Hello, everyone! I’m Alex Al-Vatar. Choosing a new MacBook can be tough , I watched a few reviews and all the Apple Presentations before I bought it and I found out that for some reasons YouTubers tend to avoid the base M3 MacBook Pro 14″ model. Most of them don’t recommend buying it. However, I bought it and I think it might be the best laptop as an upgrade since 2016 and the best value for the price. Read this article till the end to understand my point of view; all you need to know about the M3 MacBook Pro 14″ 8GB/512GB is here…
The best upgrade for the MacBook Pro 13″ 2016
The first reason I chose the M3 MacBook Pro 14 “is because I found it to be the perfect replacement for my previous Macbook model.
Inside my old MacBook was dual core Intel i5, 8GB of RAM, 128 gigs of storage. I used it for 8 years and I felt sad when it died, I liked almost everything about it. It was my first MacBook and it was perfect. Perfect size and weight, gorgeous design, it had a great IPS-screen with true colours for colour correction, great sound quality and all of the ports… But after 8 years it unfortunately started to slow down, there wasn’t enough memory anymore to install new software updates, the charger broke rendering 1080p videos in DaVince Resolve was taking hours and eventually the battery finally died. I had no other choice, but to buy a new MacBook. I wanted something just as the same, but a newer, faster and more powerful model.
I found this new Macbook Pro 14” M3 model to be the first revolutionary upgrade after its 2016 counterpart. The size and weight is the same, the screen size is bigger. Both have 8GB of RAM, but the newer model is faster and uses new production technology. Both have enough ports to connect everything you need. Both have cooling systems with one fan. Both have a webcam, however the M3 model uses a better webcam with a 1080p resolution. Both come out with the base model chipset of the lineup, but the new M3 Chip is 10 times faster and has more cores and coders to encode video while editing. So, yeah! I think this new base model of the MacBook Pro 14″ M3 is the best choice to replace my old MacBook Pro 13″ from 2016 and that’s the reason I chose it.
14″ is the perfect screen size
Having a 13″ MacBook Pro 2016 I always thought it would be great to have an extra 1 inch, fonts were too small and sometimes I couldn’t place everything I needed on my screen while editing videos (for example). Apple changed it for the new MacBook Pro line up and I think 14″ is the perfect screen size for almost everything: to watch movies, to edit photos and videos, to browse something, to take notes…
The 16 inch MacBook Pro is too big and heavy for me personally, it needs a bigger suitcase and it weighs 500 grams more. I want to be able to take my MacBook with me wherever I go and a device with 14 inches and 1.6 kg is perfect to be mobile enough. Also, having a 14″ model allows me to use my old bag from my old 13″ model, so I don’t have to spend the extra 100$ for a new one.
Ports on MacBook Pro M3
What do you think makes you a professional? Right – ports on your laptop 🙂 I think, a lot of Pro people out there who need ports even more than a powerful chip on your laptop to transfer data and connect devices.
For me personally, ports are vital. I regularly connect my MacBook to other devices. Most times I edit videos using an external SSD drive. I connect my camera and memory card to transfer data, sometimes I use it as a webcam to launch good quality streams on YouTube or via Zoom. To work on music production and sound editing I connect my midi-key, headphones and audio recorder. When I’m on the stage I share my presentation on the screen via HDMI. Sometimes many devices are connected at the same time whilst I’m working and charging my laptop. If you don’t have enough ports you have to buy connectors that aren’t cheap, so you have to spend an extra 100$ on them.
So, lack of ports is one more reason I chose this M3 MacBook Pro over the MacBook Air with the same chip, the reason I chose it over the previous MacBook Pro models from 2020.
Cooling system without thermal throttling
Even a powerful M3 Chip inside a MacBook Air doesn’t produce as much power as it can because of the lack of a cooling system. I guess you heard that if you load hard tasks and push the Air model to its limits it starts overheating, so it has to reduce the power of the chip to keep normal temperature. It’s called “Thermal Throttling”.
So, to get the maximum power out of the M3 chip Apple’s engineers put a cooling system with one fan into the M3 MacBook Pro 14″ and that’s one more reason I chose it over the Air model. Having that cooling system makes my MacBook more powerful even with the same chip.
And I think it’s vital for tasks like video editing, music production, design and multitasking, where you have to push your device up to its limits for long periods of time. Let’s say you are editing a video for 8 hours straight. Without a cooling system it starts throttling after 20 minutes and reduces the power of the chip. Having a fan makes this device more reliable throughout the day. That’s why I think that the lack of a cooling system is even worse than a lack of ports.
