The Intel Machine: A Performance Comparison with Apple's M1 MacBook Air and M1 Mini

As we explored the performance of the Intel machine, it became clear that there is a significant difference between this device and its M1 counterparts. We ran an internet speed test to compare the speeds of the two machines, using the results side by side on the screen. The Intel machine was found to be faster, which may raise questions about why we noticed this discrepancy in our testing.

We decided to investigate further by running an internet speed test and comparing it with another device - the M1 MacBook Air. This exercise revealed that when tested in alternating order, the performance of the two machines varied. We observed a notable difference in performance between the Intel machine and the M1 MacBook Air, suggesting potential issues with Wi-Fi connectivity.

Mesh Wi-Fi: A Potential Cause of Reduced Performance

It is worth noting that our office has a one-gigabit leased line, which should minimize any contention issues. However, when using mesh Wi-Fi in the same location, we observed a reduced performance on the M1 MacBook Air. This difference highlights the potential impact of Wi-Fi connectivity on device performance.

Further Testing Reveals Reduced Performance with Samsung T5 Drive

In our testing, we found that copying files from the M1 Mini to the Samsung T5 drive using Blackmagic's speed test resulted in slower speeds than expected. However, when using the standard cable supplied by Samsung, the results were more favorable - approximately 478 megabytes per second for read performance and 520 megabytes per second for write performance on the Intel machine. When comparing this to the M1 Mini, we observed a significant reduction in performance - around 100-200 megabytes per second less than expected.

The same test was conducted using another M1 MacBook Air, which revealed an even greater disparity between its performance and that of the Intel machine. In some cases, the results were closer, but still showed a notable difference.

Understanding the Cause: USB-C Performance

Further investigation into this issue led us to discover that when connected via USB 4 or Thunderbolt 3 ports on the M1 Max, the Samsung T5 drive was performing at USB 3.0 speeds - approximately 371 megabytes per second for read performance and 366 megabytes per second for write performance.

The Implications of This Discovery

The discovery that Apple's M1 machines are limited to USB 3.0 speeds when connected via USB-C ports is quite concerning, especially given the marketing hype surrounding these devices. It raises questions about whether this was a deliberate design choice or an oversight on Apple's part.

While it is possible that we simply received faulty machines or cables, multiple reports from other M1 users have suggested that this issue is not isolated to our testing environment. As early adopters of Apple's latest technology, we are expected to experience some teething issues - but the extent of these problems should be well-documented and addressed by Apple.

Conclusion

The performance differences observed between the Intel machine and the M1 MacBook Air, as well as the issue with USB-C speeds on the M1 Max, highlight the importance of proper testing and documentation before releasing new hardware. As professionals relying on their computers to earn a living, we need devices that perform consistently and meet our expectations.

