14 M1 MAX on Low Power still better than 14 M1 PRO?

[bill-p]

20% and 40% CPU/GPU loss would put it right with the base 14 8/16 PRO which is similar performance.

I understand the 13" and airs were a beast in themselves in regards to battery efficiency, similar to 16" getting 15+ hours which is why I'm trying to not compare them to those models.

you had mention your friend gets 8 hours and maybe 9 with Low power on, does he have a similar workflow?

I'm not trying to get 13 or 16 battery life. but if low power on a 14 max can be 9-10 that would put it in the acceptable range especially with the performance being similar to the 14 base pro. Basically the trade off of 10-15% battery (max vs pro 14) is worth the upside of the double GPU cores and double ram speeds that could be unlocked by turning off low power or being plugged in on the max imo

No, he probably has a different workflow compared to mine.

But he did tell me that even if he just left the 14" with M1 Max to be idle with the screen on at 50% brightness, he can't get much over 9 hours of screen time. If I leave my 14" with M1 Pro to be idle with the screen on at 50% brightness, it'll reach 14 hours even without Low Power Mode.

Hence my conclusion above: Low Power Mode is not a silver bullet. It seems to help with worst case, but it doesn't do much for light use.

Honestly, you really just have to make a trade-off here. If you need more performance, then you have to accept reduced battery run time. If you want more battery run time, you need to lose out on performance.

 

[ChpStcks]

A couple of the tests that at least try to apply the same conditions to each are discussed in one of the other threads about this.

First, there's a video that has one ridiculously bad test, followed by one that may be more useful, though details are lacking, so it's hard to say for sure. The bad test has the M1 Max clearly doing more computing than the other machines tested (in both parts of that test), because it can, so it only shows that doing more work uses more power, as we all figured anyway. The more useful test is the second, which starts at 6 minutes in. For moderately light use it finds 11 hours for the M1 Pro and 9.35 hours for the Max, which is 15% less.

The other tests are from a commenter here, who finds no to little difference, though there are potential issues there too. There's more than one post from that user there.

Battery life on M1X PRO vs M1X MAX?

I did a side by side of one very specific scenario and the battery life was nearly identical. My company got one each of the stock M1 Pro 1TB with 16GB of ram and one stock M1 Max 1TB with 32GB of ram. I was curious about the battery life after seeing The Verge article so since I was lucky...

forums.macrumors.com

I've seen some other mentions of what purport to be good tests too that fit within that range, but I don't recall offhand where. Haven't noticed any tests that look as well done that fall outside that range.

As far as I know, the performance penalty for low-power-mode is similar for both the Pro and Max, so I don't follow what you're after there.

Yeah I saw that video and thread. If I recall correctly the video only compares all three in regular power mode and after the last line of your reply, I guess my thread title could've been worded better. I meant "Is the 14 m1 Max on low power mode still better than the 14 m1 pro on regular (not low power mode)." My thought process was if I can get the 14 m1 max with similar (within 10-15%) battery life of a regular pro not on low power mode and not worse performance of the pro (when the max is on low power) it would be worth the sacrifice as I'd be basically carrying around a M1Pro when it's portable / on low power mode (which I don't mind). Then when I need to actually utilize the max features just plug it in or disable low power mode.

As for the thread link, I've read through the entire thread and saw that specific comment but figured it may have been an outlier since it's the only dataset I've see that actually has given the Max better battery than the Pro. Maybe the pro is fresh out of the box and still doing the back end syncing stuff which is known to depletes the battery quicker until after the first few cycles? But without other similar datasets I've kept it as an outlier since

 

[lclev]

I have a 14" M1 Max/ 64GB/ 1 TB. I have been using it for general web stuff and video work. If I am not doing any Premiere Pro/Photoshop work I put it on Low Power Mode. Just to give you an idea of how the battery lasts - Saturday I went to a Mac club meeting and used it to watch vids, surf the net etc, it lasted 3 about hours, came home and cruised various websites and watched some videos and I watched college football. I did not charge it and basically let it sleep on and off but mostly on. I took it off the charger at 9am that morning and put it back on the charger at 11pm that night with 46% still available on the battery.

