By Brady Betzel

As fall turns to winter, the laptop gods have decided it’s time to release all the new models at once — from Dell to HP to Apple. If you are dedicated to one brand, then your decision is a little easier, but if you are open to what works best for your workflow, you have a tough decision.

When I was around 8 years old, my family purchased an Apple IIGS (G and S stand for graphics and sound — imagine that). It was my first dip into the world of personal computers. From then on, I built my own systems except for laptops, which steered me toward Windows-based PCs. While I love getting my hands dirty building computers, at a certain point it’s nice to just buy a ready-to-go system, and Apple systems are known for turning on and just working.

That brings us to the newly released and hotly anticipated new Apple MacBook Pro, which offers more power thanks to the addition of the unified M1 Pro and M1 Max CPU and GPU. In the past, you might have had an AMD processor with a GPU built into the CPU chip — aka unified architecture. In 2021, we have finally gotten to the stage where bringing back unified architecture is paying off. Discrete CPUs and GPUs have their place. On a desktop system, you can upgrade individually instead of having to upgrade the entire system, but you sacrifice speed transferring data between the discrete processing tasks.  All right, enough nerd talk.

Simply said, the MacBook Pro with the M1 Max chip is the smoothest, snappiest and fastest mobile workstation I have ever used, but the testing will speak for itself. If you want a system that will work right out of the box and run at professional speeds, the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro or the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Max are great options.

I was sent the MacBook Pro 16-inch with M1 Max chip. Here are the additional specs:

• • 16-inch Liquid Retina XDR display
  • M1 Max chip with 10-core CPU, 16-core Neural Engine
  • 64GB unified memory
  • 2TB SSD
  • Three Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI port, SDXC card slot, MagSafe 3
  • 140W USB-C power adapter
  • Backlit Magic Keyboard with Touch ID

Other than adding an additional $1,800 for an 8TB SSD, this is the best 16-inch MacBook Pro currently available. It retails for $4,299, but you should definitely buy the AppleCare+ protection for $399 for three years, which includes up to two incidents of accidental damage protection every 12-month interval. So in reality, you are looking at over $5,000 with tax and protection. However, if you want to scale back the price tag, the base-model 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro chipset begins at $2,499. You should still purchase the AppleCare+ protection for $399, which gets you to about $3,000.

New Chips and Speed
The new M1 Pro and M1 Max chips are making the industry happy. With the CPU and GPU sharing the same chip, the M1 powered Macs are snappy — amazingly snappy. Working superficially, macOS Monterey appears to be finely tuned to remove subtle pauses and delays. From opening the lid to opening internet browser tabs, everything feels like it was opened before you clicked. The first speed improvement I noticed was when opening the lid… the monitor was on and ready to rumble. No waiting, no pauses, just ready to work.

It almost feels like the MacBook Pro is always on. Opening Adobe Premiere for the first time only took seconds as opposed to minutes. Specifically, the first time you open Premiere, it loads a lot of things, including plugins and fonts.

For good or bad, the next thing I noticed was the notch bevel in the top center of the screen – think iPhone notch. At first, I brushed it off and wanted to reserve judgment, but it’s weird. It feels like Apple was trying to keep continuity between product lines, such as with the iPhone. And to continue Apple’s “nonconformist” design decisions, they decided to make the notch interactive. The mouse pointer goes under the notch, and application menu bars skip it. I assume it’s a programming decision, but oddly enough, when you take screen grabs, it’s gone. Almost like it’s not real. It’s not the worst, but it feels like the recently banished touch bar. That being said, the updated 1080p camera that is placed within the “notch” looks great and creates a better-looking image for your Zoom meetings.

Final Cut Pro
Before I get to testing the hardware, I’ll report on Final Cut Pro, which was also updated to 10.6. One of the biggest new features is the object tracker and the ability to add titles, effects and graphics to the track. It’s good — it feels like Resolve’s tracker. If you are a FCP user, it will be easy to use. I do not use FCP every day, so it took me a few minutes to figure it out, but once I did, I understood what was going on. If you want to go further, Apple has incorporated machine learning models to identify potential objects you would want to track, such as faces. In addition, you can dial in the manual tracking features if you want to. The FCP 10.6 update also includes optimizations for use with the M1 chip family, including the Pro and Max models.

I was playing back 8K footage without hesitation; it was slick. Multiple tracks of ProRes 4444 8K footage played in real time without issue. It was pretty amazing. Finally, with the buzz surrounding the new Cinematic video mode on iPhone 13, Final Cut Pro 10.6 is compatible with that footage. You can rack focus between objects directly inside of FCP 10.6, complete with keyframes for the depth effect. You must have macOS Monterey for this feature to work. For more info on the FCPX 10.6 updates, click over to Apple’s list, which includes the XML 1.10 updates.

I usually dive into benchmarks to get them out of the way first, but I was too excited to get to some real-world testing. Benchmarks are just that, benchmarks; they aren’t the end-all-be-all of testing. I will go over benchmarks at the end and compare them to a Windows-based mobile workstation I happen to be reviewing.