In light of this discovery, we will continue to monitor these issues and provide updates as more information becomes available. We also invite readers to share their own experiences with the M1 machines and report any similar performance discrepancies they may have encountered.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso it's time for us to do another quick update video on the m1 apple silicon max i've been using this entry level 8 gigabyte m1 macbook air for as much of my work as i can and i've been experimenting with the 16 gigabyte m1 mac mini now these machines have been pretty universally priced so in this video we'd like to show you a couple of things that aren't so great with the m1 okay so i just want to start quickly with bluetooth which i mentioned in the last update and i've been doing some more testing since and i still haven't had any issues what about you nothing out of the ordinary so uh sorry that we haven't been able to to find any issues but i know that lots of you out there are reporting issues if you're struggling with bluetooth issues there are some videos out there that show how to reset the bluetooth on your mac os but it's not great that you should have to do this on a brand new machine so what could be causing the issue it could be a variety of things i wonder whether rf interference from usb 3.0 devices could be a thing here all electrical devices are prone to emit radio frequencies and in the case of usb 3.0 unfortunately some of those frequencies are at 2.4 gigahertz and that's the frequency used for bluetooth and wi-fi it is so if you've got some devices like that you might try unplugging them moving them further away or changing your cables for better quality shielded versions now that may not be a complete fix it does seem that these machines do have some wireless issues one of our developers has been testing an m1 macbook air to assess its suitability for web development we've got a video coming on that soon and he reported back that the wi-fi seemed a bit slow so we thought we'd test that out yeah so as we're back in the office today we've got a good quality mesh wi-fi network here and we also have a very fast leased line internet connection so we decided to pitch pete's m1 macbook air against my intel macbook pro 13-inch and for our first test we connected up to one of our local file servers and we copied a large 4.7 gigabyte file over first up was my intel macbook pro and it took 1 minute and 58 seconds and next we copied the same file with my m1 macbook air and it copied fine how long did it take um about the same maybe any minutes and seconds pete four minutes and 59 seconds ouch so basically times as long as the intel machine yeah that is pretty absurd when we've got some more time we'll do some more testing on that but first we thought we'd run an internet speed test we'll put the results side by side on the screen but as you can see the intel macbook was faster so we tested the machines in alternating order and what we've got here in the office is a one gigabit leased line so we definitely don't have any contention issues our mesh wi-fi though doesn't run at one gigabit which is why you don't see the the full speed on the test but certainly it does appear that the m1 has got reduced wi-fi performance when you compare it to intel max yeah so we've seen this in two separate m1 macbook airs this is just a quick update video so we haven't done loads of testing perhaps we'll do more of that if we have the time and include the m1 mac mini 2. yeah and we'd be really interested to hear if this is affecting any of you guys but for now let's talk about usb yeah there's a problem with usb right there is i was using my samsung t5 drive now i have quite a collection of these i like these drives and i thought it was a bit slow when copying files over from the m1 mini so i ran blackmagic this speed test and i was very surprised at the result because it was slower than the usb 3 performance on my old 2013 mac pro really really that's unbelievable seems like something we should test and indeed i have been testing it i've tested it on the m1 mini the m1 macbook air and also my trusty intel macbook pro 13 inch so on the intel i've got 478 megabytes per second in write performance and 520 megabytes per second for read performance well that sounds pretty normal for a samsung t5 was that with the standard cable yep so i'm just using the standard cable that samsung supplies okay so how does it score on the m1 machines okay so for right performance i got 359 on the mini and 386 on the air so more than 100 megabytes per second less than the intel yeah it's quite a performance deficit what about the uh re-performance so that was 388 on the mini and 379 on the air remember that intel machine managed 520 megabytes per second for read to an even bigger deficit we should say of course that will always be a bit of variation in these tests such as we're seeing between the two m1 machines but there's a very clear performance difference to the intel machine here yeah it's actually pretty shocking um of course the mini has two usb type a ports as well and samsung supply a type a to type c cable with these drives so these are usba five gigabits per second so surely they're going to be slower well you think so but that is basically usb 3.0 spec and i got 371 on right and 366 on read so basically no difference right so what that says to me is that the usb 4 or thunderbolt 3 ports on the m1 max are running this usb ssd at usb 3.0 speeds how does that make you feel dave honestly i'm i'm pretty appalled by it because there's just there's no way that apple didn't know about this uh and i don't find that acceptable in a brand new machine considering all of the hype that surrounded it okay well that's fair enough but could it be that we've just got bad m1 machines or a faulty ssd or faulty cable well i did wonder that so i've tried other t5 drives from my collection i've tried other cables and it's the same story every time furthermore i've also seen a number of other reports of m1 users uh both on youtube and in the blogosphere and they're saying the exact same thing so these machines do have some issues which is to be fair to be expected really perhaps apple can apply a fix in the firmware update yeah i think that's entirely possible at the end of the day this is all just part of the joys of early adoption and being apple's beta testers and it rather adds weight to what you were saying about pro users people who rely on their computer to earn a living perhaps needing to wait for these issues to be ironed out absolutely this could have a pretty big impact on professional workflows anyway that's it for this quick update pete and i are doing some video codec testing this week in final cut pro and davinci resolve so look out for a video on that later in the week hopefully you found this