Low-power mode is different on the 14in vs the 16in M1 Pro Macbooks

[hefeglass]

some interesting results..turns out the low-power mode on these new machines is quite a bit more aggressive on the 14in. It seems to do whatever necessary to keep the fans off when on low-power mode. The 14in due to its smaller size gets throttled a little harder than the 16in and it shows in the test results. The 16in was throttled to 2.7ghz on the cpu in low-power mode, the 14in was down to 2.4ghz. When in normal mode both machines perform identically as you would expect.

 

[[maven]]

I just did some testing of my own. The 14-inch I have (10-core, 32GB) doesn't prevent the fans from coming on in low-power mode, but when they come on, they spin relatively slowly and barely audibly (whereas on full-power-mode there's a bit of whooshing to be heard).

For my purely CPU-bound workload, low-power mode reduces performance by ~15% (for a task running for ~4min on all cores). And even in low-power mode, it's still faster than my 12-core, 24-thread Mac Pro.

 

[torontotim]

These are the two models I was deciding between. I have the 14" 10 core/1TB model now and love it.

It's been hard waiting out the return period to Apple and not swapping it out for the 16" to see if I'd like it, but I love the portability of the 14" and I like having the 1TB storage.

80+% of the time I'm plugged into a dock using a 4K 28" monitor, and when I'm mobile, I'm on planes and bouncing around meeting rooms.

Using a 16" laptop feels a little conspicuous in meetings.