On Sunday, I took it off low battery mode and started by running Handbrake to change a video from mkv to mp4. Then I edited that video using Premiere Pro, down to 60 minutes, added graphics to it and created three different formats using Media Encoder from that segment. Obviously, It ate rapidly through the battery in about 2 hours?? Not really sure exactly because I plugged it into a USB-C charger when the battery got down to 20%.

I love the fact I can put it in low battery mode and use it all day. And it is a dream working with videos in Premiere Pro and other apps in the creative suite. For me, that means I can take my work home and I don't have to be in the office where I have a very beefy PC. This MBP is faster than my PC. I love it.

 

[ChpStcks]

No, he probably has a different workflow compared to mine.

But he did tell me that even if he just left the 14" with M1 Max to be idle with the screen on at 50% brightness, he can't get much over 9 hours of screen time. If I leave my 14" with M1 Pro to be idle with the screen on at 50% brightness, it'll reach 14 hours even without Low Power Mode.

Hence my conclusion above: Low Power Mode is not a silver bullet. It seems to help with worst case, but it doesn't do much for light use.

Honestly, you really just have to make a trade-off here. If you need more performance, then you have to accept reduced battery run time. If you want more battery run time, you need to lose out on performance.

Yeah I saw a similar 14 being tested in a different thread that had similar battery life when idle. I would be very interested in how much he gets on low power mode with it idle @ 50% brightness. Clearly doesn't look like it'd be close to the 14 hours you're getting. but even to get 11 hours would be impressive.

As much as I'd like to accept that dilemma, I think it still calls for a few more datasets. I've got a 14 max coming in next month and just got a pro so I'll also be monitoring my personal use case / workflow and will update this thread accordingly once I get past the initial syncing cycles.

 

[ChpStcks]

I have a 14" M1 Max/ 64GB/ 1 TB. I have been using it for general web stuff and video work. If I am not doing any Premiere Pro/Photoshop work I put it on Low Power Mode. Just to give you an idea of how the battery lasts - Saturday I went to a Mac club meeting and used it to watch vids, surf the net etc, it lasted 3 about hours, came home and cruised various websites and watched some videos and I watched college football. I did not charge it and basically let it sleep on and off but mostly on. I took it off the charger at 9am that morning and put it back on the charger at 11pm that night with 46% still available on the battery.

On Sunday, I took it off low battery mode and started by running Handbrake to change a video from mkv to mp4. Then I edited that video using Premiere Pro, down to 60 minutes, added graphics to it and created three different formats using Media Encoder from that segment. Obviously, It ate rapidly through the battery in about 2 hours?? Not really sure exactly because I plugged it into a USB-C charger when the battery got down to 20%.

I love the fact I can put it in low battery mode and use it all day. And it is a dream working with videos in Premiere Pro and other apps in the creative suite. For me, that means I can take my work home and I don't have to be in the office where I have a very beefy PC. This MBP is faster than my PC. I love it.

Thanks for the data point! Just want to confirm, on Saturday when you took it off the charger at 9AM (plugged back on 11PM) was your screen time 3 hours? don't think that's the case but just trying to track your comment appropriately.

On Sunday, you went from 100% to 20% in 2 hours?

That's really all I'm looking for also, something to be able to last the whole day on light usage and when it needs to go full blast I can just plug in or know it's only going to last for a few hours which is usually more than enough.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

Just putting out the philosophical differences between the two - I haven't studied Anandtech or benchmark results.

On low power, I'd expect the SOC power draw to be quite similar or identical in both Pro and Max. Both have two efficiency cores, both are using the same functional design and semiconductor technologies. If you're just running on the efficiency cores, then that aspect of power consumption should be quite comparable. Cores that are standing idle don't consume significant amounts of power.

Pro vs. Max is related to high-end performance: more GPU cores, more memory bandwidth. Naturally, when pushing high-performance tasks, the consumption numbers are going to start diverging. Max should execute the same tasks faster than the Pro due to the greater resources at its disposal, with an expected trade-off in power consumption.

Yes, in the history of CPU design (especially Intel) we've come to expect trade-offs between the efficiency-designed chip sets and the performance-optimized chip sets. We could expect the performance chips to be clocking at a higher rate at all times, so there was always a power consumption difference.

But I haven't seen much evidence to support Apple's use of this particular strategy on these machines. Unlike Intel, they're not selling faster clocks, they're selling core count and memory bandwidth. Apple is not even mentioning clock rates in their marketing materials. Even if there is some clock manipulation going on, I don't expect it to be invoked at the low power end of things.

