That the M1 was discovered to perform well enough at 8GB memory, in situations where 8GB RAM on Intel would cause serious problems. That the base M1 is such a huge improvement over almost any Intel system, and certainly better than all affordable Intel systems, even 1.5 years after introduction. There seems to be a short memory in the Mac world, people have forgotten what the M1 was initially like, and still is. We all gotta keep the right perspective here. Going what I’ve been able find out, the base model MBP would be an upgrade in itself but, just to get me more confused, I was recently told that the 32gb was probably better for video work! I know that many say that it’s better to get the most amount of RAM as possible, if only to ‘future proof’ the computer - along with benefits to workflow, but the more I learn, the more I hear that the base model is a good choice.

I haven't tested this carefully, but my impression is that the same is true with my M1 MacBook Air. On the topic of heat throttling, I'll note that my M1 mini takes exactly the same time to crank out a JPEG from a heavily adjusted 42MP RAW with DeepPRIME applied, whether I'm exporting one image or 400 (which takes a bit over an hour). At this task, it's 8x faster than my 3.3GHz 8-core cylinder Mac Pro with 64GB RAM was.Ī faster machine with more RAM might be worth it if you're doing a lot of work on huge files (high-rez stitching and layered PS files) or really need LRC to generate 1:1 previews at super speed. It's fantastic, even churning out hundreds of JPEGs from 42MP RAWs with DeepPRIME noise reduction applied. My workhorse is an M1 Mac mini with 16GB RAM and 512GB storage. My M1 MacBook Air with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage handled a 5-day studio portrait session involving thousands of 21MP RAWs run through Lightroom Classic like a champ. I run a high-volume event photography business, editing and processing hundreds, sometimes thousands, of photos on 48-72-hour deadlines with Lightroom Classic and DxO PhotoLab 5 Elite.

Macbook pro for photoshop and lightroom