M1 iPad Pro 12.9 vs M1 MacBook Air - The BETTER Laptop?! By Max Tech

Hey guys it's Vadim with max tech and in this video we are going to answer one of the most difficult questions in the apple world of tech. Right now, do you buy the m1 iPad Pro potentially with the magic keyboard? Or do you just go with the m1 MacBook Air because they have the same chip, but they are totally different, as you guys are going to see in this video, because we're going to be comparing everything between the keyboards the trackpads, the displays, the touchscreen support, Apple Pencil, support performance, app support file management, everything in this video and give you guys an answer on which one you should buy. So let's get right into it. As you guys, probably already know, we love the m1 MacBook Air because it gives you the best bang for the buck in terms of the value and performance, because you can get it for only a thousand dollars or 950 on Amazon on sale. If you use the link below, so it's an excellent deal, but with the iPad Pro now that we have the m1 chip. This is also a great setup, especially with the magic keyboard case, which we absolutely love, and I'd say if you're getting this iPad Pro.

It deserves the magic keyboard because it is just so excellent, as I'm going to show you guys in just a minute and of course you also have the touchscreen support with the Apple Pencil. The only issue is that this 12.9 inch setup right here costs a total of fifteen hundred and fifty dollars or 1650. If you get the same 256 gigs of storage as the m1 MacBook Air, and that is very expensive, so we're going to answer in this video. If it's worth spending that much money now, of course, you could just go with the tablet itself, which is eleven hundred dollars, but this video is meant to be kind of like a laptop setup comparison. So we're going to be focusing on that and if you really do want to save some money, you can just go with the 11-inch iPad Pro setup, which is significantly cheaper because you have 800 for the iPad Pro only 300, instead of 350 for the magic keyboard case and the Apple Pencil.

So it's not going to be as expensive as this one, and this is arguably more portable because, as you can see, it's much smaller in terms of the footprint compared to the 12.9, but because in our last video a lot of you guys wanted us to use the 12.9 inch to compare to the MacBook Air instead. So we're going to be doing that in this video, both the MacBook Air and the iPad Pro have a really, really nice all aluminum design. But one of the main differences you can see is that the iPad Pro has rear cameras which you cannot get on the MacBook Air, and I don't know how big of a deal that is for you, but there's also the LIDAR scanner, the flash. So there's the extra features that you can't get on the MacBook Air and without the magic keyboard case. The iPad Pro is obviously much slimmer, more compact.

But, interestingly, it is slightly wider on this end and that's because the aspect ratio is different, but on the long end it is quite a bit less wide. So that is nice, and I'd say because of that extra thinness. It is pretty portable by itself. But then, when you add on the magic keyboard case, the iPad Pro setup actually weighs more weighs three pounds compared to 2.8 on the MacBook Air, and then it does get quite a bit more bulky. It does get a little thicker because it doesn't have that taper down like the MacBook Air does, so it is thicker, and on top of that it is wider as well because of the hinge that's built into the magic keyboard case, and I've got to say guys.

I absolutely love the new white color option on the magic keyboard case. It looks so, so good and on top of that, I think the black option kind of gets like fingerprints and scuffs easier. So I think the white is going to look much cleaner, long-term as well, and my absolute favorite part. Is this open it up like that boom? You have a floating iPad design with that hinge. Take it off with one hand, put it back on it's amazing.

I love it now. Moving on to authentication the m1 MacBook Air has the touch I'd button right here in the corner works just like that nice and easy, but I love the iPad Pro because it has face ID and with the magic keyboard you simply just double tap the space bar boom locks you in instantly, you don't have to reach anywhere. It's just done and the reason I love the magic keyboard so much other than the obvious floating iPad Pro design is the trackpad. It is so responsive. Furthermore, it's super nice, it's better than any other keyboard case out there.

Furthermore, it is literally the best because it does not have a diving board design. You have an even clicking feel all around the trackpad, just like we've always had on the mac books like it's the best. The only difference is that the MacBook comes with kind of forced touch. So if you kind of like double press, you get like menus like that, whereas the iPad Pro cannot do that. It's just one click, so you have to kind of click and hold to bring up menus like this, but this trackpad is amazing.

