If I were a video professional, rendering video files every day, I would probably notice a big difference.īut I’m not. I spent thousands of dollars on the upgrade, and I hate to admit it, but besides the battery life (which is far better than my old MacBook Pro), I really can’t say it’s noticeably faster. Maybe when I use a plug-in, instead of taking 6-seconds to process it, maybe now it only takes 4-seconds (A 33% speed increase), but I don’t really even notice it. Really, as a photographer, how would I even know? The applications I use day in/day out are already so responsive there’s almost no way to tell it’s faster for the work I do every day. On my old MacBook Pro, on my now getting old iMac, and it works exactly the same way on my new M1 Macbook Pro that cost thousands of dollars. In Photoshop, when I open an image, add a Gaussian Blur, an Unsharp Mask, Use Camera Raw, Duplicate a layer, etc., it all happens instantly. I didn’t move the slider and then sit and wait. For example, if I wanted to make my photo brighter and dragged the Exposure slider to the right, my photo got immediately brighter. When I used them on my 3-year old MacBook Pro, I would move a slider (say in Lightroom), and it did whatever I wanted it to instantly.

I primarily use Lightroom, Photoshop, Photo Mechanic, and a handful of plug-ins. Here’s why: Think about the programs we use and what we do on our computers for photography. Not for photographers anyway, because I think it would be a waste of money. I’m not getting one, and I’m not recommending them. The specs are really good, and the cost isn’t as nearly high as the “Mac Pros,” but they have similar if not better performance.

It’s nice, but there’s something I’ve learned throughout these many upgrades that’s especially important to consider now, as I know many photographers are thinking of upgrading to these Mac Studios machines. About every three years or so, I upgrade to the latest Mac model, and while my iMac is a few years old now, I recently got the new M1 Apple MacBook Pro.

Best macbook for lightroom