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This was bloody hard.
Try it. If you’re an Apple fan and you’ve been particularly enamoured by what they’ve done with the Mac during the Apple silicon era, try and choose your top five favourites.
Don’t worry, no rush. I’ll come back later.
Although by the time I return, you’ll probably be still scratching your head and trying to work out how on earth you can pick just one favourite child out of the Mac mini and the MacBook Air.
This is how good Apple silicon is. Creating a top five list of Intel Macs would have been a similarly painful process, but for the wrong reasons; one would end up simply crowning the Mac that had the least problems.
Thankfully, I have, somehow, managed to crown my own favourite Apple silicon Mac and decide on the four that very nearly made the cut.
5th place: 16-inch M1 Max MacBook Pro
This list wouldn’t be complete without at least one M-series MacBook Pro.
When the chunky, retro-infused design was revealed in 2021, there was an audible, collective sigh from everyone who relies on these machines to get important work done.
The keyboard was back. The ports were back. Even MagSafe made a triumphant return! Add to that a simply gorgeous high refresh rate display, the death of the Touch Bar, and Apple silicon power that ridiculed even the most expensive Intel Mac Pro, and this was the most satisfying – if overdue – apology from Apple.
They never actually said the word “sorry”, but the Apple silicon MacBook Pro refresh was definitely a nod towards everyone who had put up with the absolute dross that had come before it. Gone were the days of design before function in Apple’s most important Pro product.
I’m about to say goodbye to my 16-inch M1 Max MacBook Pro. It’s being superseded by a specced-up 14-inch M3 Max MacBook Pro. I don’t need the latter at all, but I wanted to go smaller, and I’m an Apple tech reviewer, so it felt like an inevitable purchase.
I will not forget what that 16-inch MacBook Pro enabled me to achieve with this business, though. What a monster.
4th place: M2 Pro Mac mini (base model)
Fun fact: the Mac mini is the only Mac that features twice in this list.
The first entry is this – the M2 Pro Mac mini, which is easily one of the most impressive professionally-focused Macs I’ve ever laid my hands on. For the money, I’m not sure anything beats it if you want a desktop Mac that is capable of crushing creative work.
Pair it was a Studio Display, a great mechanical keyboard, and a Logitech MX Master 3S mouse, and you’ve got one hell of a setup for a fraction of what it would have cost to get the same performance in the Intel days.
During those wilderness years for the Mac mini, many people (me included) assumed Apple had given up on its brilliant, unassuming little desktop Mac. Little did we know what was to come.
At the time of writing, the M2 Pro Mac mini represents the pinnacle of what the Mac mini in its current form factor is capable of. But the most impressive thing about it is that so few people need anything more than what the base model offers in its 16GB of unified memory configuration.
This is one hell of a computer. If you’re thinking about it, just buy it – now.
3rd place: 24-inch M3 iMac (24GB)
This one might come as a surprise.
The 24-inch iMac has every right to be on this list, and you might expect me to opt for the M1 version, given that it was Apple silicon’s first iteration that heralded the launch of a long-awaited iMac redesign.
The problem is that the brilliance of the M1 is noted elsewhere in this list, and in Macs which, I feel, make the performance inherent within that chip as impressive as it can be.
This doesn’t mean that the M1 iMac is a step down from those Macs. On the contrary, it is just as performant and impressive. However, the iMac has, in my opinion truly come alive with the M3 chip and, specifically, the specced-up 24GB model.
I saw that spec in action at Apple’s UK headquarters earlier this month and it was a biblically impressive all-in-one computer. Sure, few buyers of this machine need that 24GB version (the 16GB is definitely the sweet spot), but that’s irrelevant; if you want to see what Apple silicon is capable of in a desktop machine with a beautiful integrated display and a stupidly thin design – the decked-out configuration tells you everything you need to know.
The fact we now have that option for the iMac makes the buying decision for anyone looking at Apple’s all-in-one far simpler and opens up this machine to a much wider audience.
2nd place: M1 Mac mini (16GB)
I gave away my M1 Mac mini to a competition winner earlier this year, and I don’t think I’ve ever been as sad to say “goodbye” to a piece of tech.
The reason is simple – I built this business on that thing. Without it during those early days, I wouldn’t have been able to crank out my first eighty videos for the Mark Ellis Reviews YouTube channel. The unbelievable ease with which it could chew through 4K video, given its relatively modest price of £1,099, was astounding. Pound-for-pound in terms of performance, it remains the most impressive desktop computer I’ve ever used.
So, why didn’t it grab the top spot? Simple – nothing can knock the Apple silicon Mac I’ve crowned number one from its perch on the throne. Equally, the M1 Mac mini wasn’t perfect – for some users (me included), it suffered from crippling Bluetooth issues. The Mac mini also remains one of Apple’s meanest packages, given that you only receive the computer and a power cable. Everything else you need to make it useful has to be bought separately. That’s understandable in terms of a display, but would it really hurt Tim to give us a Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse as part of the deal?
Regardless, these are small concerns. The M1 Mac mini will forever hold a very special place in my heart because it worked so tirelessly for this business and never once complained.
Winner: M1 MacBook Air (base model)
While the list above was tricky to refine, the winner of my Apple Silicon Mac rundown was never in doubt.
I still have my M1 MacBook Air. It’s covered in stickers, has sustained minor battle scars, and is now playing a central role in my girlfriend’s acupuncture degree.
Giving away the M1 Mac mini was tough, but I could never let go of the M1 MacBook Air. I never will; this thing will remain within my family’s possession for as long as we’re on this planet. Even my girlfriend has fallen in love with it and she has zero interest in technology.
The M1 MacBook Air in question is the base model. That means it has 8GB of unified memory and a 256GB SSD. During those early days of Mark Ellis Reviews, while the M1 Mac mini was handling the heavy lifting for production, the M1 MacBook Air was doing everything else. Every piece of administrative work, daily writing duties, zoom calls, email, and the myriad of tasks that are required to run a full-time creator business took place on that base model Mac for nearly two years.
I even undertook the occasional 4K a-roll edit on the damn thing, and it barely broke a sweat.
Sure, the M1 MacBook Air featured the same design as the Intel generation. That didn’t matter, though. Simply ‘slapping an M1 chip in there’ revealed what that chassis had been missing for so many years: a properly efficient, powerful chip that didn’t need a fan, and which could perform well beyond its pay grade.
It also taught me, and many others, that 8GB of memory is, actually, fine. More than fine, in fact. This is why Apple silicon sent shockwaves through the tech industry; Apple had forced a new era – one which its existing line-up of Mac hardware had been waiting for, all along.
The base model M1 MacBook Air is the most impressive, value-ridden laptop I’ve ever used. I cannot see it being topped. Ever.
Final thought: where do we go from here?
What’s next for Apple silicon? Bearing in mind there’s only one entrant from the M2 and M3 generations in my list above, are we facing the inevitable? Was the M1 chip too good? Has Apple shot itself in the foot in the best, but most frustrating way possible?
I don’t think they have. The hardware team at Apple isn’t stupid – they know that the leap from Intel to M1 was bigger than anything they’re likely to repeat for many years to come – if ever.
This means we simply need to lower our expectations. My recent M3 bootstrapped benchmarking confirms this (if you’re willing to accept my rudimentary approach to testing). The performance gains between the M1 and M3 generations are marginal for most normal users – it’s only when you dig into the depths of Ludicrous Work that the improvements manifest.
That’s fine. That’s tech. This is what happens. It’s also why I decided to deliver this list today, rather than in five years’ time.
What’s your favourite Mac of the Apple silicon generation? Get involved below!
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