M3 Pro vs M2 Pro 14" MacBook Pro - WE WERE WRONG.. 🤯 

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Thanks for including Logic in your test! As a music producer i´m always happy to see those getting tested as well. 😃 Quiet shocking to see an older Macbook outperforming a new one. 😯 Planning on getting the M3 Max, that should outperform the M2 Max (hopefully).

It doesn't bother ME... but one of my friends goes crazy when he hears someone say the word 'LESS' when they should be saying 'FEWER' . It's not 'less cores'. It's 'fewer cores'. That's because it's a countable item. For everything else, you can say 'less'. Could my comments be FEWER irritating? No. But they could perhaps be LESS irritating? YES!!!

Surprising results! Still very happy with my m1 pro mac power and efficiency. Thankyou max tech for all these comparisons!!

Max is so funny. Always trying to find drama and generate excitement regarding benchmarks. I value the testing though!

5:48 For one, Apple doesn't advertize clock speeds. The max clock speed benchmark apps report is only for 1 core, and it's expected behavior for chips to have a little bit lower all-core max frequency. If you're not seeing the 4GHz speed on the graph, it could be due to 2 reasons: 1. The cooling can't sustain 4GHz on a single core due to the density of the heat on one core and therefore you'll only see it in even shorter workloads than Geekbench, 2. If the M3 is briefly boosting to 4GHz on Geekbench, the sampling rate of the frequency graph might not be high enough to detect that.

no point to replace M3 if you have M1 in your hand

As someone coming from Intel, I will definetely buy the M3 Pro. Thanks for the video

Huh, that's why I like watching videos with tear downs in them. Had no idea about the larger heat block on the M3 models. That's good to know, will never complain about improved thermals.

I've said this in the past when the M1 Pro came with only 2 efficiency cores. On my M1 Pro, it's just the 2 efficiency cores doing the work most of the time. The performance cores fire up when I'm launching a program or when I'm running Windows but I think that I'd be fine with just more efficiency cores. Intel has certainly gone big on big-little and it's a reasonable approach to get more efficiency. The improvements are not enough to get me to upgrade though as the M1 Pro more than meets my CPU/GPU requirements and battery life is good enough for my production load. I look forward to further improvements in M4 and M5. Thanks for the performance analysis work. I'm following this series to see what they did.

Thank you, I was waiting for this review!

Used/refurbished/stay-with a MBP 14” M1 base model. Best deal for performance/value if you can wait a minute or two😉 Especially if you are in a non-USA country where US$ has made any new MAC crazy priced. I use my MBP M1 for basic work, photo/video editing (no 3D rendering) and it still is fast enough, and has the ports, beautiful display (w/ VIVID app for more nits if needed), battery lasts a day out if needed, and I can’t understand the new color hype except ‘Space Black is the new Space Gray.’

Your testing is always super informative. Thanks!

Reducing memory bandwidth (that they were so proud of when they introduced it in previous chips) is the biggest blow. But I get it. Probably just a tiny fraction of both users and developers that even make use of that insane bandwidth. I see the M3 as a first generation 3nm product, which they will learn a lot from. I expect big refinements in M4. And as Vision Pro rolls out, we have a new target platform for low power, low heat, max performance. Should motivate them to be on top of the game.

Buenisimooo pensaba que la m2 pro y la m3 pro estaban a la par pero me equivoqué, como no tengo laptop en si, creo que si me convendrá mas la m3 pro, tocó invertir un poco mas pero se que valdrá la pena para los siguientes 6 años, tambien me gustó mucho la comparativa en cual se sobrecalentaba mas

Ahora la pregunta es: cual recomiendas entre el MACBOOK AIR M2 o MACBOOK PRO M3 ?? Tengo un macbook pro mid 2012 y ya está un poco lento (a pesar que tiene mejoras de SSD y RAM)... Saludos

Such an engaging review. Max is it worth upgrading from the M1 macbook pro base model and what would you recommend. thanks

I'd like to see comparisons against the M1 Pro. I don't see people upgrading from M2, but rather M1 which I think is one reason why Apple kept comparing M3 to M1 in the Keynote. Maybe even compare to the last gen Intel MacBook Pros as well. These would be much better comparisons. If someone upgrades from an M2 they were gonna do it regardless of the performance because they're ones who just have to have the latest tech at all times.