The only thing I don't really like about it is that it's kind of slim compared to the MacBook Air, which has a much wider or much taller trackpad, but in reality it's just enough for what you need for doing like gestures like that swiping side to side, switching between apps works really well, and another thing I love is the keyboard, the keys themselves. They are so good. Honestly, I feel, like the keys on the magic keyboard case are better than the ones on the MacBook Air. I know they're very similar, but one thing's for sure these keys are better than any other keyboard case out there. That's another reason why I tell people to buy the magic keyboard case, even though it's super expensive you're not going to regret it once you kind of cough up that money, it's very expensive, but it's its worth it, it's definitely worth it.

The only issue is that you do not have the top row of function. Keys like we have on the MacBook Air with all these brightness controls, audio everything else. You don't have those with the magic keyboard case, unfortunately, but because it's just so good, and it's a tablet, I can live without it and now, with all that said in our previous iPad Pro comparisons, we noticed that the 12.9-inch iPad Pro sounds better and louder than the 11-inch version, which is really nice. But how does it compare to the MacBook Air? Let's find out? Oh my goodness. That was a huge difference.

I was not expecting that because I'm used to hearing the 11-inch iPad Pro speakers, but man, the iPad Pro the 12.9 inch sounds insane. It was louder the highs and the vocals were more clear. The mid were louder. They had more bass. Everything all around is better on the iPad Pro compared to the MacBook Air, which kind of sounded muted.

It was kind of more leaned towards the highs, but even then it just wasn't balanced and that bass was totally lacking the iPad Pro speakers, man, they are good. Now, let's go ahead and move on to the ports, but there's one thing that I forgot to mention in terms of these keyboards and kind of like the laptop experience, I noticed that the magic keyboard case with the iPad Pro isn't as good or convenient on your lap compared to the MacBook Air, which is a much better lap experience. So the iPad Pro is more for kind of like this setup, with a tabletop as far as the ports. The first thing I want to mention is that the MacBook Air has a headphone jack over here on the side which the iPad Pro unfortunately does not have, and the air also has two thunderbolt ports right here. That can also be used for USB 4, while the iPad Pro now finally has a thunderbolt port right here, but it's just one.

But if you get the magic keyboard case, you actually get a charging port built into the hinge, which is very convenient because you can charge using this one right here and what we noticed with that built-in charging port is that it charges the iPad Pro, basically at the same speed as the regular port and then, if you're, using that you have this freed up for whatever else like thunderbolt accessories, except there is just one issue, and let me show you guys this right here is a treble eat, thunderbolt, 3, SSD and when you plug it in it does not show up in the files app like it. Should I don't know why, but hopefully with iPadOS 15 coming up? That issue is gonna, get fixed and now, let's finally get into the absolute biggest difference between these two and that is of course, the touchscreen support which you do not have on the MacBook Air. No mac books have had that before. So if you really care about the touch experience, you've got to go with the iPad Pro and, of course, that also goes along with the Apple Pencil. So, as you can see there, you go I'm in the notes' app.

Obviously this is the best use case, because, if you're an artist, you have those professional apps that you use. So this by itself is going to be a dealbreaker for some people out there, because you can't use the Apple Pencil with a mac unless you get a different iPad with like sidekick or whatever else. This is a major selling point. That's going to make all the difference now. The next thing I want to get into is the webcam.

So with the MacBook Air, you have a 720p webcam and because of the m1 ISP, it actually looks pretty good. Now on the iPad Pro, it has a brand new 12 megapixel ultra-wide, which basically gives you 1080p check this out when I switch to ultrawide mode boom. Look at that view that you get it's actually really nice and the quality of this is really, really impressive. The only issue with the iPad Pro is that when you're looking down at the center of the display, you can tell that you are not looking at the camera. I wish it was right here like on the MacBook, but it's not so, especially when you're zoomed in like look at that.

