M3 Macbook Pro Review
So awhile back I had written a blog about my time with the M1 Pro MacBook Pro laptop that I've used for almost 3 years. It was an amazing machine that got a lot of things done for me over the past few years, but I had some bottlenecks that were presenting a problem for me. The 3 biggest issues I had:
I really wanted to future proof my Laptop this time around and I demanded at least 5 years of daily use out of my replacement. So I took a careful look at my use case and where I think its going over the next 5 years which really helped me narrow down my options.
Before I settled on a replacement Macbook Pro, I did consider other PC choices that were available in the market today. My choice ultimately narrowed down to the Surface Laptop Studio 2, or the Macbook Pro. The Macbook being the winner due to screen size and screen performance in direct sunlight. I could trim my beard with the Surface Laptop Studio 2 in direct sunlight. The reflections were unreal.
Probably in many consumer cases, unless you're a Creative/IT Professional with some really hefty needs in the hardware performance department, the M3 Max is probably overkill. Most consumers can probably get away with the M3 Macbook Air or M1 to M3 Pro series laptops if you want something that can surf the web, pay bills, edit occasional photos etc.? Laptops, Desktops, tablets are really a tool after all and if you don't have need for some of the more demanding tasks these Laptops are made for, then its really a waste of money. Hands down, if all I was doing was email, web surfing, document writing, and occasional photo editing, I'd probably just of stayed with my iPad Pro or at the most a Macbook Air.
I've always needed as much power as I can squeeze out of any system I own, relative to cost because my workload demands fluctuate based on my current assignments.
Most of my workloads look something like this:
While I don't see myself being a road warrior traveler for now, my role at work changes quite often so I was less concerned about weight and more concerned about storage, memory, screen real estate, and power.
Hardware
My Mac was a custom build from Apple. This isn't a configuration you can just walk in and grab off the shelf. Apple has really changed the off the shelf configs available in the stores and I think they've taken a step backward in that regard, but more on that in a different post.
The new Macbook Pro is spec'd with the M3 Max Chipset containing 14 Performance Cores, 30 GPU Cores, 96 GB of RAM, and 2TB of storage. I also decided for this iteration to go up in screen size as well. There were some occasions that the 14 inch screen would feel a little too cramped during longer work sessions. I could augment this with the 12.9 inch iPad Pro, but I just needed more room to move around. Since I do travel for work and an external monitor is not always available to me, 16 inches of screen real estate seem to be just about right. While the 16 inch does come with a little more heft than the 14 (3.5 pounds versus 4.7 pounds) I am totally fine with that trade off. If you are thinking of popping out the 16 inch Macbook Pro on an airplane though, I wouldn't recommend it This beast is entirely too big for an airplane tray.
New Finish: Space Black.. Fingerprints Not Included
One of the changes Apple made surrounding the Macbook Pro was adding a true Space Black finish. While this finish is further along is fingerprint resistance compared to the Midnight finish of the Macbook Air, it still shows them but its much easier to clean them up than the Air in my opinion. If fingerprints bother you, stick with "Safe Silver" as I like to refer to it. It won't fix the keys, but it will solve everything else.
M3 Max Processors
I opt'ed for the M3 Max processor this time for the monitor support and some future proofing around the performance gains. I'm really happy that I did too. The general consensus of the M3 Pro CPU's have been that they are largely worse performers than the M1 and M2 Pro. I have not had systems to compare this consensus for my own perspective, but in the majority of reviews, the consensus is the same.
The M3 Max on the other hand... well its CPU performance is on par with the M2 Ultrachips currently available in the Mac Studio and Mac Pro. In a portable package, this is probably all I'll need for the foreseeable future.?
SSD
Disk read/writes are insane on this laptop. Writing files to disk at a blistering 6675 MB/s and Reading at a surprising 5179 MB/s.
I was surprised to see write faster than read. In my experience its typically the reverse, but wow.. just wow. For comparison, the M1 Pro 1tb model was coming in at around 4386 MB/s on write and writing is on par with 5065 MB/s on the read. While the reads are fairly close, that write speed is really important for me when I'm copying files, extracting files etc.
Another note on the SSD, it seemed the base models of the M2 Macbook Air and Macbook Pros performance went down by half for the base models. This was Due to using a single NAND chip instead of two. That seems to be corrected in the M3 series Macbook Air and Pro models. That's a welcome change and it shows that Apple listens to their customers.
The screen on the Macbook Pro is exactly what you'd expect from an Apple product. Great color, contrast and brightness, great performance in bright direct sunlight and fantastic sharpness. The specs remain similar to previous generation Macbook Pro's:
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Battery Life
Battery Life is something I want to continue to test further. Apple states that the laptop gets 22 hours of video playback or 15 hours of web browsing. Both are clearly enough on paper to get you through the day.
