I agree that the gaming performance is a 100%. The hardware is incredibly fast. The M1 Ultra (which can't be had in a MacBook) is almost as fast as a desktop RTX 3090 when it comes to gaming performance. Of course, that performance can only be achieved when a game is highly optimised for Apple Silicon, including metal support. Unfortunately very few games are optimised yet. Let's hope that changes as more new Macs are sold.

I noticed that the binned m1 pro chip says there are 16 "pipelines" vs "8 pipelines" on the unbinned chips.  does anyone know what this is, and how much it affects performance?

This is a great review! Congratulations ... ;-)
I would like to double-check the PWM rate. According to the review it's 14.880 Hz. However, the entry-level MacBook Air seems to have a PWM rate of 118.000 Hz. I guess that a higher frequency is better, because it should reduce the likelihood of the human eye detecting it.
If that is the case, I am wondering why the high-end MacBook Pro has a display with a lower PWM rate than the entry-level Air. Could someone explain, pls?

Great review as always. But its interesting to not that you have not included an AMD CPU in your performance graphs...but great and detailed review nonetheless.

I was wondering if the Mini led panel is based on IPS or VA tech and if the same applies to the ipad pro Mini led.

the subject is trackpad size/dimensions.!!!

since the keyboard layout dimensions are the same both for the 16 & 14, and also one's hands size when using either, in the 16 fits the 14 trackpad & your wrists...do you agree...if not ask tim, or whoever is steve's & tim's replacement???!

screen aspect ratio:
163:100 >> MacBook, iMac, Pro Display
163:77 >> iPhone
163:123 >> iPad, Watch

Quote from: Polyphonie on November 14, 2021, 18:48:25
The large touchpad works fine

Quote from: enormous on November 14, 2021, 18:05:12
that touchpad size is so enormous, one can fit steve's & tim's brains together inside of it !?!?!?!

Apple uses the same palm rejection algorithm from the iPad onto the large trackpad. Meaning it works really well in macOS. Not so much if you're bootcamping Windows on the MBP.

Also the large trackpad on the 15/16" MBP uses two touch controllers to make sure touch, gesture and palm are precisely detected.

Another misleading score from Notebookcheck, so 100% for gaming?

The large touchpad works fine

Quote from: enormous on November 14, 2021, 18:05:12
that touchpad size is so enormous, one can fit steve's & tim's brains together inside of it !?!?!?!

Apple uses the same palm rejection algorithm from the iPad onto the large trackpad. Meaning it works really well in macOS. Not so much if you're bootcamping Windows on the MBP.

Also the large trackpad on the 15/16" MBP uses two touch controllers to make sure touch, gesture and palm are precisely detected.

that touchpad size is so enormous, one can fit steve's & tim's brains together inside of it !?!?!?!

> This is not a gaming laptop - it is a professional workstation.

It is definitely NOT a professional workstation.

Impressive premium consumer laptop - nothing more, nothing less.

Slow Wi-Fi is very disappointing, but target audience probably doesn't care - and it's common of Apple to gimp their products in some areas to later introduce improvements bringing them up to speed with competitors with tremendous pomp as some major innovation.

Progress compared to Intel Macbooks is immense - to a large degree because the former suffered from poor internal design, admittedly - but power efficiency and, consequently, battery life are nothing short of excellent.

"An HDR video at the maximum brightness ran for about 4.5 hours on our test unit of the MBP 16 with the M1 Max SoC (currently also in review), which is a bit longer than on the smaller MBP 14 with about 4 hours."

Was this with hardware decoding?

Impressive laptop. I just wish the upgrade prices weren't as extortionate and that the software support for M1 native applications (or even games) quickly increases.

The 2019 model put next to the 2021 one looks like if it came from the future...

Quote from: philcomments on November 14, 2021, 01:14:52
How can the display backlight flicker at 14880 Hz if the display does not have a backlight? Are the thousands of mini-LEDs supposed to flicker at 14880 Hz? Does the display have a backlight in addition to the thousands of mini-LEDs? Please explain and help readers like me understand.

MiniLED means instead of having a single backlight you have thousands. There are two ways to control how much light is emitted by a LED: control the current fed to it, or switch it rapidly on and off from full brightness to off, with the LED being on in proportion to the brightness, something known as pulse width modulation or  PWM.

Controlling current is better but requires more complex circuitry and can be less power-efficient. PWM, on the other hand, can be detected by sensitive people as flickering, specially in peripheral vision where the rod cells are more sensitive to flickering because evolution planted predator-detecting neurons there.

On the MiniLED display, each zone is individually controlled, but still uses PWM to dim each zone.

one category is missing: aesthetic

that pad is huge, your wrists rest inside them when typing on the keyboard

screen aspect ratio
163:100 >> MacBook, iMac, Pro Display
163:77 >> iPhone
163:123 >> iPad, Watch

@philcomments,
a miniLED scren is still an LCD with backlight. miniLED is just a more advanced type of backlight.

miniLED is not like OLED or microLED, which are screen technologies without a backlight, as the pixels them self emit the light on those.