if you're looking to pick up either an M1, M2, or M3 Pro MacBook Pro, it's really easy to make a very expensive mistake.

Should you get the latest and greatest, or maybe just an older version to save some money? And if you do, how does it compare performance-wise? So I made this video to hopefully make the decision a little bit easier for you and potentially even save you a couple of hundred.

And yes, I bought all of these Macs with my own money.

This is not sponsored. And yes, I do need help, or at least a cheap hobby. So let's start with the easiest part of this video, which is the physical differences, or rather the lack of.

I mean, they're all the same: same dimensions, same weight, same ports, even the screen is the same, although the M3 Pro screen can get 20% brighter, which might be important if you use your MacBook in really bright environments like outside.

Even when I pop off the back cover and look at the internals, the cooling solution and fan setup is almost identical.

This is because the biggest differences are on the inside, starting with how you can configure each MacBook. Now, bear in mind, only the latest M3 Pro MacBook can be customized.

Apple no longer sells the M1 or M2 Pro brand new. So if you want any customizations, you'll need to find one with the exact specs you want.

Now, in my opinion, this is a pretty big negative, right?

Because there are quite a few customizations possible. Now, in this particular video, I am comparing the base model Pro chips with no upgrades. Here's a comparison chart showing you some of the differences: the configuration of the base models in this video on the left, and the number in brackets on the right is the maximum possible configuration you can select for the CPU.

You'll notice the M3 Pro actually decreases the number of performance cores but increases the number of efficiency cores.

The GPU is a similar story. There are two less GPU cores on the M3 Pro base model compared to the previous M2 Pro generation.

So right off the bat, it almost seems like the M3 Pro is almost a downgrade of sorts, at least in terms of the number of CPU and GPU cores.

But you do get an extra 2 GB of unified memory, otherwise known as RAM, on the M3 Pro.

And in terms of SSD speed, on the base model 512 GB variants, the M2 Pro is noticeably slower. But more on that in this video linked down below.

Moving on, all of these chips have the same media engines, with the exception of the M3 Pro, which also has something called AV1 decode, which is great for conserving battery life while streaming video.

The M3 Pro also has a number of GPU-specific upgrades like hardware accelerated ray tracing, mesh shading, and dynamic caching.

But more on that later. But perhaps one of the biggest differences between these chips is the memory bandwidth.

Now, we already know that Apple silicon chips take advantage of something called unified memory. That is, all the RAM can be accessed by the CPU, the GPU, and any programs currently running on the Mac.

Where memory bandwidth comes in is how fast this RAM can be accessed. Both the M1 and M2 Pro chips have a memory bandwidth of 200 GB per second versus 150 GB per second on the M3 Pro, which is 25% slower.

Well, think of it like a highway of sorts. The M1 and M2 Pro chips both have four lanes for traffic to use, for example, but the M3 Pro only has three lanes.

It doesn't make a difference when there's not much traffic, but in peak hour, AKA when you're pushing the system to its limit, that may not be the case, and we'll see how this impacts the performance of these chips a little bit later on.

First, let's talk about pricing. The base model 14-inch M3 Pro MacBook Pro I have here is $1999 brand new from Apple.

If you want the previous M2 or M1 versions, you can buy them refurbished from Apple if they have the configuration you want in stock, and it's the same with some other stores like Best Buy, for example.

I found this base model M1 Pro MacBook Pro for $439. Otherwise, you're going to have to buy on the secondhand market.

So I spent a few hours researching used prices, and I found base model M1 Pro MacBooks from around $1,100 to $1,300 versus the M2 Pro from roughly $1,400 to $1,600, and that's in US.

Okay, so let's get into the performance differences between these three chips. Starting with just general everyday usage stuff like web browsing, emails, and multitasking, you are not going to be able to tell a difference between any of these machines.

I mean, flicking between different apps is smooth.

I can have five or six different apps open at once with no beach ball of death or freezing. Even more intense multitasking like rendering a Blender animation while browsing the web with 20 plus Google Chrome tabs open, no difference.

So if this is what you do, you know, 90 or 95% of the time on these machines and you're not really doing anything super intensive or if you do, it's every now and then, uh, honestly, you are, if you had them all side by side, Honestly, I'm telling you now, you really will not notice a difference between all three of them.

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Okay, so now it's time to look at some more intensive tasks and see how performance differs between these three chips. Let's start with the CPU.

Again, these are all base model configurations with no upgrades, and I'm going to make a bold claim here and say there's realistically not a huge amount of difference.

Sure, the M3 Pro is clearly the superior CPU, especially when it comes to anything multi-core related, being 34% faster than the M1 Pro and 15% faster than the M2 Pro.

But that doesn't always translate into real-life workflows. If you're a programmer compiling code, for example, it means a few minutes difference between a three-year-old secondhand M1 Pro and a brand new M3 Pro, is that really a massive difference?

It's a similar story with creative workflows on the Adobe apps.

You're going to notice a decent improvement between generations, but while actually using these apps and doing everyday things like timeline scrubbing or adding 3D effects, the improvements aren't going to be super obvious.

