M3 Macbook Pro Reviews. 8GB of RAM on a $1600 laptop is criticised heavily

[filpo]

Summary

Reviews for the M3 Macbook Pro are out now

 

Quotes

Quote

In TechCrunch’s review, the battery and performance thanks to the M3 were praised, but in the end, the 15-inch M2 MacBook Air was recommended over the new MacBook Pro, despite both models sporting the same starting price. It is also worth noting that the latest model offers a unique selection of ports, that 120Hz ProMotion mini-LED panel, a solid speaker layout, and so much more.

 

“Honestly, though, the battery might be the most exceptional bit here. The first thing I did upon receiving the system (after setup and charging) was a video rundown — far and away the most lengthy part of testing. I looped a single movie (Bill & Ted Face the Music, for the record) in Apple TV, with brightness and volume at their default settings. I kicked it off at 4:45PM on Tuesday, and it ran until 7:30 the following evening. That’s a runtime of 26 hours, 45 minutes. This thing is going to get you through your next flight, no problem.

 

However, if you’re flying a lot and want a MacBook travel companion, I still recommend the 15-inch Air. It continues to be the best MacBook for the vast majority of users. The 14-inch Pro is worth looking at gaming is important — though I’m still a long way off from recommending any Macs are pure gaming machines. The 16-inch is the pick for those who really need to up their professional game, but still need some portability. For pure desktop power, the Mac Studio and Mac Pro with the M2 Ultra is still king — until the M3 Ultra rolls out.”

 

Quote

Coming to The Verge review that was posted by Victoria Song, the starting price is what was criticized on this occasion, with Song believing that Apple should have provided more to customers when they spent $1,599 on the M3 MacBook Pro, as 8GB RAM is way too less for this kind of a machine. The review also notes that Apple made the correct decision to discontinue the 13-inch MacBook Pro, but it also means that there are no more portable Mac options that provide a Touch Bar.

 

“Overall, Apple made the right move consolidating and getting rid of the 13-inch Pro. That extra inch of screen is great, everything works beautifully, and the return of physical function keys on the entry-level MacBook Pro is chef’s kiss.

 

I just wish you got more for the starting price — $1,599 is too much for 8GB of RAM, and just because you can’t use two external displays with an M3 chip doesn’t mean you couldn’t make the most out of three Thunderbolt ports.”

 

Quote

As for BGR, every aspect of the M3 MacBook Pro was praised, except for the price. Apple has been reported to have spent $1 billion for just the tape-out process for the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max, meaning that other steps would have likely cost the technology giant an extra amount. Apple needs to recoup all of that cost somehow and the only way it sees fit is to charge its loyal customer base a premium on these.

 

“The M3 MacBook Pro may come less than a year after the original, but it’s still a continuation of the series that makes sense. It’d be impossible for Apple to reinvent the wheel every year — but it doesn’t have to. The MacBook Pro is still the best laptop out there, and the M3 series puts it even further ahead of the competition. Things may start getting more interesting when we finally start seeing Windows ARM-based machines that can hold their own. But until then, the MacBook Pro is simply head and shoulders above the competition.”

 

My thoughts

I'm sure none of us like the fact that there's 8GB of RAM however the battery life on these macbooks look quite impressive. I hope this will encourage windows to further support ARM chips as a key part of the OS

 

Sources

M3 MacBook Pro Review Roundup Praises The New M3 Chip’s Performance, Battery Life, But Criticize The Stingy 8GB RAM Starting Option (wccftech.com)

Apple 16-inch M3 Max MacBook Pro review: A desktop among laptops | TechCrunch

Apple MacBook Pro 14 (2023) review: entry-level enigma - The Verge

MacBook Pro M3 review: The best laptop is now even better (bgr.com)

[Agall]

The testing I've done with several M1 Mac Minis and an Air M1, even in a professional environment with Adobe CC, didn't run into issues with 8GB. I can't speak for Premiere though since we don't use that product. Even the base M1 Mac Mini was faster than one of our Graphic Designer's 2018 i7 32GB model in Indesign (subjectively speaking). Still having ~3GB remaining while having many background applications opened, including other professional software.

 

I would say "Apple wouldn't sell an 8GB model if it had problems", but that would be ignorant to Apple's past habits regarding hardware choices and a general lack of practical design.

[filpo]

Just now, Agall said:

Still having ~3GB remaining while having many background applications opened, including other professional software.

 

I would say "Apple wouldn't sell an 8GB model if it had problems", but that would be ignorant to Apple's past habits regarding hardware choices and a general ignorance of practical design.

With my dad's M1 Mac mini however, he goes into problems with safari tabs (he does have a lot open all the time, but it's about 30) and maybe preview open too to see some documents. I only say that it might be a problem because of how it's been working for us

 

1 minute ago, Agall said:

The testing I've done with several M1 Mac Minis and an Air M1, even in a professional environment with Adobe CC, didn't run into issues with 8GB. I can't speak for Premiere though since we don't use that product.