As with the 16" M1 Max MBP (which I own), your Mic test reveals the audio to be rather muffled. It's lacking in Loudness versus your regular Mic, as it is versus my own Lav Mic. I am always left wondering why that is. Is it some kind of noise reduction Apple is using? It makes it hard to record the screen on my MBP while talking into the MBP's Mics and later integrating that audio seamlessly into a video I am editing in FCPX, where most of the audio was shot using my LAV mic. Even after boosting the Gain and adding Loudness, the MBP audio still doesn't sound anywhere close to the Loudness and clarity of my regular LAV mic. What are your thoughts about that?

Thank you for the blender test 🤩 great video as always!

I would also have had a base level Fan speed set on both those machines, as You can clearly see you show that the Fans OFF at the top. MacFAN does a good job as pushing a RPM set speed for both fans in either macbook. My M1 Pro, I always have running at around 2400 RPM on both fans. Its not audible enough to worry you and it at least keeps airflow through the chassis.

For Lightroom classic, exporting is typically not a big deal as part of the end of a workflow. However, the denoise function done in the middle of the workflow can bring a system down to it's knees. Would love to see that test.

Max, please do a battery comparison between M3,M3 Pro,M3 Max!

So, I need a new machine for the sound studio. Looking at a mac mini m2pro 16gb, would it worth the wait for the new mac minis? For video I have the mac studio m2max (but thats in a different location).

Thanks for the video. It's a lot of good information and a lot of good tests. Thank you guys. When comparing the battery life, how many cycles between M2 and M3 pro PCs?

Pleased with my binned M3 Pro on my 14" MacBook Pro. From the 8/7 base M1 on my Air it's a massive step up.

I suspect that the M3 having fewer cores in the M3 Pro vs M2 Pro had to do with yield on the new 3nm process, not meant to be a slight to make the M3 Max look better. Still a shame. Seems the power efficiency gain is greater than the performance loss.

Hello former France!!! great review, like all your job. just a question, may be the battery difference is because you use the m2 pro since January, and it s a little more tired...?

So I’m currently using a i5 16gb 1TB 2020 13 mbp would an M1 Pro be a sufficient enough upgrade? I don’t do much editing or programming.

I’ll be upgrading from a m1 air to a m3 pro. The promotion and redesign will keep me with the m3 for years and years

I think there’s another reason why the M3 Pro has been changed so radically. I believe this chip is destined for the new iPad Pros to differentiate the IPad Pros from the Airs, which will only get the M3. iPads need more efficient chips and have worse thermals, so they can’t have too many performance cores, nor too many graphics cores. This chip ssems to be designed for power savings, something an iPad needs. The prices of the Pro and Max are too different for this to be an upsell only. Few people will spend an extra $1100 to go from a Pro to Max if they had been in the market for a Pro to begin with.

thanks for this comparison! can you tell me how many external monitors @ 4k can we connect with M2 pro vs M2 max vs M3 pro vs M3 max (4 external monitors)? this would be super helpful !

Hi Max, excellent vid, can you make a more detailed video about m3 max vs m3 max with some detailed comparisons regarding Logic Pro X cpu performance? (Giving more focus to single core performance)? Thanks

I would love to see you put the 11/14 M3 Pro vs the 12/18 M3 Pro. For the minimal cost in upgrading it would be great to see if it’s worth it.

A new chip with less cores and less memory bandwidth and still beating the M2 Pro means MORE efficient cores on less power.. That's no downgrade my dear Watson. That is a HUGE improvement.

what do you think mr should I get unbinned m3 pro 14" ? is it worth to get the 12 cpu and 18 gpu version?

