Apple M1 Pro and M1 Max vs M1: Here’s what Apple improved with its new custom chips

• Apple has launched new versions of its custom M1 chips - M1 Pro and M1 Max.
• The new M1 chips power a 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro.
• Here’s a comparison between the M1 Pro and M1 Max with the M1.

Apple launched new MacBooks powered by new versions of its in-house M1 chip at the Unleashed event. There’s the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips powering the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models. The new chips are built on the same architecture as the first M1 chip but offer faster speeds and performance.

The M1 chip brought some big performance and battery life upgrades to the MacBook lineup last year as Apple moved from Intel to its custom chips. The new M1 chips boast faster performance gains as compared to the first generation. We take a look at what exactly has Apple worked on with the M1 Pro and M1 Max.

Apple M1 vs M1 Pro and M1 Max

Specs

The M1 Pro and M1 Max feature up to 10 cores in total while the M1 maxes out at eight cores. The GPU cores are also set at a maximum of 16 cores for the M1 Pro and M1 Max. The M1 has a total of eight graphics cores. This makes the new MacBooks easily handle GPU intensive tasks like video encoding, 3D rendering as well as gaming.

RAM

Apple has beefed up the RAM capacity as well on the new M1 chips. The M1 Pro has up to 32GB of RAM, while the M1 Pro can go up to a whopping 64GB of RAM. More RAM means faster processing speeds for memory-intensive tasks. Apple also says that you get the same level of performance when the MacBook Pro is on battery or plugged in. In last year’s M1 chip, the maximum RAM capacity was 16GB.

Performance

According to Apple, the M1 Pro and Max offer up to 70% faster performance as compared to the M1. The GPU performance, memory bandwidth and number of transistors are two times more on the M1 Pro than the M1. In the M1 Max, you get up to 400GBps of memory bandwidth which is almost six times that of M1. The M1 Pro can also support up to two external displays, and four external displays on the M1 Max.

Battery life

The M1 stood out for its long battery life on the MacBook Air and Pro. With the M1 Pro, the 14-inch MacBook Pro can offer up to 17 hours of video playback which is seven more hours than last year’s MacBook Pro. As for the 16-inch MacBook Pro it is claimed to give up to 21 hours of video playback on a single charge. The new MacBooks also come with fast charging that gives 50% of power with 30 minutes of charging time.

Takeaways

The M1 Pro and M1 Max are Apple’s fastest and biggest chips ever and surely boast some big performance upgrades. But real-world tests will give a better and clearer idea on whether these claims prove true.

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