That perspective is just kind of weird you're like looking off to the side, but Apple did something very cool with this iPad Pro and that's the center stage feature so when you're using FaceTime or something else like maybe zoom. When you go side to side, the camera follows your face, and it tries to keep you kind of centered, which is really, really cool, and it helps keep the experience when using FaceTime a lot better and now, let's go ahead and test the microphone quality. This is the m1 MacBook Air and now, let's switch over to the iPad, and now this is the studio quality microphones on the iPad Pro. As you can tell, this is a little weird, so I have to kind of go off to the side and then look at the webcam. If you want like a perfect kind of uh angle, which is weird, but let me know how the microphone quality is down in the comment section below and now, let's finally move on to the display quality comparison and this new iPad Pro the 12.9 inch model gets the brand-new mini LED display, which is insane because it can go up to 1600 nits of brightness for HDR content, but that's only for HDR when you're just using it like a regular iPad. It's limited to 600 nits, but that's still a lot brighter than the MacBook Air's 400 nits.

So it's going to be nice for those bright environments and especially if you're going outside, but the most important part about mini led is that there are over 10 000 of those mini LEDs, and they have local dimming zones. So right here in this image, only the LEDs right here behind this coke bottle are on. So basically it gives you pure blacks, so instead of having grays all around the MacBook Air, because the panel in the back it lights up the entire display at once. So you kind of have those grays. You have pure blacks on the iPad Pro, so let me play this and show you guys the difference.

First, you can tell that the iPad Pro is quite a bit brighter, which is really, really nice, and I can definitely see that the contrast isn't as good on that MacBook Air everything's, slightly gray, but on the iPad Pro. Oh, my goodness, those little bubbles pop like crazy. The color is more kind of vibrant those highlight details, everything whoa guys. This looks so dim, like it's all kind of flat, but man. Those highlights are popping like crazy.

That looks perfect. Now, one of the issues with the mini LED display is a little of blooming. Now I think it's a little exaggerated, and I feel like there's some kind of software issues that it's making blooming worse than it should be. But right now, in this kind of brightly lit medium lit environment, you don't really notice it even in this shot where you have pure blacks and very bright glowing bulb. Oh my goodness.

The difference between these two it is insane like wow. This display is so much better like it's not as bright on the MacBook Air, the colors don't pop the detail doesn't pop right there. That is insane. Just everything is kind of muted on the MacBook Air apple, you guys did a killer job now. The last thing I want to mention is that, even if you're not watching HDR content like this, which iPad you should buy, video, that we just posted by the way, definitely check it out.

One thing that has always bugged me with the displays on mac books is the gray bars above and below the image. As you can see right here, they are gray, but on the iPad Pro, these bars are completely black, and that is a huge difference in kind of experience and quality of life. It just looks so much better having those black bars actually be black, and that is a huge deal for me, because I watch movies on my 15-inch MacBook Pro at home and with all the lights off it sucks, seeing those gray bars. Oh- and one thing I just noticed- is the keyboard backlighting on the white keys. People said that you wouldn't be able to see it, but they definitely help in this dark environment, and the cool thing is that they're automatic they're, based on the ambient light sensor on the iPad Pro so when it gets dark those backlighting keys, turn on just like they do with the MacBook Air.

Now before we get into the performance comparison, I want to mention one of the major differences between these two and that is of course, the app support with the iPad Pro you're limited to whatever is on the iOS App Store and that's it, but with the MacBook, you have access to the professional apps. Like final cut, all the other apps da Vinci resolve just a major variety of apps anything that you download from the web. You can use on the MacBook Air, which you cannot do on the iPad Pro, and you can even get parallel 16 and get Windows 10 on here and use a lot of windows, apps or Windows games. You can't do that on the iPad, that's a major difference and some people are going to be choosing the MacBook. Just for that reason, and to make it even better for the MacBook with that new m1 chip check this out, you can go and download iPhone and iPad apps right here.

