It's no secret that I'm kind of a MacBook guy. So when Apple's new M3 MacBook launched,
I kind of started to second guess my Framework 16 pre-order.
So when we had to unbox it for ShortCircuit, I figured this is the perfect time
to get a little bit of hands-on. Now I did pre-order a Framework 16
to replace my kind of aging now Intel Core i9 MacBook Pro,
which is also a 16-inch. Full disclosure, Linus is invested in Framework.
I am not. They just look really sick and I wanna try one.
But this could be a serious competitor. I like the Framework for its repairability
and the modular discrete GPU, but man, there is something to be said
for macOS battery life. I don't know if I'll be able to go back to Windows
in a laptop form factor. This is the 16-inch MacBook Pro M3 Pro.
The Pro Pro? M3 Pro Pro? I like this.
This has letters I like. I like M3s, I like Pros, and I like MacBooks.
I think this color's called Space Black. Pretty sexy.
If I were to hold it like that, that's like the same color as a normal MacBook.
And then it's down now with black. Whoa, crazy. Inside the box, we've got the usual Apple propaganda here,
designed by Apple in California. Stickers.
Wait, is this a joke? Dude, there's a spacer in here.
It looks like there's more in there. There's not. That's just like a folded cardboard.
Maybe it's so all the boxes can be the same like some countries have more regulatory stuff than others.
We've got the standard Apple charger. This is a 140-watt brick.
Man, Apple's gonna have to start making these things smaller. And then there is the really sexy Apple cables.
What is this? This gotta be two meters. They don't list it on the Apple website,
but I think it's two meters. For comparison's sake, here is the M3 non-pro 14-inch MacBook Pro.
And then this is the last generation M2 Pro MacBook Pro 14.
I just wanted to see visually, physically, if the 14s were any different.
It doesn't look like it. I mean, the keyboard, it's the same.
I mean, which one? Is this even the M2? This is the M2, okay.
You're definitely not like flexing. You know, when the new iPhone comes out,
you can always tell, ooh, they've got like the big cameras, the fancy ones.
Oh, it's the titanium one. Nope, this one just looks the same.
In order, we've got our M3 Pro on the bottom, M3 non-pro and M2 Pro.
The IO on this side is going to be functionally looking the same.
You've got two Thunderbolt 4 slash USB 4,
you've got your MagSafe charger and audio, except on the non-pro,
these are Thunderbolt 3 instead of Thunderbolt 4, but they do also still support USB 4 across the spectrum.
It was the same on the M2 generation as it is on the M3 generation in that regard.
On the other side, we've got HDMI and extra Thunderbolt if you have a pro or better CPU,
and then an SD card reader. But for the rest of this, I'm going to focus on the space black one.
Ooh, okay, let's look at the damn software.
Looks like macOS. Mmm, feels like macOS, even smells like macOS.
Physically speaking, it's not super clear what the differences are here,
but Apple has this handy thing on their website that allows you to compare Mac models.
This is not a very Apple feeling feature to have on their website until you start scrolling down,
and then it makes more sense, because up to a 16-core CPU, you know,
it sounds like, well, this is an M3 Pro. I'm going to get more cores in my M2 Pro.
Not really. Same thing for the GPU and the memory. If we scroll down, you can see the M2 Pro
is a 12-core with eight performance cores and four efficiency cores,
while the M3 Pro also a 12-core, except it has less performance cores
and more efficiency ones. We'll see in the Labs testing if it actually makes a major difference.
I suspect knowing that it's Apple, that it probably doesn't make a huge difference.
We are moving to TSMC's three-nanometer process node on the new CPUs,
so there's going to be an efficiency improvement. I bet you, looking at this,
that they're going to take that improvement, make the laptop be better on battery
and perform pretty similarly. Also, we have less memory bandwidth.
For most people, probably not going to make a big difference. For video editing, might,
but also there's a ton of hardware acceleration on MacBook,
so maybe less. We do have AV1 decoding, which is great.
No, does it not have encoding for AV1? Yeah, okay, bell confirmed, no AV1 encoding.
Kind of weird. You get a little bit more RAM on the same SKU,
so 16 versus 18 gigs compared to the M2.