Longer battery life
Now, I’m going to explain to you my point of view, why I think the base M3 MacBook Pro could be a better choice compared to models with M1 Pro, M2 Pro, M3 Pro chips. The base M3 chip is a bit less powerful compared to the Pro series, because of that it uses less power and the battery life on the MacBook Pro 14″ M3 is incredible. Its standby can be up to 22 hours! I don’t work full time. I charge it maybe twice a week?! Even on Apple’s official website they wrote that the base M3 MacBook Pro’s model battery life is 15% longer compared to other Pro models. So, what does that mean? Why is it so important to me?
Buying a new MacBook I want to be able to keep and use it as long as I can, but after a few years bad battery condition might be a reason to repair the MacBook or even buy a new one. Therefore,, battery is vital! The base M3 version uses less power, you have more work time without a charge and less charge cycles on battery per year. M3 is still powerful enough to deal with almost any task you need, but it can serve you longer. After 5 months of using my M3 MacBook Pro 14″ battery capacity is still at 100% and cycle count is just 55.
Let’s do the math! The maximum cycle count for this M3 MacBook Pro is 1000, so it can serve me for almost 8 years long before the battery even dies. I think the battery dies faster with the M1 Pro, M2 Pro, M3 Pro chip models inside.
It’s a good combo having that less powerful chip (compared to other Pro models) and more battery capacity (compared to the Air models).
New, powerful, fast: chip, RAM and storage
When I thought about buying a new MacBook I had some doubts about the chip. Is it better to choose the M1 Pro/M2 Pro over the base M3, or do I need the M3 Pro model? Later I figured it doesn’t matter. Whatever I buy, if I’m going to replace my old MacBook based on Intel from 2016 it will be 10 times faster. Thinking of that, the base M3 chip seemed to be more than enough for my workflow.
However, I’ve created a comparison table for all the M-series chips to find out the differences in numbers of: efficiency and performance cores, GPU cores and transistors. Looking at the specs it seems like the base M3 chip is close enough to the M1 Pro, it’s newer and maybe Apple will support it longer.
| Chip Model | Efficiency cores | Performance cores | GPU cores | Transistors |
| M3 Pro (3nm) | 6 | 5 | 14 | 37 billion |
| M2 Pro (5nm) | 4 | 6 | 16 | 40 billion |
| M1 Pro (5nm) | 2 | 6 | 14 | 33.7 billion |
| M3 (3mn) | 4 | 4 | 10 | 25 billion |
| M2 (5nm) | 4 | 4 | 10 | 20 billion |
| M1 (5nm) | 4 | 4 | 8 | 16 billion |
Next, I question myself about the RAM! Is 8GB of RAM enough, or do I need more? It’s maybe the most confusing question to consider.
New MacBooks support up to 96GB of RAM and 8GB seems like too little! Inside my old MacBook Pro there was also 8GB of RAM, but new MacBooks use different types of RAM and it’s called “unified memory”. Unlike traditional RAM which resides on separate modules, unified memory is physically built into the chip. That’s why it’s so confusing to decide how much RAM I need, because I can’t change or upgrade it later.
Analysing data I found about new RAM I decide that 8GB will be enough for me and here is why:
- Apple says that 8GB of unified memory works just as well as 16GB of traditional RAM on Intel based laptops.
- All the Apple devices are produced to serve at least 5 years and if Apple sold so many MacBooks with 8GB of RAM I think it should work well.
- I think 16GB and more need individuals who work with hard multitasking (designing complex 3D projects and rendering a complex 8K video at the same time), but for simple multitasking (taking notes, browsing and editing FullHD video) I think 8GB of new unified memory is enough.
Finally about the storage. Is 512GB enough or do you need more? I have to tell you that I use storage on my MacBook only to install the software and transfer data. I have nothing important saved on my laptop. All documents I keep are on cloud drives and sized data like photos and videos are kept on my 2TB hard drives. Also I have a 512GB SSD drive for temporary files and projects, I use it whilst editing videos and transferring data. I diversified my data so I can keep it safe and have enough free space on my MacBook. After all being installed there is still 350GB of free space on my 512GB storage, I used only 150GB. Space is never enough, but you can choose how to use it and where to keep your data. I prefer to use external and cloud drives.
Talking about the storage I have to say it’s faster than it was on my old MacBook Pro. Speed on the previous model was up to 500 mb/s, but my new one can read and write data with 2800 and 2600 mb/s respectively. It’s one more upgrade they did to the new lineup.