Could it turn out that choosing Pro over Max (or vice versa) could produce different low-power numbers? Yes, but I'd expect the difference to be marginal - nothing that couldn't be compensated for by a small variation in display brightness.

Now, all bets are off when you leave efficiency mode and start piling on the tasks. A machine capable of doing more work should be expected to require more energy in order to perform that work. At that point, all the thermodynamics-obsessed can have a field day: Will the Max fans kick in sooner and run longer/faster than the Pro? How badly will battery runtime and machine longevity be hurt? Etc.

The way I look at it is pretty simplistic:

If you're running high-performance business tasks on deadline, then you sacrifice lifespan and resource consumption. Time is money. Period. If you can't justify the cost of the wear-and-tear, then you have some real issues with your business model.

If you're gaming... it's all a game. If you want to win points by claiming the best results with the lowest power consumption, or if you want to run the machine deep into the redline for extended periods and not have the thing melt down into a puddle of charred plastic and molten silicon... it's all part of the game.

 

[Sanpete]

As for the thread link, I've read through the entire thread and saw that specific comment but figured it may have been an outlier since it's the only dataset I've see that actually has given the Max better battery than the Pro. Maybe the pro is fresh out of the box and still doing the back end syncing stuff which is known to depletes the battery quicker until after the first few cycles? But without other similar datasets I've kept it as an outlier since

The tests the user reported in that thread found the Max slightly better in some, and slightly worse in others. If they're close, that would be expected. The results aren't outliers from what I've seen. The Verge results, on the other hand, are extreme (and extremely sloppy). The maybe you bring up could just as well apply to the other results you've seen, of course.

 

[Jára Tyky]

Yesterday I was writing on 16” M1Max - so light work in Office - looking for sources in Safari and playing Apple Music in backgroud.

I fully charged and then unplugged the charger. So from 100 % to 50 % only 4 hours.

I am quite disappointed and think this is not good.

 

[Sanpete]

Yesterday I was writing on 16” M1Max - so light work in Office - looking for sources in Safari and playing Apple Music in backgroud.

I fully charged and then unplugged the charger. So from 100 % to 50 % only 4 hours.

I am quite disappointed and think this is not good.

What screen brightness, what volume for the speakers?

 

[Jára Tyky]

Brightness in the middle and speakers 6-7/10

 

[breath.by.breath]

Yeah, he needs to chill, but I get it. It's a stressful, but fun purchasing decision and people are passionate about their tools and toys.

Where this type of comparison-thinking and threads go wrong are exactly as he described - he values both. But you can't have both. Nobody can. The fellow just needs to ask - does he value the 20% - 30% or so extra battery life of the Pro, or does he value the 40% better GPU performance from the Max? The Max does not and cannot match the incredibly low energy consumption of the Pro, even with low power mode.

Please reference the 20-30% more battery life with the Pro. And the question of the MAX on low battery remains.

 

[breath.by.breath]

The best comparisons, which control for the same conditions for both machines, find a much smaller difference than The Verge did. Their test was silly, didn't even attempt to make it the same for both, just reported how long each lasted while doing whatever two different reviewers happened to be doing.

Apple didn't confirm to The Verge how much difference the extra processors in the Max use on idle. Not much is the most likely answer.

According to better tests, for light and heavy use where both machines are doing the same amount of work, the Max gets about the same to 15% less battery life. In tests where the Max is doing more work or faster, the time difference can be larger, but per task it may not be.


You don't need low-power mode to get results that are close to the M1 Pro. Low-power mode is also available on the Pro, so I'm not sure it's a useful comparison anyway.

I find it a useful comparison. If the MAX is in there, it won't go away. (Yesterday I got GPU performance to close to 70%). If I go on a trip, or work from elsewhere, and low-power mode would get me close to the M1 Pro, it's like I have an option: Do less intensive work for a day but get through that day.

 

[Sanpete]

Brightness in the middle and speakers 6-7/10

Doesn't seem too awful, then. Most tests are done with screens at lower brightness, and probably speakers at lower volume. About 8 hours might be typical for what you were doing.

 

[Jára Tyky]

just writing diploma thesis and running music on background