So you get the extra advantage of having access to those apps. But the issue is right now that app support isn't that great on the MacBook Air, hopefully apple's going to fix it, but you don't have everything that you want like the best most popular games, you can't get on the m1 MacBook Air. However, 2021 is coming up really soon and there is a good chance that apple is going to be announcing professional Mac apps coming to the iPad Pro. But we don't know just yet how good it's going to be and there's a good chance that the full version on the MacBook is going to be better or more feature loaded. But who knows? Maybe apple's going to surprise us and now, let's finally get into the absolute biggest difference between these two, which is going to make or break your decision to go with the iPad Pro or the MacBook, and that is the file management, which is not good on the iPad Pro.

Of course, we have the new files' app, but it sucks it's not that good, it's kind of hard to use. It's not full-featured like on the MacBook Air. You have everything you want desktop documents. It supports a lot of different files which the iPad does not so file management killer, killer on the MacBook Air, especially since the thunderbolt drives work perfectly, whereas on the iPad Pro right now, they're not working for some reason, but the one thing that keeps me preferring the MacBook experience over the iPad is, of course, the multitasking and split screen capabilities right here we have three different apps open. We have a safari page, another one right here, an activity monitor, and you can move these around.

Whatever way you like, which is awesome but on the iPad, you're limited to just two apps, and you can't really move them around customize them. However, you want, you can split them up like this, but that's about it. So the multitasking is definitely nowhere near as good on the iPad Pro and if you're someone who loves connecting your computer to an external display, the MacBook Air is perfect. For that you get fully featured external display support, but with the iPad it sucks you basically hook up, and you get like a mirror image of the iPad. It's not a good experience.

You can't bring different apps over and use multiple apps at the same time, it's just nowhere near as good, and I really hope apple is going to fix that at WWDC. But on the other hand, the one thing that mac books do not have is cellular support and with the new m1 iPad Pro, you can get 5g connectivity, so you don't have to rely on Wi-Fi when you're going out doing whatever. That is something that's really awesome and convenient for a lot of people, and now, let's finally get into the performance comparison- and one thing I want to mention is that the m1 MacBook Air, the base model only gets a 7 core GPU compared to 8 on the iPad Pro and in reality it doesn't really make that big of a difference, especially in the real world. Both of these have 8 gigs of ram, and they both have the option to go up to 16. But I would say right now: 16 is a waste on the iPad Pro, because, as of right now, apps are currently limited to around 5 gigs of ram.

Only you can't go higher, so you can't use the full potential of the iPad Pro with 16 gigs until apple removes that limitation, hopefully with iPadOS 15. But with that said, let's go ahead and run the CPU geek bench 5 benchmarks all right. We got our scores back, and you can tell that the MacBook Air has a slightly higher single core score. Maybe it's within a margin of error. It really should be because it's the same chip, but in terms of multi-core there's around 400 points higher on the MacBook Air.

That might be because of a little of thermal throttling on the iPad approach, chassis, but I'm not sure but hey, it's actually really, really close, and now, let's run the metal graphics test, and there is the difference in graphics performance, as you can see, we're getting around 1500 more points on the iPad Pro because of that eight core GPU compared to seven cores. So there is a difference, but in reality it's not that big and to test that let's go ahead and do the 3dmark wildlife benchmark. I'm not sure why the iPad Pro is in this orientation, but, as you can see, we have wildlife extreme unlimited on both of these. So let's go ahead and start it. We have our scores, and it looks like the iPad Pro is getting around 12, more fps, thanks to that extra GPU core.

But one thing I know for sure is that you guys do not want to see those synthetic benchmarks. You guys want to see real world. So what I have right here is Lightroom open on both the MacBook Air and the iPad Pro, and I have 50 42 megapixel raw photos selected, and we're going to do an export test. So let's go ahead and share export as, and I'm going to be matching up the settings. So we have JPEG 80 images, quality, go to more options, I'm going to turn on the output sharpening to screen.