Overall, I think, when I decided to buy the base M3 MacBook Pro 14″ with 8GB of unified memory and 512GB of storage I made just the same decision as I did 8 years ago when I bought the base MacBook Pro 13″ 2016 with 8GB of traditional RAM and 128GB of slower storage. It’s just the same workhorse but newer, faster and more powerful.
Save your money and buy the base model
New M3 MacBook Pro 14 “will cost around 1600$ in the year 2024. The fact is I bought my old MacBook Pro 13” in 2016 also for 1600$. Thinking of inflation for these 8 years, the ability to buy the newest version of MacBook Pro for the same price is good value!
If your budget is 1000-2000$ you can buy something less powerful like the MacBook Air or a more powerful MacBook Pro with M Pro chipset, it’s up to you. Sometimes, to make a better decision it is better to think about all the equipment you need for your workflow. Instead of buying a better version of the MacBook Pro 14″ I bought the base model and saved some money to buy a MidiKey that came with the lite version of Ableton software that I needed for music production. My new MacBook will die after 5-8 years and I’ll have to replace it with a new one and it will be great to already have that MidiKey and software.
The point is not how to spend less, it’s about how to spend the same amount of money and get more value.
Downsides after 6 months of using it
Things I’ve noticed after 6 months of using my M3 MacBook Pro 14″ 8GB/512GB:
Sometimes 8gb of RAM isn’t enough. When I’ve created 5 desktops and was using my MacBook for few weeks without restarting it could freeze, but to be fair that happened only when I was working at the same time with: 20 tabs in Safari, 20 tabs in Google Chrome, video editing in DaVinci Resolve, Notes and XMind. If you’re going to use more than that, 8gb RAM is not for you, but it’s totally fine for me!
It feels cheap compared to my old MacBook Pro 13″ 2016. It’s hard to see the difference, but it feels like my old MacBook is more solid. Maybe it’s because Apple uses new recycling materials for their new devices, I don’t know. The display, the body, the keyboard it feels cheaper compared to older models, where everything was built like a tank. It’s not a big deal, I get used to it after a few weeks, but I remember the feeling when I first noticed that.
Display issues. I don’t know why but for my eyes it seems like the IPS display on my old MacBook looks better. I can’t explain it, the new Apple display looks good with better resolution, but feels cheap. When I look at the display I see some shadows in the corners and I notice delay whilst switching between desktops. Somebody can’t see the difference, but I noticed this for some reason.
Who is the M3 MacBook Pro 14″ for?
I think the M3 MacBook Pro 14″ is the most balanced model for life and work. Freelancers, business owners, self-employed individuals, content creators and creative people like me would like this model.
I think it’s the best MacBook to choose if you’re going to spend:
- 80% of time is spent on simple tasks like: watching movies, browsing, taking notes, creating presentations, video calls, transferring data.
- 20% of time on tasks like: photo and video editing (perfect for FullHD videos), color correction, design and coding, music production.
I wouldn’t recommend it to someone whose job is to edit 8K videos or do similar tasks every single day from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Conclusion
Let’s make a summary about everything I said about the base M3 MacBook Pro 14 8gb/512gb.
- This M3 MacBook Pro 14″ is the best upgrade for the old MacBook Pro 13″ 2016.
- MacBook Pro with M3 chip gives you more battery life compared to other models with M Pro chipset.
- Having a fan inside your MacBook Pro 14″ gives you more power compared to MacBook Air and makes it more reliable, even with the same M3 chip.
- The base M3 chip needs less power so you’ll have a longer battery life.
- Choosing the base MacBook Pro with the M3 chip and 8GB of RAM you can save some money to buy some software and equipment you need for your workflow.
Finally, I think you don’t need as much power as Apple offers you with their new devices. As a human kind we can’t work as fast as these machines can. Yes, it’s great to have 64gb of RAM and M3 Max Chip with Trillions of transistors, but at the end of the day you can be focused only on one task, even though your laptop can handle hardcore multitasking.
When I just started to work on my new base M3 MacBook Pro I was impressed by how fast it renders videos! Earlier, when I worked on my old Intel based MacBook I had to wait hours till it finished the job and could take a rest and watch a movie whilst it was rendering. However, this new generation of Apple laptops render videos in a few minutes, so I don’t even have time to make a cup of tea. It’s great to have such a powerful machine, but people still need some time for a break between tasks.
That’s why I think the base MacBook Pro M3 model has just enough power for human kind and maybe next generation of computers will be designed not for humans, but for other machines.
