The Real Value of the M1 Max and Mac Studio

I think the real value is probably the m1 max and then just figuring out which form factor you want, what specific features you value. You can still save quite a bit of money by going with the Mac Studio depending on whether you have a display and keyboard or mouse available and even if you had to purchase some of those, I think the total cost would still be a little bit less than the cost of this baseline m1 max MacBook Pro, which was right around $3,560. The Mac Studio does offer a ton of i/o compared to the Mac Pro, there's like six total USB-C ports and all six are Thunderbolt ports if you go for the m1 ultra version.

If you do the m1 max, the two on the front are actually just USB-C but on the back there's also a 10-gigabit Ethernet port, USB Type-A, and then like the MacBook Pro, you do get an SD card reader which is on the front. Absolutely love that, and there's also a 3.5-millimeter headphone jack and an HDMI slot again on the front. You have those two front-facing Thunderbolt 3 ports unless you go with the m1 max those are just USB-C and again I really love that having the SD card reader on the front basically eliminates my need for a dock especially when my monitor also offers three additional USB-C ports so I think I'm set in that department.

When using my M1 Max on a daily basis, I did have this dock from OWC, I really loved it but I just had another thing on my desk and I'm trying to keep things minimal and if you don't want to have a dock always plugged in then yeah there's something to consider with the different form factor of the Mac Studio. Now if you're still unsure about whether you want to have a desktop or a laptop, there are some obvious benefits to the MacBook Pro form factor, portability, a good amount of diverse i/o and a fantastic 16-inch Mini LED 120Hz Pro Motion display comes to mind personally.

This is the best display that I have used on a laptop and obviously on a MacBook. Unfortunately, I rarely use the MacBook Pro as a laptop or a traditional laptop because I would dock it at my desk in clamshell mode and I tucked it away underneath my desk so that I didn't have a lot of clutter and since travel has come to a halt for me still the need for a laptop on the road has dwindled but if things start to pick up here that will obviously change and the laptop becomes a lot more valuable.

Thermal management on both this 16-inch MacBook Pro and the Mac Studio have been fantastic. I've never experienced a very hot MacBook Pro on my lap or even the fans coming on not once I've been using it since it came out daily for all of my work, never once heard it kick on even when on battery never once, and the battery life by the way is pretty good. I used to never be able to finish a full video and have leftover battery life to do any kind of work.

I can knock out a full edit for half of my day on this laptop and still have battery left over which is fantastic. It's also early with the Mac Studio but I can't imagine with this size and this thermal management that I'm going to hear these fans either especially when we take into account the M1 Ultra's super high effective power efficiency at the end of the day it's going to come down to what you need, i know that's a cop-out but it really is true.

If you prefer a laptop or a desktop machine then the answer is obvious there's one desktop and there's one laptop. The MacBook Pro does give you the flexibility to do both and so I'd say most of you out there are probably going to be fine with going with an M1 Max version of either machine it probably makes sense to get the MacBook Pro since you can do that diversification of having it at your desk or taking it on the go but there's definitely a performance improvement on the M1 Ultra. It's just a matter of whether or not money is really an object and you want to spend that money for the time saving that I had.

