Best M2 Max MacBook Pro Review

Best M2 Max MacBook Pro Review

so this week, Apple updated the 14 inch

and 16 inch MacBook Pros
with a press release

and an that featured a bunch of
creators at the beginning,

which was cool, and then basically
a whole prerecorded event

that kind of looked like it
was cut out of another event.

Matter of fact, it's rumored that

this basically was cut out of an event

that they were rumored
to have late last year.

Honestly, I buy it,

like the URL and the file name
of the video had 2022 in them

and the AR files for the new laptops

were compiled in October, 2022,

suggesting that these things
were ready to go months ago.

But whatever, none of that matters.

What matters is they're here now

and what you need to
know is on the outside,

they're basically identical,

but on the inside, instead
of M1 Pro and M1 Max,

it's M2 Pro and M2 Max,

and a couple other tiny improvements also.

So the first Apple Silicon MacBook Pros,

when they came out in October, 2021,

honestly some of the most
unanimously well-liked computers

I have ever seen.

They added back the ports,
they got rid of the touch bar,

they brought back MagSafe,

they bumped up to

an excellent high refresh
rate mini LED display,

and the performance is incredible.

Like across the board,

I don't think I've met a
single person who got one

and was like, "Oh, nah, I
made a mistake with this one."

So when you see a new one
a year and a half later,

there isn't really a ton that
we're expecting to change

because the big leap was
from the Intel MacBook Pros

to the Apple Silicon ones.

Now we're back to more
incremental improvements.

So as you can imagine,

yeah, completely identical on the outside,

same sizes, same colors,

the only way I can
differentiate this new one

from my old 16 inch M1 Max

is the icon skin I've had on the back.

Of course, channel sponsor dbrand

is already selling these
for the 2023 model,

so if you want your laptop
to look a little different

than every other MacBook Pro in the world,

then, yeah, this is your
best bet, link below.

So the bulk of what's new

is coming from the new chip inside.

M2 Pro and M2 Max.

They are essentially the same price tiers

and configurations across
the board as before

but Apple is quoting now
20% more CPU performance

and 30% better GPU performance.

This in front of me here

is a maxed out M2 Max with the 38 core GPU

and the new maximum of
96 gigs of shared memory.

Shocker, this thing rips.

So under the hood, it's built on

a new second gen 5 nanometer process,

and they've added some cores,

two more high efficiency CPU cores

and three more GPU cores on the Pro,

so it's a 19 core GPU on the M2 Pro.

And a 38 core GPU on the M2 Max.

Also, the neural engine and media engine

are improved to handle machine learning

and media playback and transcoding

even faster than they already did.

If you're into synthetic benchmarks,

I did run Geekbench 5

and the single core score

is now the highest I have
ever seen, just over 2,000,

while the multi-core
score was north of 15,000.

Here's some context to give you an idea

of how impressive these numbers are.

And yes, that is about

the 20% CPU improvement that we expected.

And then, in Cinebench, again,

it had a chart topping single core score

and here's how the multi-core stacks out.

So overall capabilities,

basically the ceiling has been raised up

by the 20 to 30%, which is
great, but as I mentioned

in the original M1 Max
review a year and a half ago,

it's not so much about
the raw processing power

as much as it's about the things

that it allows you to do
better or faster than before,

hence the name Pro, theoretically.

So like I noticed this in things

where I have parts of my workflow

that work just right with it.

So I have this same I do

where I screen record with ScreenFlow

and it'll do a full
resolution screen recording

and then I'll export that and use it

and bring into Final Cut Pro.

The exporting of that screen recording

into ProRes 422 was dramatically improved

when we got the media
engine with Apple Silicon.

So a 16 core Intel Mac Pro

with a Vega Pro II Duo

that retailed for over $15,000,

took a three and a half
minute screen recording

and churned that out in 56 seconds.

But the M1 max laptop
did it in 32 seconds,

So that was so sick,

that's one of those things

you instantly notice is way faster.

This new M2 Max did it in 23 seconds.

So again, a pretty
substantial improvement.