Neat Video

Digging Into Testing
Over the past couple of years, I began building a UHD (3840×2160) sequence of various professionally filmed, “high-end” clips: Red, ARRI, Blackmagic Raw and H.264 at or above 3840×2160 resolution. In all the apps I test, I use the unrendered/uncached/unoptimized sequence with and without the uber-intensive Neat Video noise removal plugin, basic color correction and some resizes. From there I export four different versions: H.265, ProRes 4444 XQ MOV, DNxHR HQX 10-bit MXF and a DPX sequence, first in Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve and then in Adobe Premiere.

On first impressions inside of Resolve 17.4, the Red footage was set to “Full Res. Premium” (R3D 3:1), and it stutters a little playing at around 18fps. At the R3D 7:1 setting, on the other hand, it was almost able to play in real time (23.98), but it wouldn’t lock on. The other footage had no problem playing in real time in the UHD 23.98 timelines.

When using Neat Video, I never expect the timeline to play at a decent speed; Neat Video is just too power-hungry. On the M1 Max-based MacBook Pro, when playing some Sony H.264 footage, I was a little surprised that I saw about 10fps playout with Neat Video applied.

As a side note, when using Neat Video, you should always go to the Tools > Preferences > Performance > Optimize Settings for each timeline resolution you are using. This will run a few tests on all the cores, some of the cores and GPU cores. As an extra side note, I saw some people posting benchmarks on Twitter and mentioned my initial Neat Video results. They were good, but Neat Video was watching and contacted me. They sent me an unreleased prebuild version on Neat Video for the new M1 chips.

While Neat Video works with M1 chips, it only runs in CPU-only mode. It’s still fast, but the prerelease build Neat Video sent me used both the CPU and GPU, and it is good. Neat Video said it will be released in the coming weeks, but for now, I had the Resolve version, and it was fast. I could play 1080p footage with Neat Video noise reduction in real time! Even in the UHD timeline on the Red footage, I was getting between 6fps and 8fps! On the HP Fury G8 laptop I am also testing, I was lucky to get 1fps playback.

I edited and exported two 23.98fps UHD sequences that contain a mix of footage:

– ARRI RAW: 3840×2160 24fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames

– ARRI RAW: 4448×1856 24fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames

– BMD RAW: 6144×3456 24fps – 15 seconds

– Red RAW: 6144×3072 23.976fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames

– Red RAW: 6144×3160 23.976fps – 7 seconds, 12 frames

– Sony a7siii: 3840×2160 23.976fps – 15 seconds

Resolve

Resolve 17.4 Exports:

No Neat Video OFX Applied:

H.265 – :45 seconds

ProRes 4444XQ – :54

DNxHR HQX 10-bit – 1:06

DPX image sequence – :40

Neat Video (non-M1 CPU/GPU version) applied:

H.265 – 6:28

ProRes 4444XQ – 6:31

DNxHR HQX 10-bit – 6:39

DPX Image Sequence – 6:39

Neat Video (pre-build M1 CPU/GPU version) applied:

H.265 – 4:25

ProRes 4444XQ – 4:25

DNxHR HQX 10-bit – 4:25

DPX image sequence – 4:26

I was pleasantly surprised at just how fast the exports inside Resolve 17.4 were. In the past when I have run this test, mostly when testing Windows-based PCs, the results have been double or more depending on the GPU. For instance, on the not-exactly-comparable HP Z2 Mini G5 workstation, the H.265 export with Neat Video Noise Reduction was around 14:42. You can find the full results here.

By the way, the MacBook Pro M1 Max never made a sound! It is dead-silent. The only time I noticed the heat was when I was running a Blender scene render on repeat until the battery died.

Premiere Pro played back the clips similarly to Resolve, but the non-CPU/GPU version of the Neat Video demo plugin really took Premiere to task. The demo version only exports noise reduction on a 1280×720 portion of the video, so if it had been the entire resolution, I might have been going for multiple hours.

Adobe Premiere Pro 2022 Export via Media Encoder:

No Neat Video applied:
H.265 – 1:08

ProRes 4444XQ – 1:42

DNxHR HQX 10-bit – 1:37

DPX image sequence – 2:02

Demo Neat Video applied:
H.265 – 1:12:40 (hours:minutes:seconds)

ProRes 4444XQ – 1:14:05

DNxHR HQX 10-bit – 1:07:34

DPX image sequence – 1:13:10

As mentioned earlier, I am also testing the HP Fury G8, which is more or less comparable, spec-wise. Obviously, it is not built with the Apple Silicon-based processors or unified GPU. But it is packed with an Intel i9-11950H 8-core processor, 15.6-inch DreamColor display, 32GB DDR 3200 SODIMM memory (upgradable to 128GB), 1TB SSD, and Nvidia RTX A5000 GPU with 16GB of dedicated GDDR6 memory. The price is a little over $5,800 and includes a three-year warranty. You can extend to a five-year warranty with accidental damage protection and next-business-day response for another $670. The MacBook Pro is about $1,000 more, but essentially Apple is going after the mobile workstation market without the official workstation classifications.