If you think it's worth it, I think most of you out there would be fine with the M1 Max and even if you think the M1 Max is too much Apple does offer the M1 Pro for the MacBook Pro so that's something to keep in mind as well. Of course, I'd love to know your thoughts in the comments down below if you've already picked up one of these machines what do you think. If you're thinking about going towards one of these machines please let me know which one you end up picking.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis video is a tough one because honestly i contemplated sitting here and just spewing out all of the same benchmarks that so many people have done already but i think i finally become just a little bit burnt out by benchmarks i really don't think they tell the full story all the time and after having a long conversation with renee ritchie on the latest episode of the macrumor show podcast which by the way you can check out wherever you get your podcast you can check out our latest episode or click here in the upper right corner for the video version but what he said really stuck with me yeah absolutely so it's it's nice i know a lot of people get angry at us because we do videos on making videos but we know how to make videos and apple's obviously targeting video people so they're like why don't you just build webkit you're like i don't know how to build webkit i just don't you can hit those socs really hard with video and it was hard to actually see the difference between the max and the ultra and i liken it to like if you're towing a with a car or towing with a truck but all you have is a bag of groceries you're not going to see much difference in the performance between what you're towing you need to put like a boat behind it to actually see the difference long story short i don't think i can hit the max capabilities that these machines are capable of producing with real world tests the benchmarks show you the proof of what apple was saying and i will show you some benchmark scores right now and in most instances the ultra was in fact nearly two times better than the m1 max but a geekbench score or any other benchmark score might not tell you how much better one machine can operate over the other for your type of work and it's also worth noting that these are two totally different form factors and so you might already have your heart set on wanting a laptop and so yeah you're gonna just pick the laptop but if you are undecided and you don't know then hopefully this video will help you for reference the mac studio that i have here is the base m1 ultra model the specs are on screen as well as the m1 max macbook prospects so if you want to know what we're running with this is what we have from a content creator video editor point of view the m1 max has been a tremendous machine and an m1 ultra is probably a bit too much machine for me but it does help i'll give you two examples of the type of videos that i create on a regular basis here is a normal 10 minute video shot in 4k with some light color correction and a few text plugins this is my everyday workflow for the most part sure there could be more plugins here or there there could be some luts added in but for the most part i kind of keep things sort of simple and you know this is what i'm working with on a daily basis the other project that i do is i edit the podcast as well and those are not really crazy from a video editing standpoint but they are really really long 4k timelines and so when you have something that's an hour long you're going to be waiting a long time for that to export so each machine handles these scenarios and editing like butter there's no difference in my opinion between the two rarely any lag or drop frames and if it really ever does happen it's happened with the m1 max it's a little early on the mac studio for me to have had that happen to me but that's usually happened when i've had a bunch of applications open at the same time and i think the ram and cpu gets bogged down just a little bit with some rosetta apps that might be running in the background as well as the editor and so maybe sometimes that's when it happens but again it happens very rarely on the m1x or the m1 max macbook pro and i have not had it happen yet on the mac studio with the m1 ultra so exporting videos is where i can get a better sense of what's faster to me that's where i will save most of my time uh that's where that whole you know the old saying time is money that's where i can really see and quantify whether or not these chips are helpful for me it's going to be different for everybody but if you have a similar workflow as me then maybe you can get the same idea the m1 ultra definitely saves me quite a bit of time but mostly for the podcast and stuff that's really long the m1 max was already beating out my last machine in the mac pro so i was already really happy with that my normal everyday video that i explained earlier this one being at the 10 minute mark with the 4k timeline some color corrections plugins etc that finished in four minutes and 50 seconds on my m1 max the hour-long podcast finished exporting in 26 minutes so on the mac studio with the m1 ultra the same videos rendered out like this the 10-minute video that we talked about with the plug-ins and the color correction and everything that actually finished in about three minutes which saved me about a minute and 50 seconds nearly two minutes of time which it's it's that's quite a bit of time and pretty helpful especially when you're in a hurry the hour long podcast is where you know by the way it's an eight gigabyte file that finished in roughly 14 minutes and 23 seconds saving me 12 minutes which is fantastic obviously i think the ultra is probably a little bit too much for me and most people out there if you think you'll need the extra cpu and gpu cores if you need that power efficiency or if money is just simply not an issue for you then by all means go for the m1 ultra you'll definitely be able to keep this computer around for many years and i think it'll work out perfectly the real value is probably the m1 max and then just figuring out which form factor you want what specific features you value you can still save quite a bit of money by going mac studio depending on whether you have a display and keyboard or mouse available and even if you had to purchase some of those i think the total cost would still be a little bit less than the cost of this baseline m1 max macbook pro which was right around 35 3600 the mac studio does offer a ton of i o compared to the mac pro there's like six total usb c ports and all six are thunderbolt ports if you go for the m1 ultra version if you do the m1 max the two on the front are actually just usb c but on the back there's also a 10 gigabit ethernet port usb type a and then like the macbook