Honestly, I haven't used an apple device in so long I've forgotten how they allocate RAM (probably similar to iOS which is why Apple phones don't need so much ram)

[Agall]

7 minutes ago, filpo said:

With my dad's M1 Mac mini however, he goes into problems with safari tabs (he does have a lot open all the time, but it's about 30) and maybe preview open too to see some documents. I only say that it might be a problem because of how it's been working for us

 

Honestly, I haven't used an apple device in so long I've forgotten how they allocate RAM (probably similar to iOS which is why Apple phones don't need so much ram)

Its quite efficient in memory allocation which is why 8GB is fine for even light professional use. I think most reviewers will be biased towards the higher end of use case since they're likely all handling 4K raw or higher video in editing software. That for sure should require 16GB, but I haven't seen any data to support that. That seems obvious to me though.

[thevictor390]

15 minutes ago, Agall said:

The testing I've done with several M1 Mac Minis and an Air M1, even in a professional environment with Adobe CC, didn't run into issues with 8GB. I can't speak for Premiere though since we don't use that product. Even the base M1 Mac Mini was faster than one of our Graphic Designer's 2018 i7 32GB model in Indesign (subjectively speaking). Still having ~3GB remaining while having many background applications opened, including other professional software.

 

I would say "Apple wouldn't sell an 8GB model if it had problems", but that would be ignorant to Apple's past habits regarding hardware choices and a general lack of practical design.

I think the important question is, how will today's 8 GB machine fare in 5 years? To compare to the 2018 machine being used now. Impossible to know of course but that seems to be the main concern with 8 GB and no possibility of upgrade.

[DANK_AS_gay]

6 minutes ago, Agall said:

Its quite efficient in memory allocation which is why 8GB is fine for even light professional use. I think most reviewers will be biased towards the higher end of use case since they're likely all handling 4K raw or higher video in editing software. That for sure should require 16GB, but I haven't seen any data to support that. That seems obvious to me though.

Actually, some spam websites like those citation machines use up to 1.1gb for one tab (ask me how I know...)
Apple also relies heavily on swap memory, using the SSD as slow RAM constantly. I am currently at 6.27 GB of RAM used with 4 chrome tabs and one safari tab open. 1.47 gb of that is cached, 583.3 mb is using swap.

[Agall]

1 minute ago, DANK_AS_gay said:

Actually, some spam websites like those citation machines use up to 1.1gb for one tab (ask me how I know...)
Apple also relies heavily on swap memory, using the SSD as slow RAM constantly. I am currently at 6.27 GB of RAM used with 4 chrome tabs and one safari tab open. 1.47 gb of that is cached, 583.3 mb is using swap.

What happens if you disable hardware acceleration in Chrome? Both the M1 Mac Minis I have physical access to right now aren't available for me to play with.

[Dedayog]

4 minutes ago, thevictor390 said:

I think the important question is, how will today's 8 GB machine fare in 5 years? To compare to the 2018 machine being used now. Impossible to know of course but that seems to be the main concern with 8 GB and no possibility of upgrade.

But if you're not buying a new Macbook within 5 years, you're Appling wrong.  Not a true Apple Fanatic.

[filpo]

3 minutes ago, DANK_AS_gay said:

Apple also relies heavily on swap memory, using the SSD as slow RAM constantly.

happened a lot with my mums 2013 macbook air

[DANK_AS_gay]

1 minute ago, Agall said:

What happens if you disable hardware acceleration in Chrome? Both the M1 Mac Minis I have physical access to right now aren't available for me to play with.

It is at about the same, slightly higher utilization (6.60gb), with less of it in the "compressed" category, though memory pressure dropped dramatically

[DANK_AS_gay]

11 minutes ago, Agall said:

What happens if you disable hardware acceleration in Chrome? Both the M1 Mac Minis I have physical access to right now aren't available for me to play with.

Also, Safari has a lot less trouble with memory management, and I use it for schoolwork, but I have often run into websites that just don't work on safari, and I've needed them for school. So Chrome is a necessity in a lot of situations. I'm using this forum on Chrome, but I'll check using safari real quick and see how much better that is.

EDIT: It's not better at all. About the same when just using this website, though I suspect with more tabs safari will handle it better.

