M4 Air vs M5 Macbook Pro (with secret embedded vlog#1)

The M4 MacBook Air versus the M5 MacBook Pro. How is this even a choice? This is Apple's fault. These two laptops are supposed to be two totally different tools aimed at completing two totally different types of work. The idea of the MacBook Air is a computer with an exceptionally lightweight design made to do lightweight computer work. College students writing papers, journalists traveling to a place to write about a thing, emails, Zoom calls, spreadsheets, Netflix, YouTube, whatever. The idea of the MacBook Pro, right there in the name, is a machine that professionals use to do more computationally difficult work, like a desktop computer that you can take with you to handle video editing, code compiling, music production, 3D design, hard stuff. But what's happening, and Apple may have made a mistake by improving their hardware so much, the software demand side doesn't really keep up, which leads to today's reality where a whole lot of professional work, I would argue most professional work, can be handled by the lightweight MacBook Air. Maybe it's just a problem with the naming. As if a pro can't use a base model computer. I mean, a pro writer could still get by on one of these things. Speaking of this thing, I'm programming a weird little Easter egg into this video as an experiment. Try not to be distracted by the man on the screen, but if you want to know what he's saying, click the settings. Looks like a little gear icon down here somewhere. And change the audio track to cling on. I will sort of be delivering like a channel update and an opinionated show embedded right into this video in the form of this screen and that audio track. So, feel free to switch over to that after you get bored of my comparison, or as a bonus, if this turns out to be really useful. If you've never used a newer Mac, you might be shocked to find out that the Air feels almost the same as the Pro does. And that is mainly due to how the M series approaches computing power compared to how it used to before Apple silicon. It used to be if you bought the big beefy boy, you'd get a faster processor, more gigahertz. Now though, the weakest Mac computer and the most powerful Mac computer are differentiated just by the number of their CPU and GPU cores, not the speed of those cores. This M4 Air and this M4 Max Studios single core speed is the same. And that means if a given piece of software doesn't use more than four cores, this computer is effectively the same speed as this one, even though the Max will benchmark at like double the overall computing power and double the price. There is of course a difference in RAM throughput and SSD speed, but those are only noticeable in truly power user use cases, and I'm not talking about that here. And fun fact, most software uses four or less cores until it comes time to export your work. But this comparison is M4 versus M5. And the M5 does have faster cores, but they're only like 15 to 20% faster. And the M4 was already overkill for almost everything. Whether you're exporting music or batch photos or AI generated images or 3D video or code, it's exporting where the difference between these becomes immediately clear. Allow me to illustrate. I'm going to run a Cinebench. And the purpose of this is not to talk about how these two computers feel like when they're running. We'll get to that in a bit, but you can see with the MX Power Gadget over here, the M4 MacBook Air on a single core test runs its CPU cores at a little over 4 GHz. Pretty steady. The M5 runs its CPUs at about 4.35 GHz. And this is with no fans coming on. So, it's not a thermal throttling thing. This is just the main difference between these two computers. Half a gigahertz, half a gigahertz, whatever. But then we should look at thermals because even with this single core test, so only one out of the 10 cores running, these both have the same number of cores. Four performance cores, six efficiency cores. There's a pretty big difference between the two. The M4, depending on the ambient temperature of the room you're in, is running a full 10°C above the M5, where M5, and again, the fan is off, runs cooler, nowhere near thermal throttling. When we get into the multi-core test, you'll see the effect of heat very, very quickly. But no, first I want to show you what I mean. Here's the multi-core test. And man, if I go too deep into a sidebar, I'm going to lose the main plot. But stick with me here. If you use something like TG Pro, this fan control software, and it does cost a couple of bucks, so I totally understand if some of you or a lot of you think it's a ripoff, but you can set the MacBook Pros fans to start spinning up earlier than Apple has them set. Apple has decided to set their focus on noise levels and user experience over pro performance, which I disagree with. And you can make it so your fans spin up before the processor slows down so that this thing will almost never thermal throttle. I love that. Link in the description for that software. Anyway, have a look see. M5 will run a little slower than the single core test, starting off at 4.25 GHz and dropping just a little bit as everything heats up to 4.1. In stark contrast, the M4 Air will almost immediately heat up. You can see it's running at that 4 GHz for exactly 1 second before it heats up enough that the CPU starts dropping in speed all the way down to below 3 GHz and ultimately all the way down to 2.35 GHz, just 60% of its original speed by the time it's done with the test. You can also see the total output power of this computer is literally less than half. This is 10 watts, a little under 10 watts by the end. This thing is running at almost 30 watts. None of that matters. I think it's important to point out that these tests are not simulating how you use a computer. During tests like these, the CPU cores are pegged to 100%. The work phase of using a computer never does that. Like the part where you're actively involved in making whatever thing on your computer, that graph will look more like this. While I'm actually working a video edit, the graph looks like this. little spikes of activity and plenty of time between those spikes for everything to stay cool and to not slow down. It's the exporting process or the code compiling process or more importantly the part where you're done and your computer takes over doing the work. If the work you do even includes an export