#MACBOOK AIR M1 VS MACBOOK PRO M1 PRO#

Remember, this same M1 chip performs well in the fanless MacBook Air, so this fan likely doesn’t have all that much to do even under extended load. This thing likely never spins at more than a fraction of its upper limit. In other words, what you’re not hearing there is the sound of an aggressive fan curve.

#MACBOOK AIR M1 VS MACBOOK PRO M1 PRO#

It turns out, not so much: our M1 MacBook Pro’s single fan is identical to the fan in the two-port Intel MacBook Pro 2020 we picked up earlier this year. Speaking of the fan, there has been some light speculation that these new machines run so impossibly quiet even under heavy load, they might be concealing some nigh-magical new cooling tech. The M1 MacBook Pro’s cooling setup is very similar to that of its Intel-based ancestors: nothing fancy, just a copper heat pipe carrying heat away from the processor toward a small heatsink, where the hot air is promptly shown the door grille by the fan. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the Pro’s familiar thermal design. And the repair procedures tend to be similar if not identical.īut the two-port MacBook Pro and the new MacBook Air still hail from completely different evolutionary lines. In a pinch, you can even pilfer parts from devices that aren’t exactly the same as yours. Interchangeable parts (such as we found in some of this year’s iPhones) would significantly increase your odds of finding replacements down the line, since more of them get produced. These machines are, after all, running the same chip, and the same OS, on nearly identical screens. We’d expected-nay, hoped-to see some consolidation of MacBook parts and design. The MacBook Pro sees even fewer internal changes than the Air, and in a way, that is a surprise in itself. MacBook Pro-Mostly the Same, Which Is Different As for the board and the M1 itself, more on that below. The repair procedures will likely remain almost totally unchanged. There’s a new battery model, with minimally different specs. You’ll want new thermal paste occasionally, and that’s about it.Īpart from the new board and cooler, the rest of the Air remains all but identical to its predecessor. There are no moving parts, and nothing to break. Without a fan, this solution may take longer to cool off, and may cap out sooner, but by foregoing heatpipes or a vapor chamber, the sink also has more mass to saturate with thermal energy. A thick cold plate over the M1 processor draws heat via conduction to its flatter, cooler end, where it can safely radiate away. But let’s be real: the best repair is the one you never have to make in the first place. Will anyone actually miss having to open their laptop to de-gunk or replace a dusty old fan? Maybe somebody will.

If this new thermal arrangement is truly enough to meet the M1’s needs-and early reviews indicate that for most workloads, it is-it means less maintenance and one less point of mechanical failure. So you might worry that the fan is the new headphone jack, an inevitable victim of designers obsessed with slim, light slabs and minimaluminiumalism.īut there’s something to be said for the fanless simplicity of the iPad (Apple’s other computer). The Air hasn’t had the best track record with thermals-it was starting to gain a reputation-and the cooling solutions in some other Apple notebooks are famously anemic. Recent history arguably warrants a little pessimism here. If that move has you groaning slightly, we understand.

In what a pessimist might describe as pulling a Microsoft, Apple nixed the fan in favor of a simple aluminum heat spreader hanging off the left edge of the logic board. The biggest physical change to either of these machines is also the punniest: The Air no longer actively moves air. Meanwhile, the new MacBook Air’s biggest move was to … eliminate the fan.

The new 13” MacBook Pro looks so familiar inside, we had to double-check that we didn’t accidentally purchase the old model. While Apple touts its M1-powered Macs as nothing short of a revolution, internally, they could hardly be any more similar to their predecessors. We’ll spill all the details below, but suffice to say, our curiosity has been rewarded in the most unintuitive way possible. Except… we opened them from the other side.

Like Craig Federighi before us, today we’re opening up the new M1 MacBooks and seeing the light.

Macbook air m1 vs macbook pro m1