Dang, this is like the same laptop. So maybe the next laptop for me
is going to be a used M2 Pro for a substantial discount.
Let's try out the speakers. I think they're the same.
They both sound good. If you really care that much, put headphones in.
I mean, display, display looks good. Is it different?
I don't think so. I didn't see anything different in the specs page,
so probably not, but let's take a look at the lab's results and see.
In terms of brightness on the display, we're pretty much right in line with what Apple rates it as.
For display brightness in SDR, we're at 600 nits, which is pretty good.
So we're going to go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead
and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead. So we're at 600 nits, which is exactly what Apple rates it as.
And for peak HDR brightness in XDR mode, as Apple calls it,
we're right at 1600 nits as rated. I think we did see ever so slightly higher
on a full-screen test. It looks like it was around 1100.
And Apple only says 1000, so that's cool. They're decently color accurate.
The P3 gamut coverage is pretty much effectively 100%.
The average SDR delta E's are around 1.5 average
which is decently color accurate, although the default HDR mode tends to kind of over brighten
what you see to give it a bit of more of a punchy Costco effect, but there is a picture mode called
PQ2084 that tracks HDR brightness much more accurately. And as with the last generation,
the local dimming is still some of the best we've seen on pretty much any non OLED display.
You're looking at 2000 plus zones on the 14 inch and then 2500 plus on the 16 inch,
which is really good considering how small that screen is.
But what about performance? Hmm? The single-threader performance is quite a bit better,
like in the range of 20%, which is substantial. Even the non-pro M3 is tracking 20% faster than
an M2 Max last time, or about 17% faster than the M2 Pro, which is pretty substantial. Moving over
to multi-core, at least in Cinebench 2024, the M3 Pro picks up 30 plus percent on an M2 Pro,
albeit in a 14 inch chassis, which is quite substantial. That three nanometer process node
is offering some substantial, substantial performance here, even considering we have
less performance, more efficiency cores. I kind of assumed it was going to be the same, but lower
power draw, but it seems like it's better and probably lower power draw. Battery life as expected
excels on these new MacBooks. We're looking at 24 and a half hours in our YouTube endurance test
on the 16 inch and around 21 hours on the 14 inch. That's to be expected because it's a
pretty substantially smaller battery in the 14 inch chassis. For stress test, pretty much exactly
the same. And then the time to full charge is around an hour and a half and an hour and 45,
respectively, much bigger charger on the 16 inch and then a smaller battery on the 14 inch. So
those kind of balance each other out to be pretty similar overall. After I've looked at some of the
other benchmarks, it seems like in a fair few situations, we're quite a bit faster on this
new generation, which is great. It's probably going to be more efficient. You're talking a
three nanometer process node, which is quite a bit smaller. We have more transistors from the
M2 non-pro to the M3 non-pro, 20 billion to 25 billion, which is a huge increase, except
confusingly going from the M2 pro to the M3 pro, we have less 40 billion versus 37.
And still it's generally faster. One thing that I'm noting out of all of this is the M2 pro Mac mini
is kind of a superstar. It seems most of the time it's like almost as fast. So if you're just using
this at your desk, you might want to look at a Mac mini from last gen. Either way, faster laptop
in most cases, battery life, still nuts is ever screen, still excellent. I like the new colors.
Apple keep doing a good job. You make great laptops, but they are goddamn expensive.
Like seriously, how much is this thing? I don't even want to look 1600 US dollars for the base
spec 14 inch MacBook Pro. If we look at the 16 inch MacBook Pro, which is what I'm interested in,
maybe I'm less interested now. In 16 inch land, it's $2,500 for the base spec M3 pro.
That's a 12 core CPU, 18 core GPU, 18 gigs of RAM and a 512 gig SSD. You bump up to 36 gigs of RAM
like we have in a one terabyte, 3100 with a 512, 2900. And if you go for the M3 max,
it starts at 3,500 US dollars. What's the just humor me? What is the most expensive MacBook pro?
Holy crap. That is 7,200 US dollars.
Maybe I'll be applying for a new credit card soon. If you're interested in more information on these
laptops, Mac Address or Apple channel will have a full review coming very shortly. Get subscribed,
like the video. God damn, why do the nice things have to be so expensive? It's just pretty. Damn.