The M1 Pro comes in as the second most powerful chipset in the M1 Apple Silicon series, powering the most recent MacBook Pro. Now being taken over by the M1 Max and M1 Ultra, here is everything you need to know about the Pro processor.
Initially, the M1 Pro was intended to become the ‘Pro’ variation on the vanilla M1 chip, offering a more powerful performance than its predecessor with integrated graphics that is cable of 8K video editing and 3D animation.
Though, since the release of the M1 Max and M1 Ultra, the M1 Pro now sits as a middling processor, in terms of what Apple Silicon has to offer. And with the continuous rumours on the supposed M2 and M2 Pro chipsets, it looks like there will be more processors on offer that provide an even better experience for users.
However, even with the new processors the M1 Pro is still a mighty processor and is ideal for anyone looking for a speedy laptop that is still portable.
Keep reading to find out everything you need to know about the Apple M1 Pro chip, and be sure to message us on Twitter if you have any further questions that we didn’t cover here.
Release date
The M1 Pro chip has already made its debut and is available to buy in both the 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pro laptops.
It’s expected to be available in other Apple devices soon, with the iMac Pro having the best chance. There were rumours that the Mac Mini would see a refresh including the M1 Pro and M1 Mac chipset, though it now looks like it will skip past the M1 range and dive straight into the M2 range, though this has not been confirmed by Apple.
Price
Looking at the 14-inch MacBook Pro, the M1 Pro variation starts out at $1999/£1899, coming with eight CPU cores and 14 GPU cores. If you’re after a more powerful performance, you can upgrade and get the M1 Pro chip that comes with a 10-core CPU and 16-core GPU, which costs an extra £300.
The larger-screened 16-inch MacBook Pro also packs the full-fat M1 Pro chip, with a starting price of $2499/£2399.
While the lower configuration will still be powerful, the added cores in the beefed-up variation allow your laptop to run multiple processes at the same time with greater ease, which should provide a smoother and faster experience overall.
Specs
The M1 Pro chip comes with up to 10 CPU cores, which are made up of eight high-performance cores and two power-efficient cores, also known as P-cores and E-cores. This also shows that Apple does prioritise performance over its battery life.
Apple claims that the Pro offers 70% faster processing speeds than the M1 chip, which makes it ideal for those who need a high-end performance.
The 16-core GPU is 1.7x faster at rendering 8K video than AMD’s Radeon Pro 5600M GPU – according to Apple – which is featured in the 2019 MacBook Pro. Generally, the Pro is more powerful than the vanilla M1 chip, though if you are after even more power, you will want to look towards the M1 Max and M1 Ultra solutions.
Moreover, despite being more capable than the standard M1 chip, the M1 Pro is still built on the same 5nm node architecture. This suggests that it should be viewed as the more powerful configuration for supported Macs, rather than a true sequel to the M1 chip.
Benchmarks
Since we have tested out the MacBook Pro laptops, we can attest first-hand to how powerful it is. We tested the performance via Geekbench 5, which is a good indicator as to what kind of processing power you should expect.
It is also worth noting that the performance of a processor is dependent on a few factors, including what computer it is in and what the cooling solutions look like. With that in mind, you should consider the benchmark results below as a rough guide rather than conclusive performance scores.
| Geekbench 5: Single-Core | Geekbench 5: Multi-Core | |
| Apple M1 | 1731 | 7308 |
| Apple M1 Pro | 1745 | 12,520 |
| Apple M1 Max | 1784 | 12,713 |
| Intel Core i7-12800H | 1412 | 12,571 |
| Ryzen 9 5900HS | 1485 | 7282 |
As you can see from the table above, the M1 Pro scored the second-highest single-core performance, only being beaten out by the M1 Max. For multi-core performance, which is most significant for intensive workloads, the M1 Pro came in third, after the M1 Max and Intel Core i7 -12800H.
The Intel processor was housed in the Razer Blade 17, with the processor having 14 cores rather than the M1 Pro’s 10, which is likely why it won out in the multi-core test.
We have not been able to get the benchmark scores for the integrated graphics performance yet, however, we should expect Apple to have a huge performance advantage over Intel. We will be sure to update this article when we have the benchmark results for the iGPU.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.