Why I still bought the 13” M1 MacBook Pro

2021 has not been a great year for the rumour mills where accuracy is concerned. Even so, an October/November MacBook Pro refresh was highly likely and not one to be ignored. Knowing full well that a major refresh was most likely on the horizon, I still decided to pull the trigger on a custom 13” M1 MacBook Pro just a month before the new 14” and 16” Macbook Pros were announced. 

Here’s why.

Battery life
Prior to my M1 MacBook Pro, I was sporting a 2017 13” 4 thunderbolt MacBook Pro. It worked great for almost everything I needed it to do, as long as it stayed plugged in. Yes this model was the one with the shortest battery life of the bunch thanks its battery size and the power efficiency of Intel’s Kaby Lake chips. Even after a battery change, it would last me 5-6hours max if I were doing the least demanding tasks and barely 2 hours on Final Cut Pro.

While the M1 MacBook Air was a very strong contender, I simply wanted the longest battery life I could get in a laptop. I also knew I wouldn’t be going for a 16” due to my preference for the smaller sizes and if history (and bit of physics analysis) is anything to go by, a souped up M1 chip in a 14” body was more than likely to suffer reduced battery life.

And I was proven right.

As seen in pretty much any review as well as my own experience, the 13” M1 MacBook Pro does last as much as 20 hours or even more when doing basic tasks. Even for video editing, it easily lasts 8 to 10 hours. That’s longer than the 2017 does when doing simple tasks. The 14” as we now know falls short by several hours for basic tasks although it could potentially eke out slightly more when doing video editing due to the more powerful M1 Pro/Max. Since the majority of what I do involves word processing, spreadsheets and some web development, the 20 hour battery life is a far better choice for me.

Touch Bar 
Yes I’m one of the 3 people who actually like the Touch Bar. And no I don’t use its flashy functions, I actually use a customised control strip. Why don’t I just get the standard function keys like on virtually every other MacBook you ask? Well it’s partly because I had already become accustomed to my customised control strip from my previous 2017 Touch Bar model and the new models didn’t have the same controls that I use. 

Yes I know there are apps to customise the physical keys but the icons on them being something else just bothers me enough. Plus there are at least 3 of those keys that are redundant to me and I can even fit a lot more on my Touch Bar. Thank goodness for the physical escape key though, that might’ve been a deal breaker.

Price
MacBook Pros aren’t cheap. Especially not the most powerful ones straight out of a refresh cycle. It didn’t take much convincing to assume that the new 14” MacBook Pros with the supposed M1X (as they were known at the time) to be pretty much in the range of the top end MacBook Pro models which cost almost 50% more. 

I was right.

Plus I also got my 13” M1 refurbished which saved me another nice chunk of change. With 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD, I paid S$2079 for it refurbished from Apple. For comparison, a base model 14” starts from S$2999, over S$900 more than what I paid for the same storage and memory configuration. Yes you do get an amazing screen, better webcam, speakers and the faster M1 Pro/Max chip but those just aren’t game changing enough for me to sacrifice 6 hours of battery life and S$900 at this point in time.

That Port Situation
I’m glad Apple decided to give us back our ports, it’s a great thing to have on the new MacBooks. However, while 2 thunderbolt ports on the 13” does sound pitiful, I’ve by now embraced the USB-C life and am able to run pretty much everything I do off those 2 ports. 

Even my external monitors are all USB-C so I have a 1 cable solution for everything. I film my YouTube videos on my iPhone 12 so I simply AirDrop my files for editing. 

Maybe when I do move on to a big boy camera will I finally wish I had an SD card slot, but I have a multi dongle for that.

I Really Don’t Need More Power
Stepping up from the intel i5 Kaby Lake with 8GB RAM to an M1 with 16GB ram was a huge improvement especially for video editing. Would I like to have more power? Sure. Do I need it? Not really. 

The most intense stuff I do is editing a 10-15 minute YouTube video once or twice a week on Final Cut Pro. I use 1 LUT, and rarely have more than 2 4K channels. Everything else is mostly word processing, spreadsheets and basic web development. Saving a few minutes on a 10 minute export is hardly going to change my life plus it gives me a nice window to do up my thumbnails. That 20 hour battery life is worth a lot more to me.

So yes while the new MacBooks are definitely for higher end creative pros, I do still see the 13” MacBook Pro as the perfect laptop for executive pros which just happens to be the category I fall under.

Final Thoughts
So the new MacBook Pros have been out in the wild for just about a month now and while they are definitely amazing machines, I don’t regret my decision one bit. My 13” M1 MacBook Pro is the best and most productive computer I’ve ever used and it fits into my workflow like a glove. 

Leave a comment if you’ve also had to make a similar decision or if you think I’m missing out on something by not getting the new 14” and 16”.