Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsThe King. M2 Max vs M1 Max 14" vs 16" which one?
Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2023
efore going into details i want to say these are the best laptops on the market hands down there is no competition. I am intending this review to help people in a position of trying to figure out which model to get as a high end user and which size 14" vs 16". Also that there is ZERO reason to upgrade from an M1 2021 version of this laptop as it is so similar unless you have a very specific need (eg wi-fi 6e, bluetooth 5.3, hdmi 2.1) or use case (profesional video editing and time based 3D rendering projects that it would likely be a waste of money. Also sorry for an extremely long review but read it all if you want to know where things sit.
I own the 2021 m1 max 32 core gpu as well as the 14 and 16 core, m2 air 8-core, a few other windows gaming laptops and macs and now m2 max 38-core gpu model. I have recently picked up this years 19 and 30 core so i know a thing or two about all of them.
First I will cover 14" vs 16" size comparison and then go into details regarding why i daily drive the one i do and how they all compare.
As you can see from my pictures i am showing a couple comparisons of the 14" vs the 16" for size wise. This is always a common thing to be looking at when making a purchase and portability plays a large role. Flat out the 16" is LARGE, heavy, but packs a greater punch so to speak. The 16" has better speakers, larger battery giving a couple more hours, clearly far more screen real estate, larger track pad, and larger fans/cooling system so it runs about 10c cooler than the 14" at all times though i want to note neither size ever EVER overheats unlike the old intel models.
Speakers- the speakers are the best in any laptop ever on the 16" but the 14" ones are not that far behind or enough to be mad over they still are better than any windows laptop ive heard (ive heard a lot).
The larger battery- Realistically speaking in the real world were talking getting 14 hours vs 16 hours on light use so again if you have a windows machine or older mac your probably only getting 6-10 hours max anyway so even the 14" is worth your time there.
Screen- These are the best screens on the market today even against OLED as these have no risk of burn in yet still produce deep blacks. That said the screen real estate on the 16" is MUCH more and this is where you need to stop and think about what you need from your laptop. If you do any video editing or coding you may find that the 16" is the absolute best for you. The 14" can feel extremely cramped while using it on the go and for me this is the only real drawback of that size. Also note that if you dock at a desk using an external monitor or your TV at home ( hdmi or casting wirelessly to airplay) this becomes a non issue and i would much reccomend the 14" instead.
Track pad- Again these are by far the best track pads made. Just like the screen if you do video editing it is much easier using the much larger 16" versions trackpad as its a few extra inches over the already ridiculously large one on the 14". If you use an external mouse this clearly doesnt matter and if you dont do intensive tasks like gestures constantly this also wont matter for you as both are abnormally large and amazing to use.
Thermals Fans - Ok so by now you might know that the redesign with apple silicon in 2021 also came with extremely cool running laptops which is just amazing! Comparing the 14 and 16" models as said above you will see about a good 10c difference in temps under heavy load. That said you will still almost NEVER hear the fans run. Even when they do they are so quiet youd have to put your ear to the laptop to see if that is indeed what your hearing, thats how good they are. Now, if you are putting a large CPU and GPU load on your machine doing something like gaming or 3d work here is where you might realize something that most reviewers cant attest to. The 16" fans when at full speed (over 100c under extremely rare times that almost nobody can make it do mind you) are MUCH louder than the 14" ones at full speed as they push a lot more air with larger blades. This is a topic that is largely glossed over because you legit cannot get your machine this hot almost ever. So the 1% out there that do this, you know who you are, get the 14" if you care about fan sound which is the opposite of what most say because under normal use the 16" handles heat better and doesnt spin the fans as much generally speaking.
To finish the whole 14" vs 16" debate its of course personal preference however i personally daily use my 14" as its way way more portable and i enjoy using it more regardless of the drawbacks stated above. I use it at the office and home desk docked with an external display so that doesnt bother me. I also air play it to my living room TV to get video editing done or use my magic keyboard and trackpad from my couch with it hooked to my TV HDMI and it works amazing. If you dont travel or you are going to keep it plugged in at all times go for the 16" as you can enjoy the better items it can provide.
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M1 MAX 32-core vs M2 MAX 38-Core GPU's as well as others-
The advertised spec bump is exactly as youd imagine it is a very small increase to graphical performance. You actually get a much larger leap by the fact the base clock speed is higher than the M1 chip rather than the 8 extra GPU cores. In gaming i can say in world of warcraft that the extra 8 gpu cores actually increased framerates 65%!! This game however also has more to do with single core cpu speeds then GPU but it is a massive increase none the less. In video rednering ive seen a massive decrease which was suprising because the documentation doesnt mention it having double encode and decode engines yet it must because its walking all over the m1 max 32 core. Most other generic workloads arent going to matter with saving time but almost everything ive done and tested on these are within 10% difference in performance and probably not worth spending more money to get the M2 version unless you have a very specific need. When looking at the base models of these the 19-core in the 2023 vs 2021 provides a larger increase in performance and is a very welcomed change over last year. Since if your buying that machine you would not be pushing the envelope most things will work better then youd ever imagine or need and you may also want to cross shop the M2 air model if you dont mind the worse speakers and screen (see in store).
M1 10 core cpu vs 12 core cpu
This year they added 2 more efficency cores which provides a tangable performance jump over the previous model. I can see this in daily use and i can see a large difference in battery life as well as its much more effecient. The cores run at a higher clock speed and provide just a much smoother experience multi tasking or under heavy cpu work load. Its much harder to get it to hiccup vs the older models.
14" vs 16"
There is NO performance difference between the 14" and 16" contrary to popular belief from tech youtubers talking about thermal throttling. This is ridiculously based off of worthless benchmarks that literally max out your cpu and gpu for 10 mins straight and are not at all a normal use case so dont be fooled by those videos. I have real world experience on both. Do not base your choice on the made up metrics just decide what size phyiscally works better for your use case unless you need something very specific or NEED the extra 1.5-2 hours of battery for whatever reason that the 16" provides.
RAM / Unified memory
So you dont have that many options from the "stock" models that the stores get you can only choose between 16GB and 32GB which come with their own set of set SSD sizes and options but for MOST people are more then enough with any that you choose. These laptops will certainly last longer then 5 years and since you will already be spending a ton of money i highly suggest if you have any doubt to just go with the 32GB unified memory model to "futureproof" as many say. The 16GB though is more than capible and these machines can use what they call SWAP memory where it can write to the extremely fast SSD drive (except the base model 10/16 14" that has a slow ssd and worse performance) and use it as unified memory in the case your running out of physical memory. So its nothing like a windows computer where you just bluescreen and crash, these do not do that it will give you many warnings and allow you to choose how to proceed instead.
There is many other things you could say about these but this is already more than long enough and i hope i have helped you make a better choice on your potentially new laptop.
That said if your looking for the absolute king of the jungle this is your machine! Everything is largely identical to the eye between the 2021 models and these new 2023 so keep that in mind these are just an upgraded internally with some benefits. Some of those being wi-fi 6e, bluetooth 5.3, better battery life, and HDMI 2.1 which essentially means you have more bandwidth to output a video signal over if you wish to run something like a 4k monitor at up to 240hz (2021 can only do 4k 60hz).
