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4 Months with M2 Max MacBook Pro 14! The Best there is!

10:26 video

It’s been four months since Apple released the M2 MacBook Pros, and I’ve made this M2 Max my primary device for my day job, YouTube and everything else. I really like it as a daily driver, with a couple of things I wish were better.

The configuration

The 14-inch MacBook Pro with the base M2 Max, or “Baby Max” (it’s a thing, I said it in previous videos): a 12-core CPU, 30-core GPU, 32 GB of memory, and I upgraded the storage to 2 TB. It comes to a mind-boggling $3,500, which I’ll admit is overkill, but I like it.

I review it from the perspective of a desktop-laptop, a term from Marco on the Accidental Tech Podcast, which you should check out: it lives on my desk connected to my CalDigit dock and Studio Display 90% of the time, and I take it traveling for the portable power, which I rarely need. The 14-inch size fits just under the Studio Display, so I have two displays right in front of me without looking left or right. With the 16-inch, the Studio Display had to be higher and felt less ergonomic.

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Design

Nothing I’d change: the refined classic aluminum laptop from the 2021 M1 models. It doesn’t feel too bulky for a Pro machine, even away from a desk, and I like the two-tone look with a black keyboard and silver chassis.

Thing I dislike #1: the keyboard material

I love how the Magic Keyboard feels: just the right travel, not too loud, the same across all Apple keyboards. But the material is junk. After a few days you see wear like shiny spots. I made a whole video about it, and tried stickers and keyboard covers, but they take away from the feel. The spots get worse over time, especially on the keys you use most and, for me, the right side of the space bar. Wear is understandable over time, but on MacBooks it starts within days, making a very expensive laptop look cheap. I wish Apple would change something.

Ports

I only use two. The CalDigit TS4 connects to a Thunderbolt port and has SD card readers, external drives, Ethernet, my Studio Display and USB dongles, and charges the laptop at 98 W, so I never use MagSafe, even traveling, because I don’t want to carry another cord. I was excited when MagSafe returned, but found it redundant.

The other port I use is the SD card reader (I use the dock’s as well, to import from multiple cards at once). I’m happy it’s built in, but it’s slower than my external readers, feels rough putting a card in, and sometimes doesn’t connect, so I have to reinsert the card a few times. I rarely use HDMI, but it supports high-refresh 4K.

Display

The 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR is mind-blowing, the best display Apple makes except the 16-inch version: amazing color and brightness, ProMotion making scrolling incredibly smooth and video play at the proper frame rate, and with HDR, up to 1,600 nits makes video almost pop out of the display and everything else look dingy and bland. Despite a small amount of blooming from the 2,000-plus dimming zones, it’s the best Mac display I’ve used, though I hope for OLED someday. And the notch just fades away, like on the iPhone X. It would be nice not to have one, but it no longer bothers me.

Performance

About 10–25% faster than the comparable M1 Max, tied to the extra CPU and GPU cores, and a fairly linear step up from the other M2 chips. Most of my work is web browsing, email, remote server administration, Teams, video calls, video editing and some Pixelmator Pro photo editing, and it’s buttery smooth, never choking.

The exception is Premiere Pro. I edited a few videos in it, and it didn’t like my multicam 4K Sony files no matter what I did or how I converted them: a stuttering timeline, choppy playback, a few beach balls, and fans kicking in during renders as the computer got pretty warm.

Thing I dislike #2: heat

It does get warm, I’d say lukewarm. I expected the M2 Max to run warmer than the M2 Pro, as with the M1 versions, but I notice it more on this model. In regular use, the keyboard reaches the high 20s or mid 30s °C, and in intensive tasks like exporting video, the mid 40s or slightly higher. It grabs my attention now and then. If I used it more as a laptop away from a desk, I’d have a bigger problem, but it’s not a deal-breaker if you want this power in this form factor.

Battery

It’s a laptop with a battery, and I get through a full day of regular work and personal use. If I undock at 8 a.m. and work from the couch or kitchen table, I can get 8 or 9 hours and still have 40% left, or sometimes a day and a half on a charge. That’s not as good as the 13- or 16-inch MacBook Pros, but plenty.

Should you get it?

Yes… or no… or I don’t know. It’s fantastic in just about every way, with the right features and a design I love. The M2 Max’s performance is above what I need, but I want the headroom. If you’re not using professional apps for video, photo or audio production, or big data research, it’s overkill: look at the MacBook Air or the M2 Pro version. And if you’re upgrading from an M1 Pro or Max, skip it unless you need more RAM or SSD than you have.

My number one complaint is still the keyboard material; the M2 Max runs a little hot, and the cameras kinda suck. Do you need the power of the M2 Max?

In this video

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