MacBook Air M1 16GB 1TB First Impressions

[fcracer]

Hello all, being in Asia, I was able to get my MacBook Air M1 with 16GB ram and 1TB earlier today. It was scheduled for delivery on November 21-27, but was delivered today, November 17th.

I used a thunderbolt cable to transfer my data from my 2020 MacBook Air i7. The transfer went super fast. You may remember me as the guy that wrote up the performance modification how-to on my website.

In a nutshell, this laptop is astonishing. It's everything I've ever wanted in a laptop and more. It feels surreal how fast it is without any noise at all. Things open instantly and nothing lags. It's so fluid and slick.

Best of all, and totally unexpected is that my old intel only apps such as Capture One Pro 20 run even faster under Rosetta 2 than they do on my native Air i7. Geekbench confirms this with 1289 SC and 5913 under Rosetta 2. Running native, geekbench produces 1735 SC and 7614 MC. This is all while the computer may still be indexing and updating things.

The only downside I've found so far is that the keyboard feels noticeably different from my Air i7. It feels a bit more butterfly than scissor. It's by no means anything like the 2016-2019 keyboards, but it certainly isn't as tactile as the Air i7 sitting next to the M1. Maybe the feel will change with more use, but that would be the first time that a keyboard changes with my use.

I'm going to do a proper review from a travel & photography perspective in the next few days with proper comparison tests of real life situations, however I don't think it's premature to say that this is a big step change in performance that's going to open up new creative possibilities.

I haven't been this excited about technology since the original iPhone was launched. Congratulations to all the new owners of these amazing machines! You're going to love them!

 

[happyslayer]

I got the base model Air earlier today and feel the same way. Such a genuinely good machine so far!
congrats on your more beastly model.

 

[throAU]

I'm very much trying to convince myself not to dip into my cryptocurrency and drop the money on either a 16GB/1TB M1 Air or Pro right now

 

[Eithanius]

I'm very much trying to convince myself not to dip into my cryptocurrency and drop the money on either a 16GB/1TB M1 Air or Pro right now

Keep HODLing...!

 

[Spudlicious]

Hello all, being in Asia, I was able to get my MacBook Air M1 with 16GB ram and 1TB earlier today. It was scheduled for delivery on November 21-27, but was delivered today, November 17th.

I used a thunderbolt cable to transfer my data from my 2020 MacBook Air i7. The transfer went super fast. You may remember me as the guy that wrote up the performance modification how-to on my website.

In a nutshell, this laptop is astonishing. It's everything I've ever wanted in a laptop and more. It feels surreal how fast it is without any noise at all. Things open instantly and nothing lags. It's so fluid and slick.

Best of all, and totally unexpected is that my old intel only apps such as Capture One Pro 20 run even faster under Rosetta 2 than they do on my native Air i7. Geekbench confirms this with 1289 SC and 5913 under Rosetta 2. Running native, geekbench produces 1735 SC and 7614 MC. This is all while the computer may still be indexing and updating things.

The only downside I've found so far is that the keyboard feels noticeably different from my Air i7. It feels a bit more butterfly than scissor. It's by no means anything like the 2016-2019 keyboards, but it certainly isn't as tactile as the Air i7 sitting next to the M1. Maybe the feel will change with more use, but that would be the first time that a keyboard changes with my use.

I'm going to do a proper review from a travel & photography perspective in the next few days with proper comparison tests of real life situations, however I don't think it's premature to say that this is a big step change in performance that's going to open up new creative possibilities.

I haven't been this excited about technology since the original iPhone was launched. Congratulations to all the new owners of these amazing machines! You're going to love them!

I'm pleased people are impressed by the MI machines, Apple seem to have come up with a winner. Apple keyboards? Well, some are less awful than others but none are great and all are rubbish compared with what Lenovo routinely produce. I use the extended magic keyboard with my iMac and even after 18 months I loathe it. However, if I were in the market for a new laptop right now my cash would go on an Air, no doubt of that.

 

[Silvestru Hosszu]

Will we able to get pirated versions of native apps on arm like photoshop ?(asking for a friend)

Although I do not encourage this behavior (using pirated software is a crime), you know the saying .... where is a will there is way.
But I doubt that it will be easy.