Generally speaking when I'm out I can get a full day worth of work out of it with about 70% ish screen brightness with room to spare on the battery side. That has only been tested a few times since I picked it up two weeks ago but I'll continue to monitor this and provide an update in a few months on this topic. In my limited testing though, all day battery life is thing with this baby. Just remember your mileage may vary based on your use case.
Other reviewers who have tested battery life state they can easily get 24 hours out of the new M3 series 14 and 16 inch laptops. Which is a very welcome feature for those of use who are highly mobile these days.
Accessories
Universal Control is one of Apple's top features in their line of products. It should be. Seamlessly going between my Mac and iPad with a single set of peripherals is fantastic. Copy and paste from one device to another, also fantastic. I use Universal clipboard a lot. Finding something I need on my phone or iPad and being able to copy from device and paste it to another, works like magic. Being able to have multiple displays open plus something on my iPad which I can quickly move between makes my workflow for the type of work I do in my daily job much easier to manage.?
At this go around, I decided to change my desk area quite a bit as well. I had been using LG monitors of various types for years with my Mac products. Including the LG Ultrafine Made for Mac models. While the LG monitors were fine, there were some problems with them directly connected to my old Mac such as randomly dimming the display when waking from sleep. Before anyone asks, yes, auto adjusting brightness was turned off.?
I decided this time around I would upgrade my monitor options to something a little more robust, so I decided to start with a 27 inch Apple Studio Display as I plan to add more in the future.
I didn't add the Apple Magic Keyboard to my setup and instead, opted for the MX Keys Mechanical from Logitech. Logitech makes great keyboards and I really liked the feel of the MX series keys as I typed. The keys offer just enough resistance as I type and the clacky sound of the keyboard is just enough as to not be overly annoying during loud sessions. I avoided the Apple Magic Keyboard mostly because its just too low for me. My hands and wrists start to hurt after longer periods of typing and while it looks cool, it wasn't functional for me. I hope Apple decides to bring back the old A1048 keyboard with Touch ID. If you don't remember this keyboard, back in the mid 2000's it was a sudo Mechanical keyboard option from Apple and was probably my favorite keyboard that I owned.
Operating System
While the new 2023 and later Mac's ship with macOS Sonoma, which brings many welcome additions to the OS functionality, There's not much to really to discuss on this topic. Its largely the same OS that we're all used to using since September of 2023. I do have some thoughts on the state of macOS but that will be another blog. For now, it should run any OS Apple throws at it over the next 5 years.
Daily Uses
I use this laptop anywhere from 3-12 hours a day depending on the type of work I'm doing. So far the experience has been exactly what you'd expect. All of my shortcomings I had with the out of the box M1 Pro Macbook have gone away. I've not hit any bottlenecks when running Windows 11 VM's, Affinity Photo, Craft, Final Cut, etc. Running Word, Excel, Visual Studio Code, Chrome with like 20+ tabs, VMware View Clients, Microsoft Edge with 10-20 Tabs as well seem to have 0 impact on performance. Everything is buttery smooth.
I do notice that after a restart on some occasions, that the first app I launch gives me a nice little spinny Beach Ball of death, but afterwards, I never see it again. I would like to note that I have observed this with other Macbook Pro models in the past, so I don't think its particular to this laptop.
What isn't Great?
Someone always has a compliant about something. So far, my only real complaints boil down to 2 things:
1: The Space Black finish is amazing and the coating on the body of the laptop does resist fingerprints and grease MUCH more than say the Midnight color on the Macbook Air. I do have some concerns on the resistance to grease and oils over time, but only time will tell.
2: This one might seem a little bit nitpicky, or maybe I'm the only one who cares about it, but the Charging Brick.. I love Apple's charging brick design. But I really really wish the charging brick matched the color of the Macbook Pro. There's this beautiful Space Black braided Magsafe cable and then a white power brick that is the biggest eyesore.?
3: I know I'm in the minority here, but I still miss Bootcamp. It was such a novel feature and being able to natively dual boot to Windows without 3rd party tools or subscriptions was just about perfect.
If I had to add anything else to a list of possible complaints, I could always ask for it to be lighter. But when you want power and speed, you will inevitably have tradeoffs somewhere. Typically that is weight.
Conclusion
Overall I think these new M3 series laptops are a great improvement over the Intel series Macbooks. If you're currently running an Intel Mac, then you'll be blown away at the improvements when moving up in hardware. Though, I would recommend looking at Apple Refurbished M1 and M2 series Macbook Pro Laptops as well if you don't want the new color or care for the new graphics features like Ray Tracing. There's no way to get a discount with the M3 series Build to Order unless you happen to stumble upon a sale at MicroCenter or BH Photo which will sometimes sell Mac's at a discount.?
If you're currently running an M1 or M2 series Macbook, unless you've got performance bottlenecks like I did, you can probably skip this upgrade as I don't see a reason to change it up if you don't have some limitation. The performance gains are nice, but I honestly don't see a major performance increase being a reason to switch.