pro you do get an sd card reader which is on the front absolutely love that and there's also a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack and an hdmi slot again on the front you have those two front-facing thunderbolt 3 ports unless you go with the m1 max those are just usb-c and again i really love that having the sd card reader on the front basically eliminates my need for a dock especially when my monitor also offers uh three additional usbc ports so i think i'm set in that department when i use my m1 max on a daily basis i did have this dock from owc i really loved it but i just had another thing on my desk and i'm trying to keep things minimal and if you don't want to have a dock always plugged in then yeah there's something to consider with the different form factor of the mac studio now if you're still unsure about whether you want to have a desktop or a laptop there are some obvious benefits to the macbook pro form factor portability a good amount of diverse i o and a fantastic 16 inch mini led 120 hertz pro motion display comes to mind personally this is the best display that i have used on a laptop and obviously on a macbook unfortunately i rarely use the macbook pro as a laptop or a traditional laptop because i would dock it at my desk in clamshell mode and i tucked it away underneath my desk so that i didn't have a lot of clutter and since travel has come to a halt for me still the need for a laptop on the road has dwindled but if things start to pick up here that will obviously change and the laptop becomes a lot more valuable now thermal management on both this 16-inch macbook pro and the mac studio have been fantastic i've never experienced a very hot macbook pro on my lap or even the fans coming on not once i've been using it since it came out daily for all of my work never once heard it kick on even when on battery never once and the battery life by the way is pretty good i used to never be able to finish a full video and have leftover battery life to do any kind of work i can knock out a full edit for half of my day on this laptop and still have battery left over which is fantastic it's also early with the mac studio but i can't imagine with this size and this thermal management that i'm going to hear these fans either especially when we take into account the m1 ultra's super high effective power efficiency at the end of the day it's going to come down to what you need i know that's a cop-out but it really is true if you prefer a laptop or a desktop machine then the answer is obvious there's one desktop there's one laptop the macbook pro does give you the flexibility to do both and so i'd say most of you out there are probably going to be fine with going with an m1 max version of either machine it probably makes sense to get the macbook pro since you can do that diversification of having it at your desk or taking it on the go but there's definitely a performance improvement on the m1 ultra it's just a matter of whether or not money is really an object and you want to spend that money for the time saving that i had and if you think it's worth it i think most of you out there would be fine with the m1 max and even if you think the m1 max is too much apple does offer the m1 pro for the macbook pro so that's something to keep in mind as well of course i'd love to know your thoughts in the comments down below if you've already picked up one of these machines what do you think if you're thinking about going towards one of these machines please let me know which one you end up picking down in those comments this has been down with mac rumors thanks so much for watching and i hope to see you around in the next videothis video is a tough one because honestly i contemplated sitting here and just spewing out all of the same benchmarks that so many people have done already but i think i finally become just a little bit burnt out by benchmarks i really don't think they tell the full story all the time and after having a long conversation with renee ritchie on the latest episode of the macrumor show podcast which by the way you can check out wherever you get your podcast you can check out our latest episode or click here in the upper right corner for the video version but what he said really stuck with me yeah absolutely so it's it's nice i know a lot of people get angry at us because we do videos on making videos but we know how to make videos and apple's obviously targeting video people so they're like why don't you just build webkit you're like i don't know how to build webkit i just don't you can hit those socs really hard with video and it was hard to actually see the difference between the max and the ultra and i liken it to like if you're towing a with a car or towing with a truck but all you have is a bag of groceries you're not going to see much difference in the performance between what you're towing you need to put like a boat behind it to actually see the difference long story short i don't think i can hit the max capabilities that these machines are capable of producing with real world tests the benchmarks show you the proof of what apple was saying and i will show you some benchmark scores right now and in most instances the ultra was in fact nearly two times better than the m1 max but a geekbench score or any other benchmark score might not tell you how much better one machine can operate over the other for your type of work and it's also worth noting that these are two totally different form factors and so you might already have your heart set on wanting a laptop and so yeah you're gonna just pick the laptop but if you are undecided and you don't know then hopefully this video will help you for reference the mac studio that i have here is the base m1 ultra model the specs are on screen as well as the m1 max macbook prospects so if you want to know what we're running with this is what we have from a content creator video editor point of view the m1 max has been a tremendous machine and an m1 ultra is probably a bit too much machine for me but it does help i'll give you two examples of the type of videos that i create on a regular basis here is a normal 10 minute video shot in 4k with some light color correction and a few text plugins this is my everyday workflow for the most part sure there could be more plugins here or there there could be some luts added in but for the most part i kind of keep things sort of simple and you know this is what i'm working with on a daily basis the other project that i do is i edit the podcast as well and those are not really crazy from a video editing standpoint but they are really really long 4k timelines and so when you have something that's an hour long you're going to be waiting a long time for that to export so each machine handles these scenarios and editing like butter there's no difference