Moving on to video editing, you're going to spend 95% of your time playing back footage or scrubbing timelines, and I couldn't tell a difference between either version, even with fairly demanding multicam timelines with color correction or clips with heavy noise reduction applied.

For example, it's the same when it comes to rendering or applying effects like stabilization to a 120 FPS 4K clip.

And there is a really simple explanation for this: it's because all three chips have the same hardware video encoders and decoders.

So as long as you're using one of the supported codecs, which is the case 95% of the time, video editing performance difference between the three chips will be minimal.

However, if you choose to use a non-supported video codec, the M1 Pro does start to fall behind the M2 and M3 Pro chips due to its less powerful GPU, so that's something to consider.

Moving on to some popular 3D workflows, it is not a competition here at all.

There are significant improvements between each generation. The M3 Pro in particular destroys the others because not only does it have the new hardware-accelerated ray tracing technology among other GPU improvements, which the others do not, but this ray tracing technology is also supported in these apps, specifically Blender, which gained ray tracing capability in the latest 4.0 version.

Now, remember, there are still a lot of apps that do not support Apple Silicon ray tracing.

So if that's the case, you're going to be looking at results like this. Still pretty good, but you know, ray tracing definitely does add a big advantage.

And that brings me to my next point, which is gaming. At the time of recording this video, Mac games do not support this new ray tracing tech.

So we get quite strange results like this. The M1 Pro is clearly the weakest performer, although not by a huge margin.

But the gaming performance of the M3 Pro is pretty much equal to the chip it's supposed to replace, the M2 Pro, in some areas even being outperformed by it.

And yes, this includes games specifically designed for Apple Silicon like Resident Evil Village. And I think this is a good time to explain why the performance of the M3 Pro kind of seems a little bit lackluster compared to the previous generation, the M2 Pro, at least in a few specific areas.

Like I mentioned before, Apple kind of handicapped the M3 Pro. It has less CPU performance cores, it comes with less GPU cores, and the memory bandwidth is 25% slower.

And I can only think of two reasons why Apple would do this.

Number one, intentionally making the Pro chip less powerful to make the upgrade or the Max variant chip seem like a better choice, which, you know, means more profit for Apple.

Or number two, to make the M3 Pro a more efficient platform. Or who knows, maybe it's just a combination of the two.

But a more efficient platform does come with quite a few advantages. Firstly, I noticed the M3 Pro would run a few degrees cooler than the M2 Pro, but this was only noticeable when I was slamming each laptop with a really intensive task.

Also, the M3 Pro seems to have slightly better battery life.

I would usually get about 10 to 15% more battery left on the M3 Pro compared to the M2 Pro, but only mainly when doing intensive tasks like compiling code or gaming, for example.

But controversial opinion, I don't really care about an extra 10 to 15% battery life because when I'm doing those intensive things, it's almost always at a desk and there's a charger right there.

So, you know, 10 to 15%, is it going to be a deal breaker? I personally don't think so, especially because if you're just browsing the web or typing up emails and stuff like that, you are pretty much going to notice no real difference.

And bear in mind, almost all M2 and M1 Pros out there are at least 6 to 12 months old at this point, if not older.

So the battery is going to be slightly consumed, so it's not a 100% fair comparison.

So which one should you buy? Well, it depends. I'm only joking.

I will give you some specific advice. The M3 Pro only really makes sense if budget is not really an issue and you just want the latest and greatest, and of course, all the nice things that come with it like warranty and being able to customize it via the Apple Store, duh, obviously.

But if your workflow is also 3D based and you use apps like Blender, for example, that's really the only area where you're going to see a significant improvement with the M3 Pro, and that's mainly because of the new ray tracing tech for everyone.

else, I just don't think you can beat the M2 Pro. I mean, it's cheaper. Performance-wise, it keeps up with the M3 Pro in almost every single area.

I mean, if you're a programmer, the M2 Pro is just as good. Do you use the Adobe suite?

Sure, the M3 Pro gets a nice boost, but not by a huge amount. Video editing, you won't notice a difference. And of course, I can't forget the M1 Pro.

This is kind of the MacBook that started it all, at least in terms of higher-performing Apple silicon MacBooks, right?

And this bad boy right now, you can get it for almost 50% the price of a brand new M3 Pro.

And if you look at those performance charts that I put in this video, the performance is definitely not 50% worse than the M3 Pro, the exception being of course, if you do a lot of 3D stuff like Blender or Cinema 4D, for example, you just cannot beat that built-in hardware accelerated ray tracing on the M3 Pro.

Now, if you are deciding between if you should go for a Pro chip or a Max chip, you should definitely check out this video I made comparing all three of the Max chips: the M1, the M2, and the M3 Max.

I did all the exact same tests as this video, so you can compare if you should maybe save some money and go with the Pro, or spend a bit extra and get a pretty decent performance boost with the Max chip.

M1 Pro vs M2 Pro vs M3 Pro MacBook - ULTIMATE Comparison!

M1 Pro vs M2 Pro vs M3 Pro MacBook - ULTIMATE Comparison!

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