process, you can be a pro and just be hitting save. So, the biggest obvious performance between these two is heat rejection and that happens during the export process. And at that point, the fan and heat sink combo inside the MacBook Pro is such a gamecher that even though these are both the same base model chips, the M5 MacBook Pro will destroy the M4 MacBook Air at everything. Well, everything except video exporting. It'll still beat it, but it won't destroy it. Video exporting does not behave this way because both these Macs use Apple's media engine to do the majority of video exporting and therefore MacBook Air will not heat up and it will not slow down. The M5 is still a little faster, but it's not outrageously faster. I tested this with two different videos because first I'm curious about realistic benchmarking, but then also I shoot in 8K now. So, I wanted to see if the M4 MacBook Air can even load the file. It can. First, just a 12-minute video I made a while ago about this Z13 Rogue Flow laptop. Great little laptop if you play games. So, this is the export process of that 12-minute video. And you can see the CPU usage in both of them has little spikes here and there, but it's never using much CPU at all. It's never making sustained use of the CPU cores. The GPUs get used a bit more because they're working together with the media engine to process effects layers and animated titles and stuff like that, but the GPUs don't max out and neither computer heats up. In fact, I have that TG Pro running and on the MacBook Pro, you can see the fan is off the whole time. Memory does spike a few times, and this is just the reality of the modern day. Even 16 gigs of RAM will get all used up when a big multilayer effect loads and needs to get processed. It's only little spikes, though, and I wouldn't even worry about one or two gigs of swap being used during an export. But with 24 GB, that wouldn't happen, and this would export a little bit faster. Using swap this way is not wearing anything out. This is totally normal and acceptable behavior for the computers. Anyway, the M5 MacBook Pro exported a 12-minute video in 4K with H.264 multipass turned on in about 9 minutes and 29 seconds. The M4 did that same thing in 11 minutes flat. So, this thing is right at about 15% faster. But editing with these two computers, same experience, feels the same. If I'm hooked up to a monitor and a keyboard and a mouse, so I can't see the really nice screen on the MacBook Pro, these are equally responsive and quick, and video editing feels the same. 8K video was another story. 16 gigs of RAM is not enough. So, that totally threw off the actual amount of time it should take to process that with these two, cuz they were just in and out of the swap the whole time. But even with that, M5 MacBook Pro finished processing a 15minute 8K video in about 13 minutes. The M4 Air did it in 15 minutes. So, it's really just that same CPU spec bump that makes the difference between these two. Get 24 gigs of RAM. Any other export process, and the M5 MacBook Pro is going to stomp all over the M4 Air, exporting 3D scenes and videos from Blender, the M5 will take the M4's stepmom out to a nice dinner and pay for the whole thing. Huge photo batches in Lightroom. M5 gets to ride in first class and order drinks. M4 ran out of overhead bag space because he was flying on an airline that he had no status from. So, he had to load in like group five and wait for everyone else to get on the plane in front of him. So, he had literally no leg room. Can you imagine? But, and maybe the biggest butt of put up on this channel, using them is really similar. M4, like I said earlier, is overpowered for Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom. way overpowered for looking at the internet and scoring karma points on Reddit for email, spreadsheets, team, Slack, Zoom, One Drive, even AutoCAD. That is all firmly MacBook Air territory now. And in most cases, more RAM will give you more quality of life upgrade than the Pro model will. Let's look at the outside, though, cuz a lot of people just hate this screen when compared to this one. I have destroyed my screen, so you really can't actually look at it. I dunked this thing in a tank of dialectric fluid to make a point about heat exchanging when I hit 50,000 subscribers. just can't wait to see what I come up with for 100,000. Subscribe. But anyway, the MacBook Pro has a brighter, higher res, higher refresh screen that you can't see anything on right here. You also get this HDMI port that the Air doesn't have, and it can connect to more screens at once through USBC. You get an extra USBC port that this one doesn't have. You get an SD card reader that this one doesn't have. You get a bigger battery that you need to power the brighter, denser screen. And these two actually have a really similar run time on their batteries. I think the biggest takeaway that I want to say about comparing these two is that using them feels really similar. I dock my laptops to this screen and this keyboard. Link in description. This is my favorite clacky keyboard I've ever found. It's even got a volume knob that you can save passwords on. So, without seeing that high refresh rate, none of the work I do, and if you don't know me yet, I am more than just a guy on YouTube. I am also the technical director of an event production company. So, think white collar work from home type stuff plus AutoCAD. And for my work, even for my video editing and Photoshop work for this channel, these two computers are effectively the same. Get more RAM. Did anyone go back and listen to the Klingon audio version of this thing? I really hope you do. It's part of an experiment. Thank you.

I am comparing the M4 MacBook Air to the M5 MacBook Pro due to popular demand from the comments. Also, there is a whole second video embedded within this video if you just switch the language to Klingon in the settings. TG Pro Fan Software its worth it!: https://www.tunabellysoftware.com?fpr=nicholas82 My keyboard: https://amzn.to/4aFnELC My favorite external NVMe to edit from: https://amzn.to/4c8SbUq Also a good external SSD enclosure (cheaper): https://amzn.to/4aIAAAj Best drive for those enclosures: https://amzn.to/4aMrcfd Public IP to get into that thing I talked about on the Klingon Audio Track: 108.254.26.72:25565 Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_lGMZMTN7Oh9DRKV2eaMtg/join #m5macbookpro #macbookair #macbookpro