14in MacBook Pro M1 Pro: A Year Later - Almost Perfect

I’ve had this M1 Pro base model Macbook pro since it’s day one launch, and its been my main laptop ever since, But now after a year, I think I’ve really figured out what I like about this laptop, what I’ve disliked, and just about everything in-between. Let’s get started with a long term review.

Anker 563 USB-C Docking Station (10-in-1) | Unlock Triple Display for M1 MacBooks
Working on your M1 MacBook is so much easier when you add 10 ports including connectivity for up to 3 monitors.

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Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
0:33 The Ports
1:23 Sponsor: Anker
2:53 Ports continued
3:37 How the Body Has Held Up
4:50 User Experience and Performance
8:40 Conclusion

The M1 Pro Macbook since the beginning has been able to handle everything I throw at it. I use it to edit a significant chunk of my videos, I use it to plan out my next videos, I use it to edit YouTube thumbnails, and to do boring stuff we all need to do to survive, like pay bills, create documents and spreadsheets, write emails and do my taxes. All the different ports on the Pro have been absolutely fantastic for my own workflow. For example, if I’m editing a YouTube video, I have a magsafe charger plugged in, an sd card, and an external SSD. Leaving me with 2 usb-c ports still open for use.​​ All these ports fill up when I’m video editing with 2 external monitors but that’s when I’m in “power user” mode.

The body of the laptop itself has held up pretty well, I have only minor scuffs on the lid, the rubber feet and a little around my most frequently used ports. The keyboard builds up finger oils and then starts to look a little shiny, but this is what all macbooks deal with and will get worse overtime. On my other usb-c macbooks, I found that after a while, the usb-c ports become less responsive, maybe because the older macbooks only had 2 usb-c ports for charging, dongles and peripherals so they were always in use, but on this one, they’ve been very consistent.

The notch, while you know it’s there, fades into the background and honestly, I stopped noticing it after a week of owning this thing. The Mini-led pro-motion display is still probably the nicest looking display I have in the entire house. The combination of how bright it gets, the resolution and refresh rate, makes it enjoyable from watching movies, to making videos to just everyday usage, paying your bills, and google sheets never looked so good. And in real-word usage, I never see Mini-LED blooming, since I rarely have the display brightness all the way up to notice. The laptop doesn’t really get warm during general usage, and is normally just room temperature even when I’m using it on my lap. If I’m using it and the laptop is just sitting on the couch, it obviously gets warm but never enough to get the fans reving up. During video editing in FCPX it does get warm but even then I don’t really hear much fan noise coming out of this macbook. Overall, outside of the fanless macbooks, this has been one of the quietest macbooks I’ve owned. Since ownership I don’t think I’ve experienced many instances where I throw something at the macbook pro and it can’t handle it. My time spent between the m1 pro macbook pro and the mac studio is pretty 50/50 but even then, 95% of the things I do on the mac studio, could probably just be done on the macbook pro. This laptop has really been my workhorse and I never felt like I needed more power than what I already have here. For video editing, I’m often editing 2-4 streams of 4k .264 video with light color grading in FCPX, I don’t use any proxies either and it cuts through the raw footage like butter. This has been my favorite on-the-go editing machine. Battery life is good, even after a year, but I find that while asleep the macbook pro doesn’t seem to last anywhere near as long as my old M1 air did and needs to be charged more often if left to sleep for days. It’s a shame that with the transition to Apple silicon, Macs no longer can run windows natively. And that’s definitely affected my habits. Before I would use bootcamp to just store a small windows partition with all the casual windows only games I’d like to play if I’m itching enough to reboot into windows. But The M1 Pro is decent at running windows in a VM but obviously, it’s not perfect and certain software like Genshin just doesn’t run well in a VM.

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[mikeyalexj]

I just picked up an M1 MBP (16GB RAM/500GB SSD) and it's been a great experience. Greater for me as I'm coming from a 2015 MacBook Air (4GB RAM/128GB SSD) so massive upgrade to say the least. Huge fan of the instantaneous response times. Definitely see this lasting years past a decade which Macs are notorious for.

[tankhistoryfordummies]

I have a 14" MacBook Pro and I absolutely love it. The performance is astonishing for a 3.5 pound laptop and it is super quiet. I got the base model with 16GB memory and 512GB storage as well as 8 core/14 core M1 Pro.

[imperfectxennial]

I ordered an M1 Air and its being delivered tomorrow and I can’t wait to try it out. For my needs I don’t need the pro.

[godwin_njoroge]

Currently saving up for one. It seems like this little beast is the sweet spot for creating, designing, coding and also just chilling. Loved your review Jimmy. Thank you 🙏🏾

[ScottCallahanSr]

Finally pulled the trigger and got one. 16 gb 1 tb. Love it. Saved 400 at Best Buy. First Mac. I’m officially locked into the Ecosystem.

[tipoomaster]

I do wish they moved the keycaps to ABS material found in higher end mechanical keycaps, which retains the matte texture for years rather than becoming glossy so fast. Would cost pennies extra.