Great video. For photo editing, would any of your tests indicate performance differences with denoising using different software?

looking forward to the M3 max tests. Waiting on these to actually purchase mine.

Great comparison! I hope the M3 Logic Pro performance can be fixed with a software update. Would it be possible for you guys to add Xcode and Unreal Engine to your comparison test plan for the M3Max?

hey! which versions of gpu / cpu and ram exactly did you get ? i am not sure if i got it right :) so for photo and vid editing etc would it still be better in your opinion to get m3pro with 11cpu14gpu and 16 ram than m2 pro 10/16 even tho it has slightly bigger gpu after all these tests you have done right ? thank you so much for your help ! :)

I came from the base m2 13” MBP and upgraded to the m3 pro and love it. I use it for work although not a “professional” I’m super happy with it (if I had the m2 14” prior I wouldn’t have upgraded) but in my case it was well worth it lol

Great review! There isn't much incentive for M2 Pro owners to upgrade to the M3 Pro of course but I'd say the improvements are substantial enough to discard the "M3 Pro is a dud" nonsense, especially once you also factor in ~20% better battery life and lower surface temps. People upgrading from Intel will be very happy. I just wish they'd offer more than 36 GB of RAM without requiring an M3 Max.

Great video. So pleased with your results. Some reviewers were quick to say the M3 pro was a 'dud' (i.e no better than M2 pro) but you have shown how good it is. Do you think the 16" M3 pro would be much different, maybe thermally better? I upgraded from 2019 Intel MBP so M3 pro MBP is 300% faster on Geekbench score.

The DAW performance issues aren't limited to Logic. ProTools and Studio One also appear to not use E cores. Reaper and Cubase use both P/E cores and are very close in performance. I am on an M1 max, so it is much less of an issue as it's 8/2 P/E. For those with a 50/50 split, it's really unfortunate.

Can you please make a comparison video between the M1 Max and the M3 Pro/M3 Max? I'm curious whether the 400Gb/s memory bandwidth on the M1 Max can hold it to decent performance levels, and there is no need to upgrade. Please and thank you.

just bought brand new m1max 14" 64gb ram and 2tb ssd for $2500. m3 max is not mind blowing to me since m1max is still one of the best laptops out there for ux/ui designers and no need to spend over $4k for that "extra" performance. very happy with my purchase

Overall some gains with year over year bumps, but this was a bigger year for the change to 3nm IMO. Plus the M3 Ultra looks to be an absolute beast when it comes to market next year.

I'm looking to upgrade my old laptop, a 15" mid 2014 macbook pro. I do most of my video editing work on my mac mini m2 pro in my office but may do some light editing on the road. It sounds like the m1 pro is pretty sweet from what people are saying here. Should i try to just find a used one of those, or just bite the bullet and get the m3 pro and be future proofed? Or go m2 pro??

I’d like to see a comparison between the binned M1 Pro vs binned M3 Pro. Also M3 Pro vs M3 Max, which I assume is coming soon. Most people upgrading are coming from M1 or older, so the comparison to M2 is incremental at best.

look forward to see a solid benchmark of M3 Max 16" compared M1 Max and/or M2 Max^^ (gaming too)

3:20 "M3 Pro can no longer get 8TB of RAM" 💀

Finally!!!This is the video comparison for 3D that i needed - thank you!

As always your videos are great. However I’ve got one request that nobody had tested yet. For around the same price what’s best between MacBook 14” M3 Max binned 14 CPU 30 GPU with 96GB 300GB/sec at $3,999 vs M3 Max 16 CPU 30 GPU 64GB 400GB/sec at $3,899 ? 14 inches being more thermally constrained, is it better to have a less powerful chip with more memory or the full chip with 22GB less memory ? Do 300GB/sec any slower than 400GB/sec in real life ? Thanks in advance

This is just the comparo I was looking for! I was leaning towards the refurbished M2 Pro, but now am leaning towards the M3 Pro. While not a big gamer per se, I would like to be able to play Baldur's Gate 3. Was worried about the reduced GPU cores on the M3. But it looks like it should handle it just fine, due to the results of all the other tests. Thanks for doing all these tests between the two. Now will keep looking for any deals I can find on the 14" M3 Macbook Pro. Because right now I do think the extra $$ will be worth it in the long run. Thanks!

