We just tested and reviewed the 13-inch MacBook Pro 2022, which has the first available instance of Apple’s recently announced M2 processor. While there is a lot to discuss in the review about features and design (see review here), it was also our first chance to delve into what the M2 chip could really do, testing its performance in various dimensions. performance.
So how does the new M2 processor compare to the original M1 and other M1 members of the Apple Silicon family?
What is the Apple M2 processor?
Confused by all the M2 and M1 conversations you’ve been watching around Apple products lately? Here’s a quick refreshment.
In early June, Apple held its annual global developer conference, WWDC 2022. During the inaugural conference of the multi-day event, the company announced the first second-generation Apple Silicon processor for Mac, the M2 processor .
The new CPU benefits from a new production process, which Apple calls its “second-generation 5-nanometer process.” We’ll delve into the specs in a moment, but the new M2 chip offers several advances over the M1 processor starting in 2020, including more transistors, more memory bandwidth, and support for higher RAM allocations.
Then there are Apple’s rising claims. The company says that the new chip, compared to the original M1, offers 18% more CPU performance with the same power, significantly improved graphics performance with two additional graphics cores and a 40% more Neural Engine fast. The biggest question is how the M2 chip fits into the existing CPU line offered by Apple. Following on from the M1, we expected it to be better than the M1 in terms of simple performance. But how does it compare to the M1 Pro, M1 Max or even the M1 Ultra?
Equally important, just as the M1 overtook the more powerful M1 Pro, M1 Max and finally M1 Ultra earlier this year, the M2 chip is just the presumed first entry into the new line. Second-generation chips will likely follow the same staggered approach, with (assuming Apple follows the same model) the unannounced M2 Pro, M2 Max, and M2 Ultra chips will likely be based on the M2 processor base.
Apple M2: What are the basic specifications?
As mentioned above, the M2 processor enhances the M1 in several different ways.
While retaining the ARM-based architecture used in the M1, Apple has updated its lithography process, the engraving technology used to make today’s powerful processors, to pack an additional 4 billion transistors on the surface. of the CPU, increasing the total by 16 billion. up to 20 billion.
(Photo: Brian Westover)
In addition, the memory driver has been improved to double the bandwidth, up to 100 GBps. The chip now supports up to 24GB of unified memory (Apple’s branding approach to RAM, which serves the CPU and GPU as a whole).
Apple claims that the four high-performance cores and the four efficiency cores of the chip have been improved, with a 33% higher cache, better energy efficiency and an increase in the number of GPU cores of the seven or eight available on M1 at eight or 10. on M2 chip.
The M2 also gets faster ProRes processing and adds support for H.264 and H.265 8K media, which was not available on the M1 chip.
The end result of all this tweaking and refinement should be better performance, offering a clear step from the 2020 M1 chip, but not so great that it replaces the more premium M1 Pro and M1 Max that Apple offers in other MacBook models. .
Where can I get the Apple M2 processor?
When Apple announced the M2 processor at WWDC 2022, it noted that it would initially appear on two different Macs: the 13-inch MacBook Pro we just tested, and a new 13-inch 2022 version of the MacBook Air.
The 13-inch MacBook Pro has been available for booking since June 13 and will be available to customers on June 24. Take a look at our full review to see how the new MacBook Pro compares to the previous model and how well it compares to other ultraportable laptops on the market now.
In the near future, at the end of July, according to Apple, you will also be able to get the M2-based MacBook Air from the 2022 model, which is a complete redesign of the Air line. You can read our hands-on story for more details, but the new MacBook Air is a substantial change from older designs, changing the iconic profile of the laptop, adding a little more screen area, and introducing the same “notch.” “from the webcam that some. MacBook Pro models and reintroducing MagSafe as a power connection.
Where does M2 fit into the Apple Silicon family?
The M2 processor may be a big step for Apple’s already impressive M1 chip, but that doesn’t mean the M1 line is being jeopardized. Quite the contrary; the original M1 vanilla will remain for a while still as the cheapest entry level option for the most affordable MacBook Air. And the more powerful M1 Pro and M1 Max chips will deliver even more power, if you opt for them, to the 14-inch MacBook Pro and 16-inch MacBook Pro larger-screen laptops.
