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For this test the application is optimized for Apple Silicon. The MacBook Pro M1 smoked all of its competitors on our Handbrake video editing test, which involves transcoding a 4K clip to 1080p. The MacBook Air M1 scored a similar 5,962. This number surpasses the 5,319 score from the Dell XPS 13 and the Asus ZenBook 13’s 5,084, and both of those machines pack 11th gen Intel Core i7 CPUs. On Geekbench 5.1, which measures overall performance, the MacBook Pro M1 scored 5,945 on the multi-core portion of the test. Only once I started adding iOS apps to the mix did I start to see stuttering. I pushed the MacBook Pro M1 to 61 tabs while writing this review and the performance remained rock solid, even while I was juggling multiple conversations in Slack and streaming Spotify. One of my biggest complaints about my older Core i5 MacBook from 2019 is that it can get bogged down easily when I have lots of tabs open in Google Chrome. The easiest way to sum up the MacBook Pro M1’s performance is that the barriers between you and getting stuff done melt away.
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We're hearing Apple is preparing both a MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch model with these features. All while adding in faster processors and adopting the flat-edge design language of the iPhone 12 and iPad Pro. Rumors suggest Apple will bring back MagSafe charging and the SD memory reader, and drop the Touch Bar. The MacBook Pro 2021, though looks to seriously improve on the current model. If you want more than 512GB of storage, 1TB costs an extra $400 while 2TB will run you $800.
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It costs $200 to go from 8GB to 16GB of memory. If you want to configure the MacBook Pro M1 yourself, there are a number of upgrades available. You get 256GB of storage to start, but the $1,499 model of the MacBook Pro M1 includes 512GB of storage. That configuration gives you Apple’s powerful M1 chip with an 8-core CPU and 8-core GPU, plus 8GB of unified memory (RAM). The MacBook Pro M1 had a release date of November 17 and starts at $1,299. MacBook Pro M1 review: Release date and price
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16:32 of web browsing (M1, tested) | Up to 20 hours (Apple M1, claimed) | 10:21 (Intel, tested)
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