Macbook M1 Pro 16inch interesting facts

[Light-Yagami]

Hello, this will be a quick list of interesting facts that someone who's still considering buying the 2021 MBP should probably know.

 

Laptop in question is equipped with the unlocked version of M1 Pro (10 core CPU, 16 core GPU), 16GB of RAM and 1TB SSD

 

1. 140W Apple charger will fast charge at 115W from 0% to 60% -ish, after that it drops of to 80W. When charged to 80% of higher, charging speeds reduce to just over 40W and continue to reduce to just 15W when above 90%.

 

2. Any off-brand 100W charger will be recognised as such, but won't charge at more than 80W.

 

3. With the included 140W charger, it takes roughly 30 minutes to charge from 10% to 60%, and another 80 minutes to charge from 60% to 100%.

 

4. Battery temperature rises above 40°C when fast charging, so I recommend using AlDente to pause charging when battery temp exceeds 35°C.

 

5. Fans do not spin under light loads (streaming video, document editing, web browsing), but do turn on at moderate loads and run @1400-1500rpm. You will not hear the fans run at this stage.

 

6. The system will let the CPU reach +95°C before it ramps up fans any higher than 1500rpm. It takes a sustained load at 50W SoC draw to force the fans into a range between 2400-2600rpm. You will hear a slight hum at that point, but only in a dead silent room. That means that you can push the system full blast and still be able to work at places like libraries without any issues. Even though the temperatures can be high, there's no thermal throttling to report of. 

 

7. Average reported system power is around 7W, doing everyday stuff (screen at 250nits, streaming video). That allows for a pretty good battery life at 14 hours. Doing less intensive stuff like editing documents will drop that consumption down to 4-5W, which allows for a battery life at around 17h - confirmed by me.

 

8. M1 Pro consumes 50W when both GPU and CPU are pushed, 33W then only CPU is pushed and 25W when only GPU is pushed. I used Blender to confirm that. 100W charger will suffice for the M1 Pro, but M1 Max will drain the battery as well under heavy workloads, since it has around 80-90W SoC pull and over 100W system pull.

 

9. 16GB of RAM is actually more like 15GB that never gets fully utilised. MacOS swaps to the SSD early, at around 12GB of used space. The highest possible swapped memory is around 64GB, after which the system will crash. Usually, no more than 25GB of swap is recommended in order to maintain normal operation. MacOS uses around 6GB at all times, so that means at most 7-8GB of available RAM for anything you might do. After that, it's swapping to the SSD. If you use 3D modelling apps (with 16GB and 1TB ssd), expect around 10-15 SSD rewrites every year. Considering these SSDs can hold up to over 400 rewrites before showing bad sectors, I wouldn't worry about it too much.

 

10. When you leave the laptop to sleep, it will gradually consume it's battery, at a rate of about 4-6% per day. It's about 0.25W of power draw under sleep, which is really good, considering that all antennas are active to support the "find my mac" function. 

 

If you have any more questions, ask away  Cheers

[HumdrumPenguin]

24 minutes ago, Light-Yagami said:

Hello, this will be a quick list of interesting facts that someone who's still considering buying the 2021 MBP should probably know.

 

Laptop in question is equipped with the unlocked version of M1 Pro (10 core CPU, 16 core GPU), 16GB of RAM and 1TB SSD

 

1. 140W Apple charger will fast charge at 115W from 0% to 60% -ish, after that it drops of to 80W. When charged to 80% of higher, charging speeds reduce to just over 40W and continue to reduce to just 15W when above 90%.

 

2. Any off-brand 100W charger will be recognised as such, but won't charge at more than 80W.

 

3. With the included 140W charger, it takes roughly 30 minutes to charge from 10% to 60%, and another 80 minutes to charge from 60% to 100%.

 

4. Battery temperature rises above 40°C when fast charging, so I recommend using AlDente to pause charging when battery temp exceeds 35°C.

 

5. Fans do not spin under light loads (streaming video, document editing, web browsing), but do turn on at moderate loads and run @1400-1500rpm. You will not hear the fans run at this stage.

 

6. The system will let the CPU reach +95°C before it ramps up fans any higher than 1500rpm. It takes a sustained load at 50W SoC draw to force the fans into a range between 2400-2600rpm. You will hear a slight hum at that point, but only in a dead silent room. That means that you can push the system full blast and still be able to work at places like libraries without any issues. Even though the temperatures can be high, there's no thermal throttling to report of. 

 

7. Average reported system power is around 7W, doing everyday stuff (screen at 250nits, streaming video). That allows for a pretty good battery life at 14 hours. Doing less intensive stuff like editing documents will drop that consumption down to 4-5W, which allows for a battery life at around 17h - confirmed by me.

 

8. M1 Pro consumes 50W when both GPU and CPU are pushed, 33W then only CPU is pushed and 25W when only GPU is pushed. I used Blender to confirm that. 100W charger will suffice for the M1 Pro, but M1 Max will drain the battery as well under heavy workloads, since it has around 80-90W SoC pull and over 100W system pull.

 

9. 16GB of RAM is actually more like 15GB that never gets fully utilised. MacOS swaps to the SSD early, at around 12GB of used space. The highest possible swapped memory is around 64GB, after which the system will crash. Usually, no more than 25GB of swap is recommended in order to maintain normal operation. MacOS uses around 6GB at all times, so that means at most 7-8GB of available RAM for anything you might do. After that, it's swapping to the SSD. If you use 3D modelling apps (with 16GB and 1TB ssd), expect around 10-15 SSD rewrites every year. Considering these SSDs can hold up to over 400 rewrites before showing bad sectors, I wouldn't worry about it too much.

 

10. When you leave the laptop to sleep, it will gradually consume it's battery, at a rate of about 4-6% per day. It's about 0.25W of power draw under sleep, which is really good, considering that all antennas are active to support the "find my mac" function. 

 

If you have any more questions, ask away  Cheers

Super interesting. Thanks for sharing.