 

[Chairman.Jobbie]

Hello all, being in Asia, I was able to get my MacBook Air M1 with 16GB ram and 1TB earlier today. It was scheduled for delivery on November 21-27, but was delivered today, November 17th.

Did you get 7 core or 8 core? do you think it makes any difference?

 

[fcracer]

Did you get 7 core or 8 core? do you think it makes any difference?

8 core. Since I do a lot of photo editing and would like to get into 4K video editing of my travels (and new puppy), I went with the 8. Math would dictate that you’d see a 12.5% difference in performance but I don’t know if it scales linearly like that.

 

[Chairman.Jobbie]

I wont be doing any performance work whatsoever .... but I will have alot of apps open, alot of tabs and switching between apps and maybe watch something in background (tv or twitch)... so just alot of going on... in that case the 1 extra gpu is not going to make any difference it seems.

My current mbp 2018 gets hot when all this going on, particularly when charging... fans come on.. so I dont want that.. Ive ordered both 7 & 8 core MBA and the MBP ... so 3 orders... I want to cancel 2 once Ive made my decision. They dont deliver until mid Dec so im just holding a place in the queue for now.

 

[tkwolf]

One thing I am curious about is the heat.
How often does it get warm now that there is no fan?

Tasks like MS word, 3-4 youtube tabs on safari, spotify, twitter app, spark mail and a few videos playing as well should be fine I suppose but how often will these cause it to heat up?

 

[NoMoreSony]

Please test Safari browser performance on M1. It doesnt take a lot of time and efforts, just run test on Mozilla web site - https://krakenbenchmark.mozilla.org/ .

 

[marc_b]

I'm going to do a proper review from a travel & photography perspective in the next few days with proper comparison tests of real life situations, however I don't think it's premature to say that this is a big step change in performance that's going to open up new creative possibilities.

Really curious how this is going. I'm kinda worried about how just 16GB of RAM will perform in Capture One Pro and Photoshop with my Sony A7r III (42 megapixel) files.

 

[ice29]

Really curious how this is going. I'm kinda worried about how just 16GB of RAM will perform in Capture One Pro and Photoshop with my Sony A7r III (42 megapixel) files.

Photo editing actually does not consume that much RAM, the files are pretty small (compared to video files for example) and easily read from SSD in a split second (I also have A7rIII, I haven't noticed any difference going from 16GB to 32GB on my Hackintosh, the bottleneck is and will be CPU/GPU)

 

[wyrdness]

Please test Safari browser performance on M1. It doesnt take a lot of time and efforts, just run test on Mozilla web site - https://krakenbenchmark.mozilla.org/ .

The M1 Air is 3 times faster than my HP i7 mobile workstation (Firefox on Linux). That scores 1139ms total. M1 Air is 460ms:

===============================================
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
-----------------------------------------------
Total:                        459.9ms +/- 0.4%
-----------------------------------------------

  ai:                          80.1ms +/- 0.5%
    astar:                     80.1ms +/- 0.5%

  audio:                      117.8ms +/- 1.2%
    beat-detection:            38.0ms +/- 1.8%
    dft:                       28.1ms +/- 2.2%
    fft:                       27.7ms +/- 2.4%
    oscillator:                24.0ms +/- 1.4%

  imaging:                    104.7ms +/- 0.6%
    gaussian-blur:             39.6ms +/- 1.3%
    darkroom:                  37.0ms +/- 0.0%
    desaturate:                28.1ms +/- 0.8%

  json:                        36.4ms +/- 1.0%
    parse-financial:           22.3ms +/- 1.5%
    stringify-tinderbox:       14.1ms +/- 1.6%

  stanford:                   120.9ms +/- 0.9%
    crypto-aes:                36.8ms +/- 1.8%
    crypto-ccm:                29.2ms +/- 1.9%
    crypto-pbkdf2:             37.8ms +/- 1.7%
    crypto-sha256-iterative:   17.1ms +/- 1.3%

 

[marc_b]

Photo editing actually does not consume that much RAM, the files are pretty small (compared to video files for example) and easily read from SSD in a split second (I also have A7rIII, I haven't noticed any difference going from 16GB to 32GB on my Hackintosh, the bottleneck is and will be CPU/GPU)

Depends on how many layers you're working with, really. And on what you're doing with it.

