The latest MacBook Pro beats my high-end PC at content creation

I've always been a PC fan, even when other content creators were waving MacBooks. I'll say up front that I don't game, so everything I do on a laptop revolves around video editing. To handle that, I use a high-end desktop Windows machine at home and until recently had a Gigabyte Aero 15X laptop for video editing on the go.

So, the Aero 15X died. The keyboard stopped working and the Lightning port failed. I didn't even really mourn the loss: it was always very noisy and hot. Battery life was never great, and to do any serious video work I had to plug it in with a comically large and heavy power brick.

It was time to buy a new laptop, but I had no intention of reliving my Gigabyte experience. Instead, I wanted a lightweight, powerful, cool computer with long battery life. I needed to edit 4K videos in DaVinci Resolve while doing color correction, as well as adding effects and titles. I also edit RAW photos, so I also use Photoshop and Lightroom regularly.

I looked at a amazon;elmt:;cpos:3;pos:1″ href=”https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?merchantId=66ea567a-c987-4c2e-a2ff-02904efde6ea&siteId=us-engadget&pageId=1p-autolink&featureId=text-link&merchantName=amazon&custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsImxhbmRpbmdVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy5hbWF6b24uY29tL2RwL0IwQ001Qkw0NU4vP3RhZz1nZGd0MGMtcC12LXRvLTIwIiwiY29udGVudFV1aWQiOiI4MTI4ODFjYi1iYTljLTQ4NjItODM5MS0wOGNiY2IxMDM3NjkifQ&signature=AQAAAdcXqXxZY6c9CvJRTVhXZE5je61kNFoEpuw0AlgMLZ7D&gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fdp%2FB0CM5BL45N%2F” class=”link rapid-with-clickid etailiffa-link” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank” data-ylk=”slk:MacBook Pro M3;elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:amazon;elmt:;cpos:3;pos:1;itc:0;sec:content-canvas”>macbook pro m3, but I thought it would be too expensive. After checking it out, I was surprised to find that the difference between the price of a new MacBook Pro and a similarly performing Windows laptop has been smaller since Apple started using its own Silicon.

So I took the leap and bought a 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M3 Pro chip (12-core CPU and 18-core GPU), 36GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. From what I had read, that would be enough to handle challenging edits. I paid $3,100 in Canada, including taxes, and the same machine sold for about $200 less in the United States.

I put my new MacBook to work right away when I created a video review of the Nikon Z8 while I was in Vancouver. Later, I edited a review of the Fujifilm X100 VI in London and made a hands-on video for the Panasonic S9 camera from Japan. Those projects gave me a good idea of ​​the MacBook's performance, battery life, and usability while traveling.

Back at home, I was curious to compare the MacBook to my desktop PC. While not cutting edge, the latter still has impressive specs with a 12-core AMD Ryzen 9 5900 CPU, an NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti GPU, and 64GB of RAM.

I use mirrorless cameras like the Canon EOS R6 II and Panasonic S5 II, which output Quicktime files up to 6K 10-bit 4:2:2 Log H.264 or H.265. Those formats tend to tax a computer's processor and GPU, so I wasn't expecting real-time playback.

However, I noticed that I could play those video files just fine in DaVinci Resolve on my MacBook Pro without any rendering or conversion. I can't do that on my well-equipped desktop PC, so what was going on?

It turns out that even the latest NVIDIA and AMD GPUs can't decode many of those commonly used formats in real time, as system integrator and benchmark specialist Puget Systems claims. revealed recently. It is feasible with some of the formats (non-H.264) on newer Intel CPUs with Quick Sync technology in DaVinci Resolve 18 Studio or later.

The ability to edit these files directly from the camera was a significant quality of life improvement, eliminating a time- and storage-wasting step.

I also saw streaming playback on my Mac in most circumstances without rendering. That includes footage with 6K and 8K video, color correction on most clips, titles, multiple layers, optical flow time warping, and stabilization.

In contrast, my high-end desktop PC requires me to not only convert my video files, but also enable timeline rendering, particularly with 6K or 8K videos. Both take time and can consume hundreds of gigabytes of disk space.

While the MacBook felt quick, I also wanted to see how it compared to my Windows machine more objectively. I used the PugetBench Creator benchmark suite, which compares performance across machines in commonly used creation applications like Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and Davinci Resolve.

Considering my PC didn't work that well for video editing, the results surprised me. The M3 MacBook Pro emerged victorious in Photoshop tests, earning an overall score of 10,076 compared to 7,599 for my desktop PC. This is largely due to the superior M3 processor.

However, my PC outperformed the MacBook Pro in video editing by a fairly wide margin, thanks to its faster GPU. The Apple machine scored an overall score of 4,754 in the Premiere Pro PugetBench tests in high power mode, while my PC scored 8,763.

There are no public PugetBench tests for DaVinci Resolve yet, but Puget Systems Own Scores show that high-end PCs handily outperform high-end MacBook Pro models in that application. The PC is generally better when working with RAW formats and easily outperforms the MacBook Pro in GPU effects, ai features, and encoding in H.264 and H.265 formats.

These results show that benchmarks do not show a complete picture. The relative power of a computer depends on what you're doing with it, and in my case, the ability to edit certain video formats without rendering trumped pure speed. However, people who use more effects or work with ProRes or RAW formats may be better off with a powerful PC.

All that said, many of the things I hated about my Windows laptop had nothing to do with performance. I was often bothered by my Aero 15X's weight (if you include the power brick), heat, noise, build quality, and relatively useless trackpad.

Since purchasing the MacBook Pro 16, I've never felt it get too hot and the fans rarely turn on, even while editing videos. In contrast, I haven't heard of any Windows creator PC that doesn't generate excessive heat and fan noise under intensive loads.

Another important advantage of the MacBook is that it offers the same performance whether it is connected or not, but the same cannot be said for most PCs. Many slow down when offline, substantially reducing performance.

If you need to edit on the go and don't have access to AC power, the MacBook wins here too. While editing in DaVinci Resolve, it can last three to four hours on battery alone, triple what my Gigabyte laptop could do. And the MacBook Pro takes just 1.5 hours to reach a full charge, compared to about 2 hours minimum for Dell XPS 17 9730. It also charges considerably faster.

It's also less of a hassle to carry than my Aero as it weighs less and the charger is much lighter too. Finally, the trackpad is much better, to the point that I can even edit videos without a mouse, something I could never do with the Aero or any other laptop I've owned.

Not everything is perfect, as I don't like the webcam notch, but otherwise the MacBook Pro 16 M3 is perfect. As things stand now, Windows laptops using Intel and AMD silicon could match it in performance, but they are far behind in efficiency. That may change with new Qualcomm laptops or NVIDIA's upcoming 5000 series GPUs, but for now, Apple's products are hard to beat for traveling content creators like me.