outdoors in bright environment. I doubt Apple will patch the option in however. Lack of the best Wi-Fi, latest HDMI spec and fastest SD card reader is a little shame but none of these are bad and this is still a clear upgrade over the previous MacBook Pros.

The lack of good maintenance options and the pricing of additional RAM and memory is very Apple like and disappointing. Despite that I think the machine is competitively priced as in many ways it is the best you can get in a laptop. The combination of high quality construction and form factor, best speakers and touchpad in a laptop, one of the best laptop displays, good keyboard, great battery life, good port selection, high performance, low noise and temperatures, compact fast charger, decent camera and good microphones is unmatched. Integration of HDR is sublime, I don't think there's a better way to do it.

The power draw during light use/idle with M1 Pro vs M1 Max is something I'm eager to see in future reviews. Supposedly the M1 Max uses quite a bit more power even when not doing graphically intensive tasks which would steer me towards the 16 inch Pro model instead of Max.

[Muhammad Anhar]

You also forget to mention that M1 Max has double the memory bandwitch of M1 Pro.

[Mat06]

Thanks for the test, I have two questions regarding the screen.

1) which profile is tested on calman? (I am assuming XDR apple p3 1600 nit).

2) it is impossible to calibrate the screen because it is not possible to add an icc profile to the main screen, on the other hand no problem on an external monitor the icc profiles are well selectable.
have you noticed this problem?

[Indy]

Been a PC User all my life.  My Mom and brother were/are programmers, so we always had some form of PCs throughout our home growing up.  I've dabbled in Macs here and there, mostly for college when I got my first tech support job.

I decided to plunge on this, since Amazon says I have 3 months to evaluate...why not?  I got the 16" version.

I gotta say, I really, really love the hardware.  Battery life is simply amazing.  I've never used a device that has lasted half as long.  I've had the MacBook a week, and it sits at 47% charge, after using it for web browsing/screwing around with the OS a bit (2-4 hours?) daily.   

Now, what I'm not a huge fan of, is the OS.  OSX gets in the way.  The window control compared to Windows is pretty sub-par.  I suppose a lot of that has to do with my learning curve, but it's maddening at times the differences between what appears to be full-screen and what OSX determines as full screen. 

I was surprised at how unintuitive some of the functions are of the OS.  The App Store has crashed on me twice, something I haven't seen on a Windows laptop in over a year.  I assume it's due to the newness of Monterey?

Safari is just amazing.  I love my Firefox, but holy cow is Safari fast.  Adding in a few extensions and it's *almost* as powerful as Firefox.   Thankfully, both co-exist on my MacBook perfectly fine.

Overall, this is the best physical hardware mobile I've ever worked with.  I'm over the marketing crap Apple used to pull, I just look the other way so I don't feel like I'm part of the flock.  I wish I could get a decent Linux (Trust,) system with this hardware, and leave OSX behind.

I have 90 days to evaluate... and so far I'm pretty sold on it.  Well done, Apple.

[not_anton]

"You also forget to mention that M1 Max has double the memory bandwitch of M1 Pro."
CPU memory bandwidth is the same across both options, 100GB/s per CPU cluster.

@etny
Agree, this is not a laptop for us the developers. Apple really targeted video editor here - I mean, look at the hardware video accelerator that was a $2000 option for Mac Pro, and Apple puts it in every single MacBook Pro now. I guess they knew the supply would be limited, and hard targeted the group of customers who the most expensive configurations with lots of SSD space and memory. At a very special Apple upgrade price.
Waiting for 2022 to see a slim fanless M2 MacBook Air with the same pro screen.

[myishrt]

IIRC, the previous M1 MacBook Air and Pro had a constant 60Hz flicker above certain brightness levels in addition to the PWM (Mentioned in the reviews on notebookcheck). Do these newer ones have a similar thing, or is it always just the 14,880hz flicker at all times? If so, that may be better than the previous Macs since the hz is so high.

[Will]

Dont forget that the card reader is limited to UHS-II rather than UHS-III. For the money and the rest of the notebook being top of the line why skimp on an WiFi module, hdmi port and ss card reader. They could have charged an extra $100 and still been fine.

[Will]

Agreed with the conclusion. Macbook Air is a lighter, better designed (Steve...) more comfortable (tapered), fanless, no ugly notch, nice black on metal keyboard (not this all black slab) etc... and much cheaper. Same single core performance. Apple is taking huge steps backwards design-wise. And the next macbook air is like the new iMac... silly toy looking. This is unfortunate. I don't care about the extra ports. For a laptop, I preferred slim-downed with dongles when needed (rarely), than ugly and heavy with ports.

I really hope they don't go with a white bezel on the next air. Imagine how that notch will look with a dark screen especially a movie with the black bars. At least offer a black bezel and notch on the space grey model.

[Tridents]

"You also forget to mention that M1 Max has double the memory bandwitch of M1 Pro."
CPU memory bandwidth is the same across both options, 100GB/s per CPU cluster.

@etny
Agree, this is not a laptop for us the developers. Apple really targeted video editor here - I mean, look at the hardware video accelerator that was a $2000 option for Mac Pro, and Apple puts it in every single MacBook Pro now. I guess they knew the supply would be limited, and hard targeted the group of customers who the most expensive configurations with lots of SSD space and memory. At a very special Apple upgrade price.
Waiting for 2022 to see a slim fanless M2 MacBook Air with the same pro screen.

That is not exactly right!
The 100 GB/s is for just one core, which is more than what you can get in other laptop complete CPU packages. Two clusters can use 224 GB/s, and all cores can use 245 GB/s. So more bandwidth available on the Max, even more so when consider that in many circumstances the CPU clusters on a M1 Pro won't have access to all the 200GB/s.
Considering its performance while compiling don't know why it cannot be considered a laptop for developers, unless you are a web developer.

[Scrum Master]

Several negative bullet points are nitpicky for me. There shouldn't be more cons than pros, considering this overall killer device. Like PWM with 15 Kilohertz, which is so high that less than 1% will even notice. Or that power charger, which you can upgrade for +20$. Maintenance is better than before, ports and battery can be replaced.

Hands down, regarding the overall package (power, silence, battery, screen, speakers, trackpad, ports, webcam, unibody...) this is the best laptops out there on the market currently, full stop.

[lole]

Andreas "We Would've Liked" Osthoff

[Hello]

Hello peeps, thought I'd just chime in regarding PWM. Although I'm not skilled in the art of reading oscilloscopes, I'd like to say there's too much focus on the frequency of PWM. Yes it's important, but amplitude is perhaps even more important.

For instance, the vertical (voltage) scale of the chart on this MacBook Pro 14 would indicate that the amplitude is actually quite large compared to that of the Macbook Air which is measured in mV!  Another thing is also the duty cycle (horizontal).

Could someone kindly correct me if I'm wrong?