[Sentry]

I just got my 14in M1 Pro on black friday on sale with $400 off. Don't know how I ever lasted so long on a windows machine. Absolutely love this thing.

[bilalahmedwrites]

Watching it on my Macbook Pro M1 14". Using it for 3 months now and cannot love it enough.

[ShakeAndBakeGuy]

Great review! I've had the base model for a year in January. Being my first baseline model in over a decade, I thought I'd start upgrading every year or two but it honestly meets all of my needs with very few hiccups. Don't miss the extra inch or pounds from my 2012 15 inch MBP at all. It's truly one of the best computer computers I've owned.

[ThatMarkGilroy]

I just upgraded to a refurbed M1 Max version of the 14” from a 2015 iMac and man, it flies.

[asdf]

I think the M1 MBP, whether one chooses the M1 Pro or Max, is a very solid high quality laptop that will last and be useful for a number of years. Personally I always thought 16” was the way to go, but now I’m thinking the 14” is pretty compelling. I don’t currently have a laptop other than my work MBP (2018 vintage), but if I decided I needed one, this one would be at the top of my list.

[POVwithRC]

I do all the editing for my channel on a base 14" pro. Compressor runs like a dream. It is all I need.

[cosmonauts]

I've been using my ancient 2011 15" MBP up until recently. There were a few upgrades like 16gb RAM and SSD (the SSD gave it a second life) that kept it going for so long. The wi-fi card also died, so I had to get a USB wi-fi adapter or just use ethernet haha. So going to the 14" M1 pro base model is a huge jump for me. I was waiting until the M3 MBPs came out, but after seeing all the lukewarm reviews, I decided to pick up an older M1 MBP for a big discount. Glad to hear that the base model is still powerful enough to handle 4K video editing. Ideally I'd like to keep this for another 5-10 years before the next upgrade.

[Shaggy]

16" M1 Pro user here - I've had it since launch, and not a single hairline scratch or scuff on it - it looks new! Also for the fingerprint oil on the keyboard, I use a wet wipe every few days and clean each key, keeps it looking like new! As mine is the 16 its the 16 core as standard, i've not had a single issue with it regarding power. I'm currently programming in Java Maven, compoling a 19MB program with HTML, css, js, sql, and java, along with apple music, youtube in 4k, MS Office, and I even have parallels open with a Steam game running - and its running flawlessly, i've not once had the fans kick in at any point of me owning it. The screen is insanley good, I'm using an app called 'Vivid' to make it so i can have 1000 nits of brightness sustained (as Apple should allow us by default), so I can use it outside on sunny days with sunglasses on. I get around 10 hours of battery on medium usage, and even when hitting it heavy, outside, full brightness, i'll still get 4+ hours. Speakers are the best i've ever heard on a laptop etc... the list goes on. I really cannot think of a downside to it, it's just perfect.

[donions]

Bought the 14 in. MBP back in October '22 and this thing is a powerhouse that'll get me through college. I've been using it for light work and the battery life (when shut off during periods of no usage) can last for days. Definitely glad this is an investment I made that'll last many years until I have to get into the market again.

[justgregnow]

I just picked up the 14” MacBook Pro at best buy because it was $400 off. My 1st ever Mac… so far I’m stoked about it and yeah the speakers and display are insane. Nice review man!

[DarkAngel]

I do own the 14 M1 Pro and it's been a blast up to now. It is th best machine I have ever owned, and even when working on site, I can work all day long with light tasks + my windows VM running for around 12hours on battery.
This thing is a killer ! Even the few games that are optimized to run on apple silicon show that it is very capable at gaming, in only Apple supported Vulkan :D

[JBoya]

I recently dedicate my M1 Air to our recording room. No fans and small size make it perfect for that. And for a portable machine I purchased a base config 14" (16GB/512 GB) MBP. So far it has been great. Not as light as the Air, but still very portable. And the LCD screen and 1040p webcam are big upgrades. I do development and video content and the system is good for both and I never experience the slowdowns I did with the 8GB/256GB Air. The final nail in an M2 Air was the price of an upgraded Air with the same 16GB/512GB was more than the Amazon price ($1599) for the base MBP 14 Pro.

[albyx]

Hi Jimmy, I’ve also had my M1 Pro/14” MBP for about a year now.

I’ve never had an issue with the edge getting scratched because while I do wear accessories on my wrists, I think I got used to “picking up” my wrists so that they’re not touching. I typically still charge using the MagSafe cable (the braided white cable is just so good) but I have charged using a standard USB-C cable with an Anker charge block (65w).

My only gripe is that the HDMI port seems flimsy. I’ve never moved my laptop around when using cables but for some reason, the HDMI cable is clearly “moving” when connected (it’s not even when inserted). It still works but I don’t like the unevenness. You can “jiggle” it to make it even but I shouldn’t have to.

[origamiman]

I run parallel windows virtualization pretty often on my M1 pro and it works quite well. Higher end games and new releases often don't work well but anything released 2-3 years ago almost always work, just run at a lower graphic setting.