14” M2 Max MacBook Pro Review – What Went Wrong?

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I had an awesome plan this year.

With the 16-inch M1 Max MacBook Pro getting seemingly heavier each time I travelled with it, I’d make the switch to the 14-inch version.

I wouldn’t just buy an M1 Max 14-inch MacBook Pro, though, because that would be a bit silly. No, I’d wait for Apple to launch the M2 version and grab that, instead.

In March.

When that laptop should arrive.

Only, it didn’t. It came much earlier.

In a bid to finally unleash a bunch of chips and products that should clearly have arrived last October, Apple pushed out the new MacBook Pros in January. Cheers, Tim.

As it turns out, they’ve done me a favour, because investing my business’s hard-earned money in an M2 Max 14-inch MacBook Pro would have been a very silly idea indeed.

The specs

You might be wondering how I came to this conclusion. It was pretty simple – I ran another one of my awesome tests.

I’m going to level with you here. I am utterly through with running these Mark Ellis Reviews Benchmarks™️ for a while. Although mine pale in comparison to the rigorous testing carried out by others, they’re still time-consuming.

Each machine needs to be running the same version of macOS. There needs to be identical versions of Final Cut Pro at play, and equally identical pieces of 4K footage on which to carry out the tests.

Then, there are the numbers generated by these tests, which, when it comes to the M2 are mind-bendingly weird. I’ll get onto that in a moment, but just a quick note on the specs.

This particular test involves two machines – a 14-inch M2 Max MacBook Pro and a 16-inch M1 Max MacBook Pro. Bar the chip, they both have the same configuration – 32GB of unified memory and a 2TB SSD.

There’s one big difference, literally – the size of each laptop. I know I’m not comparing Apple’s with Apple’s here, but I have neither the budget nor the desire to get another 16-inch MacBook Pro to test against the M1 version. Plus, as noted, I genuinely wanted to see if it was worth switching to the 14-inch M2 edition.

It isn’t.

The test

Despite my benchmark fatigue, I was actually looking forward to this particular battle.

Bar the unified memory and storage, I had two of the most capable MacBook Pros in front of me. Both had maxed-out Max chips. On paper, the 14-inch M2 version is a cut above its M1 grandfather – as it should be. It has 12-cores of CPU versus 10, and six more graphics cores, bringing the total for the latter to 38. The 14-inch M2 Max MacBook Pro also has new video encoding engines.

Apple is, unsurprisingly, ‘giving it large’ when it comes to their reported performance boosts over the M1 generation.

Surely, it would smash the M1 Max MacBook Pro in my silly test, right?

Nope.

As a reminder, this test involves two tasks – rendering and exporting a piece of 10-minute, 4K, 10-bit footage from my Sony FX3 camera.

These are the results.

• M1 Max 16-inch MacBook Pro
  
  • Render: 01:31
  • Export: 02:37
• M2 Max 14-inch MacBook Pro
  
  • Render: 01:10
  • Export: 04:36

The render felt blisteringly quick as soon as I set it off on the 14-inch M2 Max MacBook Pro. It thundered through the task, completing it in the fastest time of all the Macs I’ve tested recently. One minute and ten seconds really isn’t to be sniffed at – that is super fast.

The export? Oh dear.

If someone can explain why the brand-new 14-inch M2 Max MacBook Pro is nearly two seconds slower at exporting the exact same piece of footage from Final Cut Pro under the exact same conditions as the outgoing model, I’m all ears.

As you’d guess, lots of people have already offered their thoughts on this.

The conclusion

My YouTube video review of this MacBook battle has drawn in loads of comments. This Mac coverage always does.

Here are some of the responses.

“Thermals? SSD speed when the export is writing to disk?”

“The M2 14 inch gets thermal throttled like crazy.”

“Pretty sure your issue is because the SSD’s in the new M2 models are slower than the ones in the M1 models.”

“The M2 14″ version is throttled like hell that may explain why your 14″ MBP is so much slower.”

“These new m2 machines are disappointing to put it politely”

They go on, and on, and on. It doesn’t make for pretty reading.

Other, more accurate benchmarks have demonstrated that the 14-inch M2 Max MacBook Pro does indeed throttle fast and heavily under load, which is probably the reason I experienced such a poor export time. Remember – mine has the 2TB SSD, which doesn’t suffer from these NAND chip configuration issues.

Upgrading from an M1-based MacBook Pro to the M2 platform makes zero sense. These new machines are slower when put to task, which is, ironically, exactly what they’re made for.

I won’t be switching. The 16-inch M1 Max MacBook Pro will remain my production steed until the M3 arrives either later this year or in 2024.

I’m disappointed, though. These new chips and Macs are not only late – they’re also worse than before. Most buyers won’t realise this – and that’s a point I’ve peddled previously as being a non-issue, but when you sit down and compare the two generations, it simply doesn’t make sense.

How can the new one be slower and more expensive? I can’t think of any other tech product where that applies.

This M2 generation of Macs feels like a mess. Rushed, delayed, pushing the limits of what this version of the SoC is capable of and sneakily hampered. Worse still (and this is the bit I really don’t understand) is the horrible PR it’s generating for them. Search for a review of the new MacBooks Pro and you’re met immediately with reports of slow SSDs, thermal throttling, and degraded performance.

That doesn’t look good, Tim.

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