A recap on the new M1 apple devices

1 CPU performance is better than the current 16 inch macbook core i9 top model ; the GPU side is about 30% slower than the 16 inch, but also 3 times faster than previous intel 13inch. All coming in less than 10w compared to about 90w (charger limit) of combined cpu+gpu on the Intel 16inch.

2 since load power is just 10w, the Pro cooling system does make very little difference and only with very long CPU+GPU full load, like gaming; therefore, the Air offers much better value. The other “supposed disadvantages” of the Air are lack of touch bar (wich i find annoyng and also a waste of power) and slightly lower maximum brightness. It is important to note that adding cooling pads to the Air will make it perform even better than the Pro

3 while the 7 core gpu is about 10% slower than the 8 core one in GPU compute, the real world experience and even video editing are more dependant on the encoders/decoders and bandwith of memory (wich remain the same in all m1 chips) and most importantly the amount of it; i’ts also only 40 euros difference if you upgrade the 7 core to 512gb SSD. Prioritize Ram and Disk Space and save the GPU upgrade only if you want to export video ofter, work on really huge multi-layered images or play games

4 the new architecture has amazing fast access to the internal ssd, making it less important to cache content in the ram, but this only applies to READING (stuff that has to be accessed, but not modified during the job) data on the INTERNAL DISK. This will not work with external storage, so plan your purchase in advance. If you need to work on external drives, thunderbolt nvme SSDs are mandatory to reduce bottleneck.