quick update to be useful and maybe we did enough to earn a thumbs up or a thumbs down if you feel so inclined in any case see you next time for some more geekery youso it's time for us to do another quick update video on the m1 apple silicon max i've been using this entry level 8 gigabyte m1 macbook air for as much of my work as i can and i've been experimenting with the 16 gigabyte m1 mac mini now these machines have been pretty universally priced so in this video we'd like to show you a couple of things that aren't so great with the m1 okay so i just want to start quickly with bluetooth which i mentioned in the last update and i've been doing some more testing since and i still haven't had any issues what about you nothing out of the ordinary so uh sorry that we haven't been able to to find any issues but i know that lots of you out there are reporting issues if you're struggling with bluetooth issues there are some videos out there that show how to reset the bluetooth on your mac os but it's not great that you should have to do this on a brand new machine so what could be causing the issue it could be a variety of things i wonder whether rf interference from usb 3.0 devices could be a thing here all electrical devices are prone to emit radio frequencies and in the case of usb 3.0 unfortunately some of those frequencies are at 2.4 gigahertz and that's the frequency used for bluetooth and wi-fi it is so if you've got some devices like that you might try unplugging them moving them further away or changing your cables for better quality shielded versions now that may not be a complete fix it does seem that these machines do have some wireless issues one of our developers has been testing an m1 macbook air to assess its suitability for web development we've got a video coming on that soon and he reported back that the wi-fi seemed a bit slow so we thought we'd test that out yeah so as we're back in the office today we've got a good quality mesh wi-fi network here and we also have a very fast leased line internet connection so we decided to pitch pete's m1 macbook air against my intel macbook pro 13-inch and for our first test we connected up to one of our local file servers and we copied a large 4.7 gigabyte file over first up was my intel macbook pro and it took 1 minute and 58 seconds and next we copied the same file with my m1 macbook air and it copied fine how long did it take um about the same maybe any minutes and seconds pete four minutes and 59 seconds ouch so basically times as long as the intel machine yeah that is pretty absurd when we've got some more time we'll do some more testing on that but first we thought we'd run an internet speed test we'll put the results side by side on the screen but as you can see the intel macbook was faster so we tested the machines in alternating order and what we've got here in the office is a one gigabit leased line so we definitely don't have any contention issues our mesh wi-fi though doesn't run at one gigabit which is why you don't see the the full speed on the test but certainly it does appear that the m1 has got reduced wi-fi performance when you compare it to intel max yeah so we've seen this in two separate m1 macbook airs this is just a quick update video so we haven't done loads of testing perhaps we'll do more of that if we have the time and include the m1 mac mini 2. yeah and we'd be really interested to hear if this is affecting any of you guys but for now let's talk about usb yeah there's a problem with usb right there is i was using my samsung t5 drive now i have quite a collection of these i like these drives and i thought it was a bit slow when copying files over from the m1 mini so i ran blackmagic this speed test and i was very surprised at the result because it was slower than the usb 3 performance on my old 2013 mac pro really really that's unbelievable seems like something we should test and indeed i have been testing it i've tested it on the m1 mini the m1 macbook air and also my trusty intel macbook pro 13 inch so on the intel i've got 478 megabytes per second in write performance and 520 megabytes per second for read performance well that sounds pretty normal for a samsung t5 was that with the standard cable yep so i'm just using the standard cable that samsung supplies okay so how does it score on the m1 machines okay so for right performance i got 359 on the mini and 386 on the air so more than 100 megabytes per second less than the intel yeah it's quite a performance deficit what about the uh re-performance so that was 388 on the mini and 379 on the air remember that intel machine managed 520 megabytes per second for read to an even bigger deficit we should say of course that will always be a bit of variation in these tests such as we're seeing between the two m1 machines but there's a very clear performance difference to the intel machine here yeah it's actually pretty shocking um of course the mini has two usb type a ports as well and samsung supply a type a to type c cable with these drives so these are usba five gigabits per second so surely they're going to be slower well you think so but that is basically usb 3.0 spec and i got 371 on right and 366 on read so basically no difference right so what that says to me is that the usb 4 or thunderbolt 3 ports on the m1 max are running this usb ssd at usb 3.0 speeds how does that make you feel dave honestly i'm i'm pretty appalled by it because there's just there's no way that apple didn't know about this uh and i don't find that acceptable in a brand new machine considering all of the hype that surrounded it okay well that's fair enough but could it be that we've just got bad m1 machines or a faulty ssd or faulty cable well i did wonder that so i've tried other t5 drives from my collection i've tried other cables and it's the same story every time furthermore i've also seen a number of other reports of m1 users uh both on youtube and in the blogosphere and they're saying the exact same thing so these machines do have some issues which is to be fair to be expected really perhaps apple can apply a fix in the firmware update yeah i think that's entirely possible at the end of the day this is all just part of the joys of early adoption and being apple's beta testers and it rather adds weight to what you were saying about pro users people who rely on their computer to earn a living perhaps needing to wait for these issues to be ironed out absolutely this could have a pretty big impact on professional workflows anyway that's it for this quick update pete and i are doing some video codec testing this week in final cut pro and davinci resolve so look out for a video on that later in the week hopefully you found this quick update to be useful and maybe we did enough to earn a thumbs up or a thumbs down if you feel so inclined in any case see you next time for some more geekery you\n"