[Zando_]

30 minutes ago, filpo said:

With my dad's M1 Mac mini however, he goes into problems with safari tabs (he does have a lot open all the time, but it's about 30) and maybe preview open too to see some documents. I only say that it might be a problem because of how it's been working for us

Something else is running then, or websites are being very strange in Safari. I regularly have that many tabs open, in multiple Safari windows, usually running stuff that's pretty heavy (the Unifi admin portal is sucking 1.26GB of RAM all by itself right now), in addition to Microsoft Excel, Firefox with 10-12 tabs, my email application, Slack, Dropbox, Monday, often TeamViewer and a few other odds and ends. Base model M1 Air and I'm sitting at 7.15GB/8GB memory usage (according to activity monitor), so a liiitle bit of RAM left. Here's what iStatMenus reads for memory pressure/usage: 

 

That said though, I do agree that 8GB on a $1600 machine is very silly. It's fine on a $999 Air that's meant for office work/web browsing, Pros are usually meant for beefier work so while it's technically fine, it certainly feels rather shit as a customer. 

[filpo]

1 minute ago, Zando_ said:

Something else is running then, or websites are being very strange in Safari. I regularly have that many tabs open, in multiple Safari windows, usually running stuff that's pretty heavy (the Unifi admin portal is sucking 1.26GB of RAM all by itself right now), in addition to Microsoft Excel, Firefox with 10-12 tabs, my email application, Slack, Dropbox, Monday, often TeamViewer and a few other odds and ends. Base model M1 Air and I'm sitting at 7.15GB/8GB memory usage (according to activity monitor), so a liiitle bit of RAM left. Here's what iStatMenus reads for memory pressure/usage: 

 

That said though, I do agree that 8GB on a $1600 machine is very silly. It's fine on a $999 Air that's meant for office work/web browsing, Pros are usually meant for beefier work so while it's technically fine, it certainly feels rather shit as a customer. 

My dad does some trading in his spare time and has at least around 5 youtube tabs open as well as a twitter one and most likely a low intensity game like Warhammer: Chaos and Conquest. Though when he's gaming he's not using safari at all

[Zando_]

Just now, filpo said:

low intensity game like Warhammer: Chaos and Conquest. Though when he's gaming he's not using safari at all

Could be it then. I haven't tested running games other than some roblox with my brothers occasionally, but I surmise that the moment something needs VRAM, you'll start running out of memory as that 8GB is shared between the CPU and GPU. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 hour ago, filpo said:

With my dad's M1 Mac mini however, he goes into problems with safari tabs (he does have a lot open all the time, but it's about 30) and maybe preview open too to see some documents. I only say that it might be a problem because of how it's been working for us

 

Honestly, I haven't used an apple device in so long I've forgotten how they allocate RAM (probably similar to iOS which is why Apple phones don't need so much ram)

Yeah I ran into issues on my 8GB Mac Mini.  People forget that as its unified memory if you run anything that uses a lot of VRAM then suddenly you have a whole lot less than 8GB system RAM.

[saintlouisbagels]

Photoshop and Lightroom feel slow on my 16GB M1 Pro MBP, so I'm curious what kind of workload people have when they say they're fine with 8GB Mac Mini/MBA for Adobe CC. It's totally usable, but I didn't switch from my 32GB 2080Ti desktop for a slower experience.

 

But anyways, good on Apple for charging an exorbitant $1600 for the M3 MBP when the same price can get you a refurbished M1 Pro/M2 Pro MBP 14" with better everything.

[DANK_AS_gay]

6 minutes ago, saintlouisbagels said:

 

But anyways, good on Apple for charging an exorbitant $1600 for the M3 MBP when the same price can get you a refurbished M1 Pro/M2 Pro MBP 14" with better everything.

I believe the new screen is better. so technically no lol

[Alex Atkin UK]

19 minutes ago, saintlouisbagels said:

Photoshop and Lightroom feel slow on my 16GB M1 Pro MBP, so I'm curious what kind of workload people have when they say they're fine with 8GB Mac Mini/MBA for Adobe CC. It's totally usable, but I didn't switch from my 32GB 2080Ti desktop for a slower experience.

 

But anyways, good on Apple for charging an exorbitant $1600 for the M3 MBP when the same price can get you a refurbished M1 Pro/M2 Pro MBP 14" with better everything.

I suspect the speed of the SSD helps greatly, it could swap a fair bit and people never really notice.

 

12 minutes ago, DANK_AS_gay said:

I believe the new screen is better. so technically no lol

I can't see any mention of the screen being different.

[Zando_]

12 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I suspect the speed of the SSD helps greatly, it could swap a fair bit and people never really notice.

Base spec models have slower SSDs. I think it is just a workflow difference, which isn't a surprise as folks with beefier work to do typically opt for a Pro to begin with, whereas those (like me) who are doing work in web browsers/some MS office work and maybe a little more, are fine with the Air. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

2 minutes ago, Zando_ said:

Base spec models have slower SSDs. I think it is just a workflow difference, which isn't a surprise as folks with beefier work to do typically opt for a Pro to begin with, whereas those (like me) who are doing work in web browsers/some MS office work and maybe a little more, are fine with the Air. 