 

[calstanford]

The M1 Air is 3 times faster than my HP i7 mobile workstation (Firefox on Linux). That scores 1139ms total. M1 Air is 460ms:

===============================================
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
-----------------------------------------------
Total:                        459.9ms +/- 0.4%
-----------------------------------------------

  ai:                          80.1ms +/- 0.5%
    astar:                     80.1ms +/- 0.5%

  audio:                      117.8ms +/- 1.2%
    beat-detection:            38.0ms +/- 1.8%
    dft:                       28.1ms +/- 2.2%
    fft:                       27.7ms +/- 2.4%
    oscillator:                24.0ms +/- 1.4%

  imaging:                    104.7ms +/- 0.6%
    gaussian-blur:             39.6ms +/- 1.3%
    darkroom:                  37.0ms +/- 0.0%
    desaturate:                28.1ms +/- 0.8%

  json:                        36.4ms +/- 1.0%
    parse-financial:           22.3ms +/- 1.5%
    stringify-tinderbox:       14.1ms +/- 1.6%

  stanford:                   120.9ms +/- 0.9%
    crypto-aes:                36.8ms +/- 1.8%
    crypto-ccm:                29.2ms +/- 1.9%
    crypto-pbkdf2:             37.8ms +/- 1.7%
    crypto-sha256-iterative:   17.1ms +/- 1.3%

That's insane. Here is my fully equipped 16" MBP 8-core i9. It's exactly half as fast:

===============================================
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
-----------------------------------------------
Total: 940.4ms +/- 21.2%
-----------------------------------------------

ai: 136.2ms +/- 7.9%
astar: 136.2ms +/- 7.9%

audio: 249.3ms +/- 20.4%
beat-detection: 59.3ms +/- 14.1%
dft: 73.5ms +/- 36.2%
fft: 42.4ms +/- 10.9%
oscillator: 74.1ms +/- 32.3%

imaging: 207.9ms +/- 22.1%
gaussian-blur: 82.2ms +/- 25.2%
darkroom: 64.6ms +/- 13.1%
desaturate: 61.1ms +/- 41.6%

json: 70.0ms +/- 31.4%
parse-financial: 41.6ms +/- 50.2%
stringify-tinderbox: 28.4ms +/- 33.8%

stanford: 277.0ms +/- 43.4%
crypto-aes: 49.2ms +/- 11.7%
crypto-ccm: 66.9ms +/- 35.5%
crypto-pbkdf2: 131.1ms +/- 89.7%
crypto-sha256-iterative: 29.8ms +/- 17.5%

 

[chatin]

I have the base late-2020 Air. It is growing on me after an initial problem with iTunes / Apple TV. I have the space grey port expander from the previous generation plugged in as to shield my charging port from USB-C. Love the Apple chime!

 

[wyrdness]

That's insane. Here is my fully equipped 16" MBP 8-core i9. It's exactly half as fast:

I've never seen anything that comes close for loading web pages. The first site I tried was https://news.bbc.co.uk
I typed the url, pressed Enter and it was there. I couldn't even see it load, it was so fast. On my i7 with Firefox, it takes a couple of seconds and I can see it rendering.

 

[kp98077]

Do you thing 8 RAM would be ok if coming from 16 on a MBP? Just do MS office, tV/ video, internet. Like the thought of fanless and thin

 

[deeddawg]

Do you thing 8 RAM would be ok if coming from 16 on a MBP? Just do MS office, tV/ video, internet. Like the thought of fanless and thin

That level of usage should be fine.

What's your memory pressure look like presently? ActivityMonitor->MemoryTab. Ignore the memory-used stuff, it tends to be inflated since macOS will "use" all the memory you have even if it doesn't really need it. Kinda like a teenage daughter spreads her clothes and stuff across her room no matter how big the room.

 

[fcracer]

Really curious how this is going. I'm kinda worried about how just 16GB of RAM will perform in Capture One Pro and Photoshop with my Sony A7r III (42 megapixel) files.

So far, mind-blowing results. 125 image export from 50MP GFX50R completes in half the time of the Intel i7 MBA 2020 (after heat mod) and less than half if your i7 is stock. More amazing, it’s even 30% faster than my old 2018 MacBook Pro i7 which was a beast of a computer, albeit horrible for battery life. Imagine when C1 is optimized for Apple silicon!