Traditional mobile workstations come with certifications verifying that the software and hardware have been proven by the vendors to work together with little to no issues and at their max capabilities. These are called ISV (Independent Software Vendor) certifications. Apple doesn’t necessarily have these certifications, and this can sometimes stop businesses from adopting uncertified hardware. It is one of the reasons Lenovo and HP have a firm grasp on corporate sales — their hardware has been certified to work with professional software.

To compare, here are some of my results using the same footage and sequences I used on the MacBook Pro processed using the HP Fury G8 workstation — both on the internal SSDs…

Resolve 17.4 Exports:
No Neat Video OFX applied:
H.265 – :55 seconds

DNxHR HQX 10-bit – 1:38

DPX image sequence – 1:25

Neat Video applied:

H.265 – 6:53

DNxHR HQX 10-bit – 7:06

DPX Image Sequence – 7:07

Adobe Premiere Pro 2022 Exports via Media Encoder:
No Neat Video applied:
H.265 – 1:58

ProRes 4444XQ – 2:47

DNxHR HQX 10-bit – 2:24

DPX image sequence – 3:54

Demo Neat Video Applied:
H.265 – 51:27

ProRes 4444XQ – 52:23

DNxHR HQX 10-bit – 45:38

DPX image sequence – 5:25:16 (not sure what happened here but it happened multiple times)

As you can see from the pre-build Neat Video plugin results, the MacBook Pro with M1 Max chip bested its competitors. It was in the world of 60% faster in Resolve 17.4. That is a major difference. Apple has said the new MacBook Pro with M1 Max could play ProRes 422 8K media smoothly in Final Cut’s timeline. I wanted to see if that would hold true for Resolve, and it worked! I first played back some sample 8K Red Raw clips I found on RawFilm. These are Red Helium 8K (full DCI) 8192×4320, 24p, RedCode 8:1 clips. They are great samples. When using Full Res. Premium settings as well as setting the “Use the GPU for R3D for Decompression and debayer,” I was able to playback the 8K R3D at about 16 fps! That is very good. But Apple states that the M1 Max has special ProRes encode and decode magical powers, so I converted the 8K R3D to a ProRes 4444 8K file, re-imported and began playing it back in real time. I began stacking them and it kept playing in real time.

Eventually, I started adding Gaussian blur to the clip until it couldn’t playback in real time. It took seven layers of Gaussian blur to bring the playback down to about 19fps, six layers and under played in real time.

For comparison, the HP Fury G8 played back the same ProRes 4444 file with two Gaussian blur layers. The third layer started choking the playback to around 20fps. An amazing comparison — and between this and the Neat Video results, it has flipped me around. But I’m not necessarily an Apple fanboy. I like the products, but I am always skeptical — the exception being the iMac Pro. (I love those machines). But now the new Apple MacBook Pro M1 Max laptop is the best laptop I have ever used for multimedia.

Blender

The Battery
The battery on the Apple MacBook Pro M1 Max can last a long time when using it for web browsing, simple photo editing and more basic tasks. When using it for multimedia applications, I was getting between 2 and 2.5 hours of life. Using a Blender-based benchmark scene called Gooseberry and Maxon’s Cinebench R23, I ran looping render tests, and both had similar results. I made sure to use the newest Blender version (2.93.5), which is Apple Silicon-compatible. I ran the tests a few times and was getting closer to 2 hours, but to be fair, I did get 2.5 hours once. On the HP Fury G8, I was getting between 1.5 hours and 2 hours of battery life. The MacBook Pro M1 Max bested the HP by a good amount. On both systems I cranked the brightness up to its max and made sure the power settings were on high, so I was burning these systems.

Final Thoughts
In the end, the MacBook Pro 16-inch with M1 Max processor is an amazingly snappy and utterly silent laptop. It takes a lot to get the fans spinning, and even when they do wind up, they are barely audible. The new six-speaker audio setup sounds amazing.

I love that Apple has accepted that some of their innovations weren’t fully embraced, like the Touch Bar, and removed them. They also recognized when they needed to reinstate things that they did eliminate, like the MagSafe power adapter. I always loved the MagSafe power supply and can’t imagine a MacBook Pro without it. If you’ve ever broken off a power supply in a laptop, then you know why.

The battery life is astounding. The new ProMotion — Liquid Retina XDR — display is bright, colorful and overall one of the best looking displays I have used. Not to mention it can crank up to 120Hz and sustain a purported 1000 nits (it even hit 1600 nits in peak brightness, although that’s a little too bright for my old eyes). While I can’t attest to the accuracy because I didn’t calibrate with a SpectraCal monitor, but the XDR display is a modern marvel and worth the price of admission alone. I typically use external displays that are color calibrated that run through analyzing scopes for color accuracy, but the Liquid Retina XDR might be on the same level.

The MacBook Pro with M1 Max chip is amazing, if nothing else I have to give credit to Apple for creating an entirely new CPU/GPU ecosystem internally with relatively no issues.

I can only imagine what will be coming to a desktop Mac Pro or MacBook Pro M2 Max lineup next. Who knows, are we going to see an iPad Pro with M1 Max? Check out more on the MacBook Pro with M1 Max on www.apple.com.

Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on shows like Life Below Zero and Uninterrupted: The Shop . He is also a member of the Producers Guild of America. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.