I had a feeling this might be the case. The engineers know what they are doing, and I think they struck a real sweet spot between power and efficiency with this model.

I really like how you just go straight to the point!

Wondering if I should upgrade. I currently have a 2020 13'' MBP M1 with 8Gb of Ram and it's starting to feel a bit slow for certain things

I really enjoy your videos. This one was very interesting, especially the detailed comparison between the M2 Pro and M3 Pro. It was really helpful to learn about their temperature and battery life, as I was curious about that. Could you please compare the M2 Max and M3 Max next? I'm looking forward to it.

I’d love to see a comparison between the M3 Pro 12/18 and the M3 Max 14/30. I want to know if it’s worth it to spend the extra money or not.

Hello. At the same price would you buy a Macbook Pro 14 with an M2 Max 32Gb Ram ou an M3 pro CPU 18Gb Ram? Thanks 😊

I just got my new macbook Is it advisable to put on a screen guard?

A common theme for the gpu, is that it is generally slower in rasterization and compute tasks, but faster in RT workloads, if you test games, gfx bench, UE5, the M3 pro is in unfortunately general slower. Kind of a sidegrade this generation as the base M2 Pro was never slower than the full M1 pro. But if your workload revolves around RT then it’s a no brainer

For lightroom, creating previews is the thing that takes the most time. That would be a really useful, real world benchmark for photographers, and used far more than exporting. Otherwise some great comparisons. Thanks

Any difference in performance on the SSD on the M3 Pro between the 500gb and 1tb drive?

When and where is the best place to get an M2 Pro? Not see much of a discount on some websites.

Where can I get the Logic Pro benchmark to test for myself?

Even MKBHD did not see the point to upgrade from M1...

another question would you still go for M3 pro with 11/14 cpu gpu or maybe M2 pro with higher configuration of 12/19 ? your help will be insanely appreciated 🙏🏼

What Ram/unified memory do these machines have? The stock 16/18 or upgraded 32/36??

Good Review. I have been using my new MBP M3 Pro equipped with the unbinned M3 Pro chip coupled to 36 GB of unified memory and 1 TB of SSD storage. This machine FLYs with all that ram. Suffice it to say, I am one happy new owner of a very nice Space Black 14" MBP. PS Windows 11 on ARM in a Parallels Desktop 19 virtual machine (configured to 4 CPU cores/8 GB or ram) boots in 9 seconds and useful work ia available after 15 seconds from initial boot up. I have been impressed.

Was waiting for that comparison and really skeptical about all that criticism before even testing it. Respect for the “We were wrong”!

Sooo is a MacBook Pro M3 Pro worth buying it? Please let me know with which specifications to get. My current laptop is from the year 2016 he😅

Help! I'm in the process of upgrading from an M1 Mac mini to another Mac more suitable for 3D work (Cinema 4D + Redshift/GPU version). My budget is $2000 and considering purchasing the base model M2 Max studio that is within my price range. I'm reconsidering after watching this review. Which would be a better investment, the M2 Max studio (base model) or this new M2 Pro 14" MacBook Pro?

I have an M1 Pro with 32GB and 1TB, it's my go to if I need battery life for a project. Expensive but I never had a problem with it! M3 does look promising!

Luckily for my workflow which is more single core reliant, the M3pro has been a considerable bump in single core performance, overall responsiveness, and efficiency over M2 but I definitely don’t like Apple has been pulling these slight downgrades on paper

Does the mat black color influence the thermals compared to the silver version when using the laptop outdoors in the sun? I like to work outside and wonder if there is a difference.

