Let's compare all M2 generation MacBook Pros: the M2, M2 Pro, and M2 Max, and all

the variations in a pro photo and video workflow to determine which one's best suited for your workflow and also

your budget. Because when we take a look at this entire range, we're also looking at a price delta of $2400. So let's

determine which one is going to be the sweet spot in all this. Let's jump right in! I'm Artist.  This video isn't

entirely new; all the testing data for this generation M2 has already been released with my M2 Max comparison video. However,

I'm looking at some of these machines in a slightly different way so that we can highlight certain machines a little

differently. So if you want to learn more about this, let's jump right in! As usual, I'll be sharing lots of

information. Please pause the video so you can analyze the results yourself. In addition to the analysis I'll be sharing

with you, this channel is fully self-funded. If you find the information helpful, a membership, YouTube Super Thanks, or I'll also leave a link to my

tip jar in the description. And if the only thing you can do is subscribe if you haven't already and tap on

that like button, the YouTube algorithm will push this to an even larger audience. I would greatly appreciate that, and it works equally as

well. Now, if you do find the information helpful, though, if you can help me share this video with three other creatives,

this way they can learn about all these and choose the right machine for their workflow, too. That would be even more

fantastic. And lastly, if you find any mistakes or have a question or something like that, just be kind in the comments

please, because I am a one-person channel. With that said, we're going to take a look at all of these machines. These are

The stock configuration for this generation, and a few things I want to point out: if you, for

instance, upgrade to the top silicon on this one—on this one, usually if you go in and just really bump up the silicon

itself, you're going to see very little performance gain. Another thing I will also say—in my previous video, if

you haven't watched that yet, the link will be in the description—but when we compare the M4 Pro top versus the M4 Max

base, the results really surprised us. Because if we take a look at the stock configuration right now, it's a $2,000

price difference, and most of the time the gain we're getting on this Max base is usually only a few minutes; and on

most of the tests, we're talking about less than three minutes. Something interesting to consider there. Now, with

all these, we're really going up in terms of the GPUs. So we're having more CPUs—

note that between these two, they have the same amount of CPU; that is, the top Pro versus the base Max.  The rest have

just an increasing amount of GPU as we go throughout the system; increasing amounts of memory and also SSD.

For the stock configuration, too—the one that I got; this is also considered stock—however, you can really get the base one

in 256GB, which I think is really not enough for any type of pro workflow. Lastly, I want to point this out: this memory

bandwidth number. And what I'm going to say is that it really doesn't matter. Don't consider getting the silicon, or

the generation for that matter, or the family of silicon based on that number, because there is no app in photo and

video today that can really go in and saturate that bandwidth. And you may argue, like, 'what about in the future?' I'm

Like, okay, let's be honest about something: since the M1 generation, we haven't seen an app that can really go

in and utilize that. I think we're still more than a few years away before we have an app that can go in and saturate

CPU, GPU, NPU, and also memory at the same time. Not to mention, a lot of apps are not really running the processes on the

GPU or on the NPU because there are color artifacts. It comes from that, interesting, right? All right, when we

take a look at the base 14-inch one with the M2 to the top M2 Max, we're taking a

look at a price delta of $2,400 across the lineup. Now you really have to ask yourself which one are you going to buy?

That's going to be the sweet spot that will give you the best performance. I think I already have an answer in mind,

but take a guess right now and see in the end if you agree or not, and if your answer is correct. All right, with that in

mind, let's—we're going to also be adding results from the M1 to the M2 Max,

the Pros, the regular ones. You'll also see the two Mac Studio, Mac mini this generation and going back all the way to the M1

generation in the compilation chart, and a PC—this is the Alienware m18 R1 configuration. Buyer guides will be

at the end. Now, one thing that I will mention about this is in Apple silicon, there's always this segmentation—more

consumer-leaning and the Pro. If you're doing this for revenue, I definitely recommend getting the Pro Max or Ultra

with the name attached to it because it's a more well-rounded system, and it's going to save you a lot more time in the

long run. So that's what I have to say. Now, if you're a hobbyist, definitely you can go with the M2; that's going to be

just fine, and I'm also going to say this: there are some who have asked me to do a comparison between the Intel

and the current generation. I mean, let's be honest, at this point there's really no comparison. If you want to see

how the Intel Mac would perform against an Apple silicon, starting with the M1 generation, I would definitely recommend that you go back and watch my M1

generation video, because at that point the M1 chips were pretty much already smoking Intel out of the water. The

only tasks where I couldn't do certain things really well were things that weren't really optimized. And remember,

those were the tasks that were running on Rosetta 2; they were running on the translation layer. It wasn't even

running on the native application at that point in time. All right, upgrade priority: my recommendation is to choose the amount of memory first, and then from

there, once you really know how much memory you need, then look at the chip family. This would be, for example, going

from the regular to the Pro to the Max, etc. Storage size, and then the variance within that chip family—whether you want

to add GPU or CPU to that or not, to go up to, for example, the top-of-the-line M4 Pro.