 

[superamit]

Glad to see your report here @fracer, really appreciated your posts and writeup on the i7 2020 MacBook Air.

My only complaint with the 2020 i7 Air is the incessant fan and sluggishness in Figma when used with an external 4K display. (I've done the paste mod.)

Did you use your i7 with an external 4K/5K display and notice any sluggishness in your workflow? If so, how does the M1 MacBook Air compare in this regard?

I'm wondering if I should go for the M1 Air (or Pro) or wait for something with better graphics down the line.

 

[fcracer]

Please test Safari browser performance on M1. It doesnt take a lot of time and efforts, just run test on Mozilla web site - https://krakenbenchmark.mozilla.org/ .

Happy to help. Maybe you can help me understand if this is a good result or not:

M1 Air:

===============================================
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
-----------------------------------------------
Total: 677.2ms +/- 1.3%
-----------------------------------------------

ai: 101.3ms +/- 3.7%
astar: 101.3ms +/- 3.7%

audio: 179.3ms +/- 1.6%
beat-detection: 55.4ms +/- 6.8%
dft: 40.0ms +/- 1.9%
fft: 43.2ms +/- 4.7%
oscillator: 40.7ms +/- 7.0%

imaging: 146.7ms +/- 2.6%
gaussian-blur: 56.6ms +/- 3.6%
darkroom: 51.1ms +/- 1.8%
desaturate: 39.0ms +/- 9.5%

json: 62.3ms +/- 5.1%
parse-financial: 35.0ms +/- 4.9%
stringify-tinderbox: 27.3ms +/- 7.0%

stanford: 187.6ms +/- 4.3%
crypto-aes: 61.8ms +/- 3.2%
crypto-ccm: 42.0ms +/- 3.4%
crypto-pbkdf2: 56.5ms +/- 8.2%
crypto-sha256-iterative: 27.3ms +/- 5.9%

i7 Air 2020:


===============================================
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
-----------------------------------------------
Total: 1045.2ms +/- 1.6%
-----------------------------------------------

ai: 118.2ms +/- 3.2%
astar: 118.2ms +/- 3.2%

audio: 307.7ms +/- 1.2%
beat-detection: 80.0ms +/- 1.5%
dft: 86.6ms +/- 2.7%
fft: 63.4ms +/- 2.3%
oscillator: 77.7ms +/- 2.0%

imaging: 240.8ms +/- 5.1%
gaussian-blur: 87.8ms +/- 0.8%
darkroom: 89.3ms +/- 1.1%
desaturate: 63.7ms +/- 19.0%

json: 90.6ms +/- 2.1%
parse-financial: 55.5ms +/- 3.3%
stringify-tinderbox: 35.1ms +/- 2.2%

stanford: 287.9ms +/- 1.7%
crypto-aes: 76.9ms +/- 0.9%
crypto-ccm: 71.1ms +/- 1.5%
crypto-pbkdf2: 96.0ms +/- 3.1%
crypto-sha256-iterative: 43.9ms +/- 4.0%

 

[ascender]

One thing I am curious about is the heat.
How often does it get warm now that there is no fan?

Tasks like MS word, 3-4 youtube tabs on safari, spotify, twitter app, spark mail and a few videos playing as well should be fine I suppose but how often will these cause it to heat up?

A couple of the reviewers have commented to say that the new Air, even under load and running benchmarks stays very cool which is encouraging.

 

[fcracer]

Glad to see your report here @fracer, really appreciated your posts and writeup on the i7 2020 MacBook Air.

My only complaint with the 2020 i7 Air is the incessant fan and sluggishness in Figma when used with an external 4K display. (I've done the paste mod.)

Did you use your i7 with an external 4K/5K display and notice any sluggishness in your workflow? If so, how does the M1 MacBook Air compare in this regard?

I'm wondering if I should go for the M1 Air (or Pro) or wait for something with better graphics down the line.

Thanks for the kind words. Unfortunately I use the MacBook as a purely mobile computer, mostly for travel. I never attach a screen to it. Before covid, I was in a plane twice a week. For desktop use, I have a 2019 iMac i9 with 48GB of ram. It’s a beast but I can’t imagine what Apple will do to this line with their new chips.