Like, clearly the outgoing
machines weren't lacking

but they've taken basically
everything that was good

about the old ones and improved it,

just bumped it up a little
bit, which is sweet.

For everyday daily non-demanding tasks

as you can probably imagine,

these are still great, totally great.

Like, I've already told you all about

the excellent mini LED display

that has a questionable
amount of light bleed

but still looks pretty
great most of the time.

I've already told you
about the top-notch design

and all of the metal build quality,

the huge track pad, the
high quality headphone jack,

the return of the built-in SD card slot,

I've already told you about all that,

but what about those
other tiny improvements

I mentioned earlier
that aren't the M2 chip?

Well, there's a couple things.

So first of all, the
extra efficiency cores

that I mentioned earlier are great,

of course, for battery life.

Not only is the battery
life still really good

but there's also a claimed extra hour

on both the 14 inch
and 16 inch of battery.

I'm not seeing a dramatic difference,

but, hey, the fact that it's
better at all, it's sick.

And then these laptops still fast charge

but there's also now a color
matching MagSafe cable.

Now this is a slight difference

since these laptops are really only silver

or slightly darker
silver, but there you go,

it's darker now with a
space gray one, it matches,

color matching all the way up

until the white plastic
USB-C nub on the other end.

And then there's a few other capabilities

WiFI 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, and HDMI 2.1.

So HDMI 2.1 was actually something

I was confused about
missing on the last version

since it had been out for a little bit.

But it's now here and that allows for

up to 8K 60FPSs through one
cable via the HDMI port.

So that's about time.

WiFi 6E is just sort of
starting to roll out now,

that's gonna be great for future proofing.

We literally just got WiFi
6E routers in the studio

for the first time and the MacBook Pros

have consistently been
like the fastest thing

on our wifi network,

and it continues to stretch
that lead in that department.

And Bluetooth 5.3, again,

very much future proofing,
but that's welcome.

But really the Apple Silicon
transition has come a long way

since the very first M1 Max that we saw

when they first started doing this.

There are a lot more well optimized apps,

it's a lot more obvious
what the benefits are.

It's still not complete, of course,

because we don't have a Mac Pro yet,

and also it kind of feels like
they forgot about the iMac.

That's just chilling, still
stuck at M1, for some reason.

But really, yeah, these are
a level up from the rest.

And I think my overall
recommendations about what to buy

at certain spots in the lineup
basically stays the same.

So if you're after battery life,

M2 Pro is gonna be awesome,

if you're after maximum power

at the expense of some
of your battery life,

then M2 Max is probably the move.

And really my pretty
textbook conclusion here

is these laptops aren't for people

who already have the M1
Pro and M1 Max laptops

that just came out,

they are for people who have older laptops

that now have a better
machine to upgrade to,

unless you're one of a
tiny fraction of people

who got the old ones

and was pushing it to its limits

and just needs that 30% more power,

in which case, you know who you are.

Matter of fact, for those
people on older laptops,

I think looking for sales now

of the M1 Pro and M1 Max,

when you start to find deals on those,

those are gonna be really good laptops.

Now, you might have also seen the rumors

that it's possible that
the first of the M3 laptops

is gonna be coming out
later this calendar year

on a three nanometer process,

and you might be wondering
if you should wait for that.

To which I would say,
you should actually wait

till quarter three of
2027 when we have the M5s

because that'll be 30% faster than the M4s

which is 30% faster than the M3s,

and you can see where I'm going with this.

Like, if you're gonna be
waiting for the next thing,

you'll just be waiting forever

'cause that's just the way tech is.

These are great machines,

they're more than most people need,

and if you can get your hands on the M1s,

those are gonna be really
good for most people too.

Either way, make sure you get subscribed

because I think,

I think actually the new M2 Mac Minis

are a way more interesting machine,

so stay tuned for that video.

Also, I said something
in in my last review.

With that being said,

if the next version of this laptop

still has a notch this big
and doesn't add Face ID,

I'll wear socks and sandals
for a day, like Linus.

Like, they gotta be planning on

putting it there eventually, right?

Well, all day today,

I'm a man of my word.

Thanks for reading