So it's perfectly identical on both of these. So let's go ahead and export this and see how long it takes ready set go and, interestingly, the iPad Pro is actually faster, which is weird because the chassis is thinner, they're, both obviously finless, but the MacBook Air should be performing better because, first of all the chassis is thicker and the display is separated. So the heat kind of gets pulled away from it. It doesn't add onto it compared to the iPad Pro, which has everything all in one, so it heats up more, or it theoretically should. But as far as this, it's actually faster right now- oh I don't know if you guys noticed that, but the display on the iPad Pro just dimmed down because it is getting very hot, whereas the MacBook Air did not do that.

But the iPad is almost finished, and it looks like it is done there. You go three minutes and 24 seconds for the iPad Pro and the MacBook is still going. That is mind-blowing. I don't know how apple managed to pull off, putting this much performance into the thin iPad Pro and there you go the MacBook Air finally finished. I cannot believe it took that long, but it took five minutes and 57 seconds compared to three minutes and 24.

That's two and a half minutes longer. It does not make any sense at all because in geek bench it was performing better in the multi-core performance test. So the only way I can make sense of this is that iPadOS is much more kind of efficient and optimized compared to macOS, which has to support a lot of different things. At the same time. So I've got to say I'm extremely impressed with the m1 iPad Pro and now before we get into the conclusion.

I want to talk a little about gaming. Obviously the iPad Pro is limited to whatever is in the app store, and that is it and based on the performance, it's overkill for every single game out there. That's the biggest issue right now: we're waiting for more high performance games, but the cool thing about the MacBook Air is that it also supports some iPad in iPhone games as well, but not the most popular ones. But the best part is that you get to play a wide variety of macOS games as well, and on top of that, we were able to get windows on here using different methods like parallel, 16 or other methods, and actually get decent gaming performance for other games like that, and you could even use special programs to play those ancient classic Nintendo games. So you have a wide variety of options with the MacBook Air in terms of gaming compared to the iPad Pro, which is a little limited, and the last thing I want to talk about is the battery life because they both have the same m1 chip, but the MacBook Air has a larger battery.

It's going to get better battery life, maybe around three to five hours better than the iPad Pro, which is definitely a plus, and it might change this decision for some of you and now, let's finally answer the original question: should you buy the iPad Pro setup which is more expensive or go with the MacBook Air? Well, if you just want to use the iPad Pro as a tablet, then you could easily be fine with the 11-inch model, which is more portable, and it's definitely a lot cheaper, even if you pay for the Apple Pencil you're going to be cheaper than the m1 MacBook Air. However, if you really want that full laptop replacement experience, you could end up spending to 550 to 650 dollars more for the iPad Pro, which is a lot of money. And I'd say that if you care more about saving money than getting the touchscreen support, I would honestly just go for the MacBook Air, because you're really getting a lot of bang for your buck, and you're. Getting the full app in file management support compared to the limited experience on the iPad Pro, which is definitely lacking in those areas. But if you're willing to make some compromises in terms of the file management in order to gain the touchscreen support and the Apple Pencil and everything else, then the iPad Pro is definitely a great option, especially because of that amazing mini LED display.

And if you're, an artist who uses that Apple Pencil professionally or as a hobby. I've got to say you're going to be enjoying the iPad Pro much more because if you go for the MacBook Air you're going to be lacking. That touch touchscreen support. And you might even regret that you didn't go for the iPad Pro, because the experience is just so good with that Apple Pencil and if you're, trying to save some money right now, you could just buy the iPad Pro itself and then hold off on the magic keyboard case. Until you save up some extra cash, and then you can buy it in the future, which is nice.

So to sum up this entire comparison in one sentence: if you want to save money and get excellent file, management and multitasking support, buy the MacBook Air or if you really care about having touchscreen support the Apple Pencil and a better display experience on the 12.9 inch model, then buy the iPad Pro. So there you guys go. Hopefully you enjoyed this video and if you did, click that circle above to subscribe for more videos like this one definitely check out one of those two videos right there. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you in the next video.

Source : Max Tech