Hi Max, following from couples of years, loves your content. Could you please focus on RAM arround multitasking? We are a plenty that do multitasking and not need that much performance. I will love to see between M2 air with 24 gb of RAM vs M3 with more than 24 of ram contest that stress out the ram and checking on battery test. There is only $300 between the M2 air 24 ram and the pro m3 version with same ram... The air is always quite and is lighter, but does 24 of ram is enought is the real question for me. I want to be able to do multitasking and still have great battery life at the end of the day. If you tell me that the m3 pro with 48 of ram have better battery when you stress out the ram, I will be suprise !

I think it's funny they removed extra ram pads to prevent Dosdude from developing a cheap ram upgrade method.

I can see the M3 Pro not being worth it if you have an M2 pro or even M1 pro for some people, but as I'm going to be coming from an intel i5 macbook pro i think the M3 will be well worth the money, even if its just for the color alone haha

I got the unbinned M3 pro and curious if you are going to do more of a detailed comparison of the binned vs unbinned model. I ran cinebench 2024 and got 1053 multicore and 6089 gpu, which is notably more than the scores you showed in this video.

Do you think is worth it buy a mac mini m2 pro instead to wait for mac mini 3 due to the cores decreasing?

For battery comparison: Is the M2 Pro brand new out-of-the-box like the M3 Pro for this comparison? If not, I believe a disclaimer should be made regarding how many months of recharging are on the M2 Pro's life at time of recording

It seems these days "professionals" are never happy. Which is a shame because there is so much joy to be found in feeling happy. Apple would be foolish not to increase the performance.

Did the speakers also get quieter from the m1 pro to m2 pro? I feel like I saw this comparison before.

What's the temp/fan speed monitor that's being used in the menu bar? It doesn't look like iStat Menu's icon.

6:51 I think the Metal Compute score is worse on M3 Pro because these are the base models. Base M2 Pro / M3 Pro have 16 and 14 GPU cores respectively, so it's a 12.5% reduction in core count for M3 Pro, which is a lot. If you get the fully maxed out M2 Pro / M3 Pro instead, they have 19 and 18 cores respectively (only 5.3% reduction in core count in M3 Pro), and from other benchmarks I have seen (e.g. from Ars Technica) I think the maxed out M3 Pro still produces better Geekbench Metal score, as each M3 GPU core is faster than the M2 ones. 8:20 The GPU performance improvement in M3 probably isn't due to ray tracing, as the Wild Life Extreme test you are doing doesn't use it I think (this way you get apples-to-apples comparison). It's probably due to generally more efficient GPU especially with the Dynamic Caching feature which allows apps/games to more fully utilize the hardware.

Thanks for including Figma in your test! 👍🧑‍💻

A month or two after I bought the m2pro at the original price it came out with the m3 series mac should I go for a replacement. It feels like I'm losing so much money :(

Will you compare the 16" models m3 pro VS m2 pro too? That is what I am looking after to buy

Thanks for bringing up all possible combinations of comparisions. Without this many people would have been misguided by Apple's marketing tricks. Your reseach definitely helps a ton to take an informed decision. I always keep waiting for your comparision videos.

And for $200 more, I think the M3 Pro with 12-Core CPU and 18-Core GPU is going to be a killer machine, specially when it comes out into the Mac Mini 😍

Hi. I have a choice between 14" m1 max 64ram/2tb or 16" m1 max 32ram/1tb(they are both at the same price). I've got m1 14" 16ram/512gb on which i am using Mainstqge3 . It looks like 16ram is not enough for me. It is 5gb project (with many vsts n plugins), and was wondering ,if 64ram will make that much of a difference over the 32ram? Cheers

I think that for some people, how well, some Virtualisation software works on M3 is a key issue. Mac Intel virtualisation is a big plus for some software, like Revit that people use via Parallels x86 with dedicated AMD graphic cards. How that software works on Macs with M3? Parallels for Apple Silicon runs Windows for ARM, not the x86 version.

