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14" M1 MAX vs 16" M1 MAX: What's the Difference?

17:13 video

I now have a 16-inch and a 14-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Max. After the first day and a half they’re pretty great, and a little surprising. It’s almost like Apple is doing an apology tour: sorry for the butterfly keyboards, for the focus on thin and light over productivity and performance, and for potato cameras in a pandemic when everybody’s working from home. Most of that has been resolved.

Specs

  • 16-inch: the high base model: 10-core CPU, 32-core GPU, 32 GB of memory and a 1 TB SSD.
  • 14-inch: M1 Max with a 10-core CPU, 32-core GPU, 64 GB of memory and a 2 TB SSD (a custom upgrade).

That’s a crap ton of money, and it’s up to you whether these are worth it for your workload. I can’t tell you that, only show how I use mine.

Design, weight and ports

Both have the new design: a flat top and sides with a taper on the bottom, thicker than previous MacBook Pros, a good thing because Apple chose higher performance, better heat dissipation and a big battery over thin and light. There are new flat feet instead of nubs, and vents on the sides and by the display.

  • Weight: hefty and solid. The 16-inch (M1 Max) weighs 4.8 pounds, half a pound more than the previous 16-inch (4.3 pounds), and the 14-inch weighs 3.5 pounds, also about half a pound heavier than before. If you’re considering the 16-inch for the larger display, try one in person: it can be cumbersome to carry for long distances (for example, around a campus) and takes more desk space unless you use a vertical mount.
  • Ports (identical on both): MagSafe 3, two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a headphone jack on the left; an SD card slot, a Thunderbolt 4 port and HDMI 2.0 on the right.

Displays and the notch

The 16.2-inch and 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR displays look amazing, like the iPad Pro’s and Pro Display XDR: up to 1,000 nits peak in regular use and 1,600 nits for HDR, with thousands of mini-LEDs lighting only the parts you need. Watching Earth HDR video is like looking through a piece of glass, with shadow detail, no blown highlights and vivid colors. Combined with ProMotion, which also ramps down to save battery, it feels life-changing, like I want all my content to look real. Because they use mini-LED rather than OLED, there’s possible blooming (a halo around bright objects on black), but in my limited testing I don’t see it in regular use, and it was clearer on the iPad Pro.

The notch houses the camera, but with no Face ID and no ultra wide camera for Center Stage. It either gives you more screen space or takes it away: windows go up to the notch and the menu bar sits above, so you get more vertical space than with a larger bezel and the menu below. But the cursor can get stuck behind it, and menu bar items can be hidden when there are many; apps and Apple will need time to work around it. The notch is the same size on both, so the 14-inch has less menu bar space than the 16-inch.

Keyboard and Touch ID

The new all-black Magic Keyboard on a black double-anodized well has full-size function keys replacing the Touch Bar. I was ambivalent about the Touch Bar (I usually had it show function keys anyway), but I prefer physical, tactile keys for volume and brightness, and the Do Not Disturb key is nice. The keys feel like a Magic Keyboard. Touch ID feels faster, maybe a placebo.

Speakers, camera and mics

A new system with two tweeters and two sets of force-canceling woofers: amazing, crazy good for laptop speakers. The 16-inch gets so loud I worry about disturbing people in the next room. With a decibel meter: about 80 dB on the 16-inch vs. 78 to 79 dB on the 14-inch. Both have the new camera sensor and image signal processing.

Benchmarks (14-inch with 64 GB vs. 16-inch with 32 GB)

  • High Power mode (16-inch): I saw no difference with or without it.
  • Blackmagic Disk Speed Test: the 16-inch (1 TB) got 5.8 GB/s write and 5.2 GB/s read. The 14-inch’s 2 TB drive is a bit faster, up to almost 6.5 GB/s write and 5.5 GB/s read.
  • Geekbench 5: about even: 1754 single-core and 12,355 multi-core on the 14-inch vs. 1783 and 12,629 on the 16-inch. The extra memory didn’t help.
  • Geekbench Metal: 68,209 on the 14-inch (64 GB) vs. 65,338 on the 16-inch (32 GB).
  • Final Cut Pro export: a 10 min 39 s video (my iPhone 12 Pro unboxing). The 16-inch took a flat 4:00 (way faster than any previous computer), and the 14-inch 3:51, so the extra memory makes a little difference.
  • Battery: I haven’t had them long enough; Apple claims up to 11 hours of wireless web on the 14-inch and 14 hours on the 16-inch.

Trackpads

The 16-inch’s is larger and sounds like a dull thud, like the MacBook Air’s, while the 14-inch’s has a clank or tink like the 13-inch Pro’s. I prefer the thud, which can matter if you click thousands of times a day.

Bottom line

These things are fast, way faster than previous versions, and still quiet: in my 16-inch M1 Max benchmark video, the fan was nearly inaudible the whole time. Do you have questions, or something you’d like me to test?

In this video

  • 0:00 Apology Tour
  • 1:03 Specs
  • 2:05 Design, Weight, and Ports
  • 4:38 Displays and Notch
  • 8:49 Keyboard and Touch ID
  • 9:59 Speakers, Camera and Mics
  • 11:54 Benchmarks 14 vs 16
  • 15:31 Trackpads

Some links in this post are affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I may receive a small commission. See my ethics statement.

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