Microsoft Teams - does it perform better on M1?

[slooksterPSV]

Hi all,
I utilize Teams a lot for work and when doing anything with more then 2 video feeds during a call, my i3 MBA 2020 slows down and the CPU idles at 95C.

Does anyone use Teams on M1? How does it run? What about video calls, is it any better?

Thanks,

 

[chrfr]

Hi all,
I utilize Teams a lot for work and when doing anything with more then 2 video feeds during a call, my i3 MBA 2020 slows down and the CPU idles at 95C.

Does anyone use Teams on M1? How does it run? What about video calls, is it any better?

Thanks,

Teams isn't M1 native but works fine on the MacBook Air without any issues. The M1 Macs don't have the thermal problems the late Intel Airs did.

 

[Tev11]

Teams isn't M1 native but works fine on the MacBook Air without any issues. The M1 Macs don't have the thermal problems the late Intel Airs did.

Seconded. Teams does still use more resources, but you don't feel any slow down or heat because of it.

 

[Kelly Jones]

I use Teams with the M1 Air and video with multiple feeds is fine.

 

[skaertus]

This is helpful. How does MS Teams on M1 Mac runs compared to MS Teams on an average Windows PC?

 

[slooksterPSV]

This is helpful. How does MS Teams on M1 Mac runs compared to MS Teams on an average Windows PC?

I can tell you this. On a Pentium.... what is it... N4200? I can run Teams in Windows with moderate impact. It doesn't peg my system like my i3 on Mac does.

 

[CheesePuff]

Unrelated to the M1 but even on my 2020 27" iMac with 8-core i7, 32 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, Radeon 5500 its a slow clunky POS that I have to use daily

 

[mj_]

I honestly don't get what people mean by "slow clunky POS". I run Teams on both my 2017 27" iMac (Core i5) as well as my MacBook Air M1 and haven't experienced any issues, slowdowns or other major problems yet. It runs perfectly fine and smooth, although I never had to process more than a single video stream. The most taxing task I throw at both of those is our weekly team meeting with between 20-30 team members attending. The only effect this has on my iMac is a slightly elevated CPU temperature, it goes from 58 °C to 65 °C, that's it.

 

[zpafis]

The only complain for Teams on M1 is battery usage and Bytes Written.
About 4 hours after boot.

 

[Spindel]

Teams Works without problems on M1 under rosetta.

With that said MS Teams is a piece of smelling crap no matter what system you run it on be it Windows, Intel Mac or M1 mac.

At least on my M1 Mini it doesn't feel like the computer will self combust like my work issued Windows laptop.

 

[mj_]

🤷‍♀️ Five hours after restart because it updated. Since then I've had a number of audio calls of varying lengths as well as two longer video calls of 30-40 minutes each.

@zpafis have you been using Teams to access Sharepoint (aka shared teams resources)?

With that said MS Teams is a piece of smelling crap no matter what system you run it on be it Windows, Intel Mac or M1 mac.

Care to elaborate?

 

[Dockland]

Used it around 8-10h yesterday on my Mac mini M1 without any issues. Video conference and a few calls outside the usual "chat"

 

[AndyMacAndMic]

Teams Works without problems on M1 under rosetta.

With that said MS Teams is a piece of smelling crap no matter what system you run it on be it Windows, Intel Mac or M1 mac.

At least on my M1 Mini it doesn't feel like the computer will self combust like my work issued Windows laptop.

"It works without problems". "is a piece of smelling crap no matter what system you run it on".

Sounds like a contradiction in terms to me.

 

[zpafis]

🤷‍♀️ Five hours after restart because it updated. Since then I've had a number of audio calls of varying lengths as well as two longer video calls of 30-40 minutes each.

@zpafis have you been using Teams to access Sharepoint (aka shared teams resources)?

Yes I use Teams to access Sharepoint.
I will check next days if I have so much bytes written.

 

[Spindel]

View attachment 1741728
🤷‍♀️ Five hours after restart because it updated. Since then I've had a number of audio calls of varying lengths as well as two longer video calls of 30-40 minutes each.

@zpafis have you been using Teams to access Sharepoint (aka shared teams resources)?


Care to elaborate?

"It works without problems". "is a piece of smelling crap no matter what system you run it on".