in my opinion between the two rarely any lag or drop frames and if it really ever does happen it's happened with the m1 max it's a little early on the mac studio for me to have had that happen to me but that's usually happened when i've had a bunch of applications open at the same time and i think the ram and cpu gets bogged down just a little bit with some rosetta apps that might be running in the background as well as the editor and so maybe sometimes that's when it happens but again it happens very rarely on the m1x or the m1 max macbook pro and i have not had it happen yet on the mac studio with the m1 ultra so exporting videos is where i can get a better sense of what's faster to me that's where i will save most of my time uh that's where that whole you know the old saying time is money that's where i can really see and quantify whether or not these chips are helpful for me it's going to be different for everybody but if you have a similar workflow as me then maybe you can get the same idea the m1 ultra definitely saves me quite a bit of time but mostly for the podcast and stuff that's really long the m1 max was already beating out my last machine in the mac pro so i was already really happy with that my normal everyday video that i explained earlier this one being at the 10 minute mark with the 4k timeline some color corrections plugins etc that finished in four minutes and 50 seconds on my m1 max the hour-long podcast finished exporting in 26 minutes so on the mac studio with the m1 ultra the same videos rendered out like this the 10-minute video that we talked about with the plug-ins and the color correction and everything that actually finished in about three minutes which saved me about a minute and 50 seconds nearly two minutes of time which it's it's that's quite a bit of time and pretty helpful especially when you're in a hurry the hour long podcast is where you know by the way it's an eight gigabyte file that finished in roughly 14 minutes and 23 seconds saving me 12 minutes which is fantastic obviously i think the ultra is probably a little bit too much for me and most people out there if you think you'll need the extra cpu and gpu cores if you need that power efficiency or if money is just simply not an issue for you then by all means go for the m1 ultra you'll definitely be able to keep this computer around for many years and i think it'll work out perfectly the real value is probably the m1 max and then just figuring out which form factor you want what specific features you value you can still save quite a bit of money by going mac studio depending on whether you have a display and keyboard or mouse available and even if you had to purchase some of those i think the total cost would still be a little bit less than the cost of this baseline m1 max macbook pro which was right around 35 3600 the mac studio does offer a ton of i o compared to the mac pro there's like six total usb c ports and all six are thunderbolt ports if you go for the m1 ultra version if you do the m1 max the two on the front are actually just usb c but on the back there's also a 10 gigabit ethernet port usb type a and then like the macbook pro you do get an sd card reader which is on the front absolutely love that and there's also a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack and an hdmi slot again on the front you have those two front-facing thunderbolt 3 ports unless you go with the m1 max those are just usb-c and again i really love that having the sd card reader on the front basically eliminates my need for a dock especially when my monitor also offers uh three additional usbc ports so i think i'm set in that department when i use my m1 max on a daily basis i did have this dock from owc i really loved it but i just had another thing on my desk and i'm trying to keep things minimal and if you don't want to have a dock always plugged in then yeah there's something to consider with the different form factor of the mac studio now if you're still unsure about whether you want to have a desktop or a laptop there are some obvious benefits to the macbook pro form factor portability a good amount of diverse i o and a fantastic 16 inch mini led 120 hertz pro motion display comes to mind personally this is the best display that i have used on a laptop and obviously on a macbook unfortunately i rarely use the macbook pro as a laptop or a traditional laptop because i would dock it at my desk in clamshell mode and i tucked it away underneath my desk so that i didn't have a lot of clutter and since travel has come to a halt for me still the need for a laptop on the road has dwindled but if things start to pick up here that will obviously change and the laptop becomes a lot more valuable now thermal management on both this 16-inch macbook pro and the mac studio have been fantastic i've never experienced a very hot macbook pro on my lap or even the fans coming on not once i've been using it since it came out daily for all of my work never once heard it kick on even when on battery never once and the battery life by the way is pretty good i used to never be able to finish a full video and have leftover battery life to do any kind of work i can knock out a full edit for half of my day on this laptop and still have battery left over which is fantastic it's also early with the mac studio but i can't imagine with this size and this thermal management that i'm going to hear these fans either especially when we take into account the m1 ultra's super high effective power efficiency at the end of the day it's going to come down to what you need i know that's a cop-out but it really is true if you prefer a laptop or a desktop machine then the answer is obvious there's one desktop there's one laptop the macbook pro does give you the flexibility to do both and so i'd say most of you out there are probably going to be fine with going with an m1 max version of either machine it probably makes sense to get the macbook pro since you can do that diversification of having it at your desk or taking it on the go but there's definitely a performance improvement on the m1 ultra it's just a matter of whether or not money is really an object and you want to spend that money for the time saving that i had and if you think it's worth it i think most of you out there would be fine with the m1 max and even if you think the m1 max is too much apple does offer the m1 pro for the macbook pro so that's something to keep in mind as well of course i'd love to know your thoughts in the comments down below if you've already picked up one of these machines what do you think if you're thinking about going towards one of these machines please let me know which one you end up picking down in those comments this has been down with mac rumors thanks so much for watching and i hope to see you around in the next video\n"