Finally, Apple’s M1 Ultra processor, introduced in early 2022, remains the top chip model in the Mac line and a strong competitor to what could be used in a Mac Pro with Apple Silicon, traditionally , Apple’s most powerful. desktop, but that was supplanted by Apple Mac Studio last spring. The M1 Ultra has only appeared in Mac Studio so far, so for now we’ll leave it aside, as it’s not an option on a MacBook.
First tests: comparative assessment of the Apple M2 chip
When it comes to comparing a new processor or system, context matters. So we focused on comparing the M2-powered MacBook Pro to a handful of key MacBook laptops, from the M1-based 13-inch MacBook Pro (2020) to the M1 Pro 14-inch MacBook Pro and the MacBook Pro 16 inches. with M1 Max. This gave us a clear picture of where the new M2 chip really fits into Apple Silicon’s larger line.
We also analyzed ultraportable laptops comparable to Intel processors. But in this case, these comparisons are less about finding the most powerful CPU and more about highlighting the level of performance that different Apple chips provide in the context of a particular category. For more details on testing and comparisons with non-Apple products, see our individual reviews.
To measure overall productivity and raw processing power, our CPU-intensive testing begins with Handbrake 1.4, in which we transcode our standard 4K test clip, the 12-minute H.264 Tears of Steel short film from the Blender Foundation , turning the clip down. to a 1080p version. With more powerful systems completing the task in less time, it is a very simple test of the CPU in a realistic multimedia task. It relies heavily on raw processing power and available cores and processing threads deployed side by side.
The next test is Maxon’s Cinebench, a CPU test that depicts a complex scene with Maxon’s Cinema 4D engine. It is a 10-minute test that, like the handbrake, emphasizes the processing of multiple cores and multiple threads. Higher scores are better for this test.
We also run Geekbench Pro from Primate Labs, which simulates popular applications ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. It is an excellent simulation of demanding productivity tasks, with a final score indicating overall processing capacity.
In these tests, the M2 processor lands right where we might expect, offering real improvements over the original “base” M1 chip (i.e. not Pro, Max or Ultra), but not at a level that would make it more attractive to professionals. . they need the more powerful CPUs found in the more premium and larger screen MacBooks.
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The other test we do is a test with the Adobe Photoshop seminal image editor, using the PugetBench test extension for Photoshop (from workstation maker Puget Systems (Opens in new window)), that we use for everything, from the execution of the same. milling consumer systems in high-end business workstations. On Macs, this test is less of a measure of raw processing capability and more of a measure of how the system handles the demands of applications that require the Rosetta 2 emulation layer.
However, even in this test, the M2 delivers excellent performance, easily outperforming Intel Core i7-equipped ultraportables such as the HP Specter x360 14 and the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 (2021). Interestingly, however, it more or less matches the performance of the M1 Pro, with a much narrower distance than in other tests. This could indicate that the Rosetta 2 layer acts as a bottleneck or that the M2 delivers better-than-expected multimedia performance. (We’ll have to try harder to find out.)
For graphics performance, we turn to GFXBench, a cross-platform rendering test that is based on Apple’s metal instead of OpenGL. We record the results in frames per second (fps); higher numbers are better …
The results follow the expected pattern, reaching above the M1, but below the M1 Pro and M1 Max. Given that Apple claims improvements to the M2’s GPU over the M1, this makes a lot of sense, but it doesn’t necessarily indicate an upgrade to graphics power; you can see the difference between most GPU cores in the MacBooks M1 Pro and Max.
While we didn’t have time before the release to run our full set of game testing, these results strongly suggest that game support is improving for this second-generation Apple Silicon. But better hardware does not solve the biggest problems of Mac games: the most important thing is software support. Without a robust gaming element in Apple-land, support for popular titles will continue to be uneven, and complications with Rosetta 2 and non-native games will always be an issue. We’ll dig deeper into this as we do more testing.
Finally, there is battery life, specifically for now only in the context of the 13-inch MacBook Pro M2 …
With all of Apple’s claims about power …