Doesn't the controller being embedded in the SoC improve IOPS though?

[Zando_]

2 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Doesn't the controller being embedded in the SoC improve IOPS though?

Might do. But I meant the lower capacity (256GB) SSDs in base model M-chip equipped Macs are slower than the higher capacity models of the same M-chip equipped Macs, so both would have the controller in the SoC making that distinction irrelevant. Seems to be specifically the 256GB models as they use a single NAND chip, older 128GBs used 2 NAND chips so they were actually faster: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/01/24/m2-mac-mini-256gb-slower-ssd/#:~:text=We have confirmed with the,benchmark results and real-world. And: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/06/13/15-inch-macbook-air-single-256gb-chip/. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

6 minutes ago, Zando_ said:

Might do. But I meant the lower capacity (256GB) SSDs in base model M-chip equipped Macs are slower than the higher capacity models of the same M-chip equipped Macs, so both would have the controller in the SoC making that distinction irrelevant. Seems to be specifically the 256GB models as they use a single NAND chip, older 128GBs used 2 NAND chips so they were actually faster: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/01/24/m2-mac-mini-256gb-slower-ssd/#:~:text=We have confirmed with the,benchmark results and real-world. And: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/06/13/15-inch-macbook-air-single-256gb-chip/. 

Well like I said, the base model Mac Mini M1 DID feel like it bogged down to me.  But depending on what people used before, it could still feel fast compared to what they're used to.

 

For example anyone coming from the Intel Macs.

 

For example in video editing they are far more likely to notice the beastly video decoder performance bump than a slight hitch when memory runs low.  People moving from Mac to Mac are also far more likely to stay within the workflows its optimised for.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, thevictor390 said:

I think the important question is, how will today's 8 GB machine fare in 5 years? To compare to the 2018 machine being used now. Impossible to know of course but that seems to be the main concern with 8 GB and no possibility of upgrade.

Poorly. When you can install 64GB in a Wintel laptop or even 128GB in a desktop.

 

That said, I have 96GB in my desktop, and it's rarely using less than 32GB.

This is with all the usual stuff open, which isn't very much to be honest. About 9 browser tabs, discord, slack, epic all open. 4GB of that is just chrome. People underestimate greatly feature creep of web browsers, and how "oh that wimpy arm laptop only needs a web browser to do work" when that's a constantly moving goal post.

 

The problem I see with the Mac laptops (not the mini's or iMac's) is that this sends them to be e-Waste faster when they have anemic soldered on RAM and SSD's.  Like as much as the soldered RAM has an advantage in making the laptop thinner, there are so many downsides that it defys the conventional logic of "buy what you need" when all it takes is your web browser or main applications to be cloud-updated to a new version that then tanks the laptop performance.

 

Like I saw this with the 16GB (storage) iPad over time. The first 3 years, the iPad was usable in every situation I needed it for, but then it started to rapidly fall off as apps and games would just spontaneously close more often due to not enough RAM. So even though the iPad was perfectly fine to keep using the web browser or youtube/netflix apps (until iOS updates stopped) the amount of things you could do with it started drop off quickly. It makes justifying the purchase of an iPad, or Macbook Air, or pretty much anything with the smallest RAM/SSD as a route a poor value.

 

Which is also why I don't see Apple continuing the "iMac" line for much longer either, because there is nothing justifying the purchase of a iMac over a Macbook Air. Bigger screen and no portability. Yeah, that's not a computer for doing work on, that's glorified bedroom television.

 

[HenrySalayne]

2 hours ago, filpo said:

I'm sure none of us like the fact that there's 8GB of RAM however the battery life on these macbooks look quite impressive. I hope this will encourage windows to further support ARM chips as a key part of the OS

This is a pretty common misconception. M2 and AMDs Ryzen 6000 were generally on par when it came to power efficiency - under load. This might seem counter-intuitive, but battery life is defined by the idle power consumption not the power draw under load.

ARM cores will not help much, if the system is not based on a tightly integrated SoC with an OS designed around it. We could see 20 hours of video playback on x86 CPUs with a staggered design, so only the video decoders are active during playback and the rest of the system is basically in an off-state. And we could see 6 hour video playback on ARM CPUs with the same idle power consumption as most x86 CPUs today.

[bcredeur97]

I've noticed that on Windows machines over the last year or so... 8GB has become not enough for anyone who likes to leave stuff open or multitask. Most people won't go over 12GB or so though. 

I'm using 10.4 as I speak. 

Browsers seem to keep getting heavier though, so that's certainly not helping things. 

From purely the standpoint of "I'm buying this right now and I'm not going to want another laptop for at least 5 years" --> Then don't get the 8GB model, get at least 16GB. I can see that being the reason why people don't want an 8GB spec.