Sounds like a contradiction in terms to me.

It works without problems = equal or better than on windows or intel macs

Is a piece of smelling crap no matter what system you run it on = it uses a **** load of resources and hogs way to much ram in proportion to what the app does. As I said, my work issued windows laptop you get the feeling it will burst into flames when having a teams meeting where someone shares their screen (screen sharing seems to pull more resources than video feeds from multiple persons).

 

[mj_]

Yes I use Teams to access Sharepoint.

Then that's why it's writing so much. Each file that you open needs to be downloaded and saved to disk first. If you would use your web browser to access Sharepoint instead you'd have the same amount of writes assigned to your web browser's PID instead of Teams.

I use OneDrive to access my most important Sharepoint files and folders. That way they're automatically synchronized onto my hard drive so I won't have to download and cache them over and over again. Much fewer writes, and much faster and more conveniant access.

 

[abhi182]

I use teams on an i5 (10th gen) windows and a M1 , mostly the latter but sometimes the former.

The M1 tends to perform better even though the app runs via rosetta. The Intel laptop hits 70-80C while on long calls while the M1 remains below 60C.
However, the incremental load on the M1 is relatively higher - In the sense that the system runs super cool (25-30C) without teams while the i5 runs warm anyway.
I have been trying to use Teams as a web app on MS edge for the last couple of days - the incremental load is a lot lower when run as a web app as against the non native client.
The temps usually don't exceed 40C even on long calls when used via Edge

 

[Joelist]

Teams is okay. I feel like it is a bit clunky for what it delivers but it does deliver it decently well. When I have the option I prefer the combination of Slack and Zoom.

 

[bluecoast]

Teams uses Electron 🙄... So that answers your question as to why (see also: Slack).

 

[Ledgem]

Teams would choke on my old office desk computer (8 GB of RAM, not sure on the processor); when they recently upgraded us (now 16 GB of RAM, again not sure on the processor) it works a bit better... similar to my work-issued laptop that seems to have similar hardware. But it works the best on my Mac (iMac late 2015, quad-core i7 with 32 GB of RAM). I use it for livestreams with about 200-300 participants (I'm just a participant); meetings with 30-40 people, multiple with their video going; calling (the organization has it connected to a live phone number); and the most intensive of all, text chatting both solo and in groups... in an organization where people love their GIFs. The GIFs tended to cause the Windows machines to choke, but the Mac handles it all pretty well and it seems the most responsive.

I get the sense that Teams is pretty resource-intensive, given my experiences with performance on systems with different RAM configurations. If the MacBook Air was struggling, it makes me wonder if GPU acceleration is also a critical factor in performance.

 

[CheesePuff]

Teams uses Electron 🙄... So that answers your question as to why (see also: Slack).

Slack was heavily refactored a year ago or so and runs much, much more efficiently:

When a rewrite isn’t: rebuilding Slack on the desktop - Engineering at Slack

Conventional wisdom holds that you should never rewrite your code from scratch, and that’s good advice. Time spent rewriting something that already works is time that won’t be spent making our customers working lives simpler, more pleasant, and more productive. And running code knows things...

slack.engineering

 

[ADGrant]

Slack was heavily refactored a year ago or so and runs much, much more efficiently:

When a rewrite isn’t: rebuilding Slack on the desktop - Engineering at Slack

Conventional wisdom holds that you should never rewrite your code from scratch, and that’s good advice. Time spent rewriting something that already works is time that won’t be spent making our customers working lives simpler, more pleasant, and more productive. And running code knows things...

slack.engineering

Still an Electron app though.

 

[mgymnop]

Teams with just video is fine. It really becomes sluggish when you switch to presentations. There is a lot of lag and stutter. I have to give a 40 min presentation on Monday for an interview and I am freaking out. I tested it today and it was not great. I have a MBP with 16GB RAM and a 1Gig AT&T fiber connection.

 

[CheesePuff]

Still an Electron app though.

Yes, but a significant amount of effort went into it to reduce memory consumption and improve performance, did you bother reading the article or at the least summary?

 

[ADGrant]

Yes, but a significant amount of effort went into it to reduce memory consumption and improve performance, did you bother reading the article or at the least summary?

I read the full article. It's still an electron app. A less bad one yes but still..