The latest MacBook Pro lineup, featuring the advanced M3 Apple silicon,raises eyebrows as the base configuration of the 14-inch model, price...
However, this decision by Apple has left many users, including Vadim Yuryev from the YouTube channel Max Tech, unconvinced. To delve into the impact of the 8GB configuration, Yuryev conducted real-world tests on two 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro models—one with 8GB and the other upgraded to 16GB of unified memory. The results, detailed in the embedded video, reveal significant performance disparities.
Unsurprisingly, the 16GB variant exhibited marked improvements in performance across various tasks, both moderate and resource-intensive. The 8GB model suffered notable performance declines in Cinebench benchmarks and took substantially longer to complete tasks such as photo-merging in Photoshop, as well as media exports in Final Cut and Adobe Lightroom Classic.
These tests, conducted in isolated operations and replicated with typical multitasking scenarios like browser tabs, YouTube videos, and emails running in the background, underscored the widening performance gap. As the 8GB model increasingly relied on its SSD swap file, overall responsiveness took a hit, leading to reported crashes during Blender rendering and a Final Cut export.
Intriguingly, Blender's raytracing acceleration, available on the 16GB models, was conspicuously absent on the 8GB MacBook Pro during an identical rendering job, indicating that the reduced memory pool hampers the GPU cores from utilizing certain features.
This poses a predicament for prospective MacBook Pro buyers, especially considering that upgrading to the 16GB or 24GB configurations at checkout incurs additional costs of $200 and $400, respectively. Compounding the issue is the inability to upgrade Apple's machines later due to their unified memory architecture.
Considering the extra $200 for 16GB on a 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro, an M3 Pro model with 18GB and additional features is only marginally more expensive at $1,999. Notably, competing laptops in a similar price range (such as Microsoft Surface or Lenovo Thinkpad) typically include at least 16GB of memory as a standard feature. This prompts a reflection on whether Apple's choice of an 8GB starting configuration for a $1,599 MacBook Pro in 2023 is truly acceptable and how the memory pricing policy has influenced users' purchase decisions. Share your thoughts in the comments below.