Macbook Pro advice: 16inch M1 or 14inch M2

bluerock · May 4, 2023

Evening

I'm after some advice please re. Macbook Pro's.

I'm after a new laptop and it has to be a mac to fit in with everything else, my eyes are not as young as they were so looking at either 14 or 16 inch. Weight is not an issue (the laptop, not me!).

Dilemma... There is just £119 difference between a 16 inch M1 and a 14 inch M2 with 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD. The M2 is £119 more than the M1.

Which to go for? Bigger screen or newer chip? I wont be using it for anything intensive.

Thanks in advance.

DJ · May 4, 2023

bluerock said:
Evening

I'm after some advice please re. Macbook Pro's.

I'm after a new laptop and it has to be a mac to fit in with everything else, my eyes are not as young as they were so looking at either 14 or 16 inch. Weight is not an issue (the laptop, not me!).

Dilemma... There is just £119 difference between a 16 inch M1 and a 14 inch M2 with 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD. The M2 is £119 more than the M1.

Which to go for? Bigger screen or newer chip? I wont be using it for anything intensive.

Thanks in advance.

Can't help sorry, avid hatter of all things apple, but I'd have thought you could have stretched to this one the amount you have been catching recently

:

https://www.currys.co.uk/products/apple-macbook-pro-16-2023-m2-max-1-tb-ssd-silver-10246968.html

lazarus · May 4, 2023

Is there much difference if battery life?

I'd personally go for the bigger one.

An extra 2 inches can make a world of difference even if you do have to compensate a little for speed

Ben Thomas · May 4, 2023

14 inch M2, trust me. the 14 inch is just the right size, it feels great. This may be preference though, so YMMV

dee · May 4, 2023

Apple says the M2 Pro gives up to 20% faster CPU and 30% faster GPU performance than the M1 Pro, but unless your getting into video renders or serious multirack recording, on a day to day basis you'd probably be hard pushed to notice the difference.

I'm on a Macbook pro from 2019 and can run lots of multitrack audio with large plug in count no problem, so either of these is going to stupid fast.

What are you actually doing with it ? I would tend to think larger screen from your initial post

EDIT - It seems the M2 is approx 1.4 times faster with same battery life ( it's more efficient ) Seems its 10 cores over 8.

So.... if your doing heavy video / renders / animation then may be worth it. If your looking at invoices and acorn then probs the bigger screen is better

bluerock · May 5, 2023

DJ said:
Can't help sorry, avid hatter of all things apple, but I'd have thought you could have stretched to this one the amount you have been catching recently :

https://www.currys.co.uk/products/apple-macbook-pro-16-2023-m2-max-1-tb-ssd-silver-10246968.html

I need to change my tag to BLUEWOOD to get some of your luck, you are currently the Man City of catchers

bluerock · May 5, 2023

Cheers for all the advice. Usage would be large word documents and lots of open safari tabs.
Probably not using it on the go but I can connect to external monitors.
Bit overkill I know but they are quality.

Muller2 · May 5, 2023

Do you attach to external monitors? IIRC the smaller m1's can't drive multiple monitors. Might not be an issue for m2's - worth double checking..

bluerock · May 5, 2023

Muller2 said:
Do you attach to external monitors? IIRC the smaller m1's can't drive multiple monitors. Might not be an issue for m2's - worth double checking..

I would just attach to a single monitor at Uni not multiples, but appreciate the post.

alex · May 5, 2023

I purchased the M1 16" about a month before the M2 came out - typical timing. But performance is still excellent, boots up adobe suite in an instant and handles very large Google Sheets, Excel/CSV exports and Parallels easily. I'd usually buy newest model to last longest, but for me the bigger screen is more important on the move so if I were given the choice now I'd go 16". Are you near an Apple Store to compare?

Ben Thomas · May 5, 2023

alex said:
I purchased the M1 16" about a month before the M2 came out - typical timing. But performance is still excellent, boots up adobe suite in an instant and handles very large Google Sheets, Excel/CSV exports and Parallels easily. I'd usually buy newest model to last longest, but for me the bigger screen is more important on the move so if I were given the choice now I'd go 16". Are you near an Apple Store to compare?

Did the same mate in 2020, right before the M1 came out. I knew it was coming, I just couldn't wait any longer as my old 2017 MacBook had started to get really slow.

Mine is still rapid. Only on the 2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5 with 16GB of RAM, I've used it for photo editing with Lightroom, graphics design, development, web design, literally everything.

I can only imagine the speed of the M1, let alone the M2.

EDIT: The worst part about that for me, was that when the faster M1 machines came out they were so much cheaper. I think I paid about £1800 for this, when the M1 came out the same specs were about £1200

bluerock · May 5, 2023

alex said:
I purchased the M1 16" about a month before the M2 came out - typical timing. But performance is still excellent, boots up adobe suite in an instant and handles very large Google Sheets, Excel/CSV exports and Parallels easily. I'd usually buy newest model to last longest, but for me the bigger screen is more important on the move so if I were given the choice now I'd go 16". Are you near an Apple Store to compare?

Hi Alex,
I'm not near an Apple store but had a look at Costco. They do 2 years warranty as well.

webber · May 6, 2023

bluerock said:
Weight is not an issue (the laptop, not me!).

Give this guy a microphone and throw him on a stage.

That was funny

lazarus said:
An extra 2 inches can make a world of difference

My girlfriend has assured me repeatedly that it does not.

DJ said:
avid hatter of all things apple

I'm with you on this one, all their consumer products are meant to work in an apple bubble.
But their computers are great and it's mostly because of macOS which is still pretty much unix with some boltons and fancy graphics, making web dev and programming easier.
They over-engineer most their products (their macpro 5,1 still is an amazing piece of tech to take apart) but that hardware is let down by strategic executive decisions in regards to software.

dee said:
What are you actually doing with it ?

Back to the original question, this is what it all boils down to: what you are actually doing with it.
Most people won't be able to tell the difference between two consecutive generations of internal hardware.
So whether it's M1 or M2 you won't perceive any difference day-to-day. Even video editing will feel about the same on both. It's the final export that will be slightly faster on the M2.
Another thing to consider is to never jump on the first generation of a new technology, so maybe the M1 should be skipped, but I've not seen many complaints about it, probably because it's not so new tech after all and is in fact the same processor we've had in our phones for a decade (ie ARM)