New Apple MacBook Air with Apple M1 Chip
Still Available in United States only
Buy Now Check PriceOkay, let’s talk about the new mac hardware. So Apple announced three new products a MacBook air a MacBook pro, and a mac mini. All three of these devices are running their new m1 processor apple’s custom apple silicon and from what we’ve seen. So far the CPU performance looks really impressive we expected it to be really good like we’ve seen what a thermally limited a14 based phone like their iPhones can do. So this stuff, not these are the older intel based units but what they can do if they uncork it. They throw a fan in there or they just have better thermal properties. You can do some really powerful stuff.
The cpu performance looks awesome the gpu performance looked pretty good as well. But keep in mind that they were comparing that stuff to intel’s older integrated graphics. So it looks competitive but it doesn’t look amazing. Now the m1 chip has eight cpu cores and eight gpu cores and it’s the same chip used across all three devices. The only difference being that the base model macbook air has one of those gpu cores either disabled or they’re binning. The chip whatever the reason being the macbook air. On the bottom end has slightly less graphical performance than the rest of the devices.
The only difference between all three products is their thermal capabilities. So the base model like the macbook air has a fanless configuration and then the macbook pro. With its single fan can probably maintain faster clock speeds a little bit better and then the mac mini. Because it’s the thickest of the bunch will probably be able to maintain the fastest clock speeds for the longest period of time that’s how they’ve differentiated. The kind of performance between them. And, that’s why they don’t have you know people are asking why are there no clock frequencies mentioned in the material. Because it doesn’t matter all three of them have the exact same clock frequency at the top end. It’s just how long can they maintain that clock frequency is the difference between them based on the thermal capabilities of the cooling solution.
If we look at the graphics capabilities of the m1 chip. This comes in around 2.6 teraflops that’s with all eight gpu cores active. This is very competitive it’s a lot better than what intel was offering before and it’s even better than what ryzen like amd’s ryzen chips offer right ow with their integrated solutions. So it’s capable hardware and apple are usually really good at leveraging their hardware to do some impressive stuff. But the gpu capabilities of m1 are somewhat limited right.
If you compare this to what the 16-inch MacBook pro has with their current and offering that is just so much better than m1. But I think we’ll get there in time when the 16-inch MacBook pros come out with apple silicon. The GPUs will be really powerful like maybe it’ll be an m2 chip or like an m1 X chip whatever it is. I’m looking forward to that because i i like my graphics.
Let’s move on to the topic of power efficiency and i think this is the thing that’s going to affect the vast majority of people out there. Not everyone needs super powerful processors and stuff like that. But when it comes to power efficiency everybody can appreciate it. It’s the thing the main feature that makes m1 worth considering right now. Because you cannot get this type of power efficiency on any other laptop right now. Not like it’s just not possible i’ve seen a few of them on this channel here’s. The thing I’ve seen so many laptop companies claim x number of battery life hours right. It’s just you’ve never seen 20.
It’s never been done before on a 13-inch device 20 hours of video playback is bonkers. Like that’s a solid 50 more for the same battery size as the previous generation it’s as. If it’s new battery tech right imagine there’s some new carbon-based battery that you know. Imagine that came out hey here’s some new batteries. That is 50 better than we had before that’s what it feels like this is how significant it is. And people are complaining about oh the bezels are the same they didn’t change the heart like who cares 50 better battery life do you get that on a laptop like this is why we buy laptops right. So we can use them portably away from our office away from our home to get 50 more fuel is insane and people are complaining about bezels on the screen.
The third thing I want to talk about is pricing. So originally when they first came out with this stuff. I was hopeful that they would reduce the price on it right because when you have control and you’re making your own chips you can theoretically reduce the price of your products. The two laptops remain the same the mac mini has reduced by 100 bucks.
Now my take on it is this you do get way more hardware way more performance. With this new stuff than you did before for your dollar. I really would have liked to see a price drop. But it’s apple it’s kind of expected one thing i don’t like is that the pricing of their storage upgrades is still quite expensive. It’s 200 to go from 256 to 512 gigs of storage which is nasty in 2020 and they still only have 720p webcams.
They’ve improved the signal processing on it. So it’s just going to be cleaner images but it’s still 720p resolution. They do have wi-fi 6 and USB c4 but you can’t connect external GPUs to these devices. At least I don’t think you can and yeah there’s no way you can and they also have an instant-on feature that may seem insignificant. But I’ve seen it implemented in some windows laptops.
It’s actually really nice you flip open it you’re working right away. It seems insignificant I know you watch the download you’re like who cares. But when you’ve used it and you get used to it. You’ll probably appreciate it. So that is my early impressions of m1 and the hardware. I will be doing full reviews on all of them. I feel like I want to test not just like the Apple apps. But because I’m an adobe user and a lot of their stuff isn’t native to the new m1 hardware.
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