Generally, I don't recommend doing this because you're not going to see that much performance per dollar. Upgrading

memory, you're going to see a lot more for that. The NanoTexture display is something that I definitely love. I wish

they had this much longer. And yes, with the NanoTexture display, you can still see accurate and good colors; the

perception of it is different, but I will also say that the NanoTexture display is giving you a more honest assessment of

how your editing is and how your work is, because if you can get something looking good on a NanoTexture, it'll always

Going to look on a look good on a glossy; however, if you get something looking good on a glossy, most of the time when

you bring it to a matte display, it kind of looks dull. That's because you're only taking it about 60% of the way there.

In another video, I'll talk about all this a little bit later on. I'll try to have that soon. I know many of you

want to see it, but that's just my initial thought on that one. But I absolutely love that calibration pass

from the M2, M2 Pro, M2 Max using Calite software and also hardware calibration with the BenQ Palette Master Ultimate. So no

problem; we can get good color on day one. My recommendation for these is to set them up as a new machine, especially if

you're coming from an Intel generation because you do not want to bring the Intel binaries over. And if you want to see

a video on how I set up my machine for a pro workflow, do leave comments; I might do a video for that. I

mean, it's hard to find time right now, but I will make it a point to do so. Here's how you read the specs. And one

more thing that I do want to mention is that I've been getting requests for the M2 Pro 48GB in the Mac Pro

configuration. I'm not going to order any machines from Apple to do any more testing; however, if you're in the Southern California

area and you want to have me borrow your machine for, I would probably say, like 3 or 4 hours, we can meet up somewhere. I

can just run the tests. Do feel free to reach out; do feel free to DM me. I think that's going to be the best way to do it.

All right, SSD. Remember that whatever you configure with the SSD itself, you can always expand it by plugging in an external drive,

an SSD, a NAS, a DAS, and so forth. And the speed on all of these are generally going to be just enough right now for what you

really need, so most of them are going to be, especially in the M4 generation, which are down at the bottom, are going to be

in around like the 5,000–6,000 range, although the write might be a little bit

slower on the Pro compared to the Max. That's because it has less bandwidth, but the read itself is actually

mighty fast. We're going to see some of that resulting in Photoshop when it's doing a lot of swapping, and I'll point it

out later on. As far as how fast of an SSD you need, I made a video talking about it; I'll leave a link in the

description. You want to check that out. All right, RAM. When it comes to this, you really need to consider use case and

modality. My main rule of thumb about RAM is, for instance, if your current machine has 32GB, like on an Intel, don't go down

to 16GB, don't go down to like 24GB; keep the same thing, if not more, on your system.

That will be the first rule of thumb I can tell you. If you're really unsure about how much RAM you need on a system

and you're already on a Mac, one thing you can definitely do is restart your machine. This way, you have a fresh memory

state, and what you can do is launch Activity Monitor, go into the Memory tab, and monitor the memory pressure as you go

through your day with the creative apps you're using. If you're green, the amount of memory that you currently have is

good; you can probably go with that. If you're in the yellow or red, definitely consider getting more. And one of the

programs I absolutely love is iStat Menus—not sponsored by them—but you can really go in and take a look at the stat,

multiple different stats from your machine, going back up to like 28 days, so it actually holds the data for that long.

You can really see your machine usage and utilization. I'm also super happy that Apple increased the base amount of

RAM to 16 GB now, and this is more relevant because we are talking about the M4. When I'm testing these, by the way,

the power is set to Auto, because in the Pro and also the Max, now, but also the Pro, most significantly, you can set it to

high power. Although, based on my testing so far, the performance between the apps and everything, we don't really see that

huge of a jump; we just see the fan jumping up higher. All right. All M4s are tested in 15.1; all the previous

generation is tested in 15.0.1.  The timing between those is within

the margin of error, and I am going forward with that. The other thing that I will also say is I've also noticed a

slowing down trend over time. That given the same machine with the newer OS, with newer apps becoming more demanding,

machines tend to slow down a lot more over time. So that's just something to think about. All right, let's take a look

at the results from Lightroom Classic, comparing all these five machines in the lineup. We do see a couple things; this is

Testing All M4 SoC MacBook Pro, Which one is best for Pro Photo/Video Workflow?

Scripts