Thanks for doing logic test for me❤❤

apple calculated that the TSMC N3B node would be better than it turned out, so now apple is in a precarious situation MacBook Pro M3 has fewer transistors than MacBook Pro M2 less bandwidth, fewer ports, fewer fans which causes problems with heat development so that the cpu throttles to mention some changes for the worse for the M3 chip externally, Apple made no changes to the MacBook Pro 2023 also MacBook Pro and Air need a major overhaul, the last one I think was in 2019 The I Mac also need a major overhaul that it still uses a lightning cable for the accessories, this says something about how often Apple updates M2 Pro has 40 billion transistors, 200GB/s bandwidth M3 pro has 37 billion transistors 150GB/s of bandwidth Not the increase transistor density by about 33% compared to 5 nm TSMC states you should get from 5 nm to 3 nm "according to TSMC has stated that its 3 nm chips will reduce power consumption by 25-30% at the same speed, increase speed by 10-15% at the same amount of power and increase transistor density by about 33% compared to its previous 5 nm" but it didn't happen with the N3B node and it affected the M3 for TSMC N3B is not good but apple had no choice but to use this fuse.wikichip.org/news/7375/tsmc-n3-and-challenges-ahead/? the 3 nm node apple uses is far from fully developed so the TSMC N3B node is not much better than the M2 node which is based TSMC N5P even if apple wants the consumer to believe it and try to get customers to buy products based on TSMC N3B just because these are manufactured on 3nm but an unfinished one with a bad prestandard that new nodes have problems is nothing new just look at Intel That the N3B node had problems you could already see on the A17 pro chip, it doesn't come close to what TSMC states that the 3 nano meter node should be able to achieve neither in energy efficiency nor in performance and Apple's M3 chip is based on the A17 pro architecture Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 which, according to tests, has the same or better capacity than Apple's M2 chip those who developed the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 are all former managers of apple's groundbreaking M chip but they got tired of apple's management Qualcomm Snapdragon is based on TSMC N4 nodes which are now well proven and have good yield as it stands now the TSMC N4 node is no worse than the TSMC N3B node so Qualcomm's new Snapdragon using TSMC N4 is logical apple took a chance and jumped on the N3 node too early with the consequence that this performs worse than what a 3nm node should do according to TSMC and what apple hoped for TSMC N3B has a very bad yield rate of just 55%, far below the standard which makes this extremely expensive to manufacture now Apple only paying for qualified circuits TSMC pay the rest TSMC sees it as a development cost to get a working 3 nm production with a reasonable yield rate technode.com/2023/07/17/tsmcs-3nm-yield-rate-reportedly-just-55-with-apple-only-paying-for-qualified-circuits/ when TSMC has better control of 3nm manufacturing and better yield, which TSMC will probably get with the N3P node that TSMC expects to come out in 2024 i had waited until apple release the M4 or the M5 chip before i had upgraded to a new apple MacBook Pro and kept my M1 M2 I MacBook Pro these are enough for 99% of all users there are too few advantages to upgrade to an M3 machine at the price apple wants I'll end with something funny ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-BeHs9eGzsB8.htmlsi=QzTT4Jv2Aer3L7uE

What's that temperature display tool in the menu bar?

You Guys are killing me 😭😭😭😭😭 I bought an 8 GB M1 Pro in ‘21, and I LOVE it!!!! I never even thought about getting 16gb. I came from a 2013 mac with 4GB so 8gb was a huge upgrade and seemed perfect. I got an M2, and I swear my M1 was faster, and it was freezing, so I returned it yesterday. Now, I’m going to get the M3, and I do not feel confident in my purchase at all 😢

The difference is even smaller between them if you compare 12 core vs 12 core instead of 10 core vs 11 core. M2 pro 12 core /19 core 16gb/1tb is the best value tbh

It seems like all reviewers make the We were WRONG video nowadays🤣😂😂

Overall if I were upgrading from Mac Mini I would buy the Macbook Pro M3 Pro 18 GB, 1 TB SSD. I find my 512 GB SSD on Mac Mini to be a problem doing very large video editing so 1 TB for me.