M1 MacBook Pro With 8GB, 16GB RAM Show Surprising Benchmark Results

Apple's M1 Silicon has definitely been hogging the computing news spotlight these past weeks, most of them comparing its performance with Intel's chips. Not all M1 Macs are the same, of course, and not just counting the difference between an M1 MacBook Air and an M1 MacBook Pro. Even the MacBook Pro (Late 2020) offers two slightly different models with different RAM capacities. Thankfully, someone took the time to benchmark these two variants, and the results might surprise you a bit.

It's probably logical to assume that an M1 MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM will outperform one with only 8GB of RAM and that may be true in some cases. It is, however, a simplistic view which could end up literally costing you when you decide which model to pick. Even benchmark tests don't give the full picture and you have to take them into context.

YouTube channel Max Tech puts these two M1-powered MacBook Pros through a series of tests and, depending on what's being tested, the performance difference between the two isn't that stark. For activities that require more memory, like exporting an 8K R3D RAW to 4K, it's only natural that the 16GB RAM configuration would finish faster. For more CPU-intensive tasks, however, the 8GB RAM model isn't that far behind.

The real loser in these tests, unsurprisingly, is Intel once again. The benchmarks put an Intel Core i9 MacBook Pro with 32GB of RAM and a 2020 iMac with 16GB of RAM to be almost in the same ballpark as the M1 MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM. Considering the Intel-powered Macs cost twice or thrice as much, the result is almost embarrassing for Intel.

The benchmarks aren't exactly a glowing recommendation of the 8GB RAM M1 MacBook Pro, just that, for most use cases, it would be enough. As always, buyers have to keep in mind what they intend to use the MacBook Pros for in the long run but they can rest assured knowing that even the more affordable model is no slouch.