They have the same limitations as the machines they replace - 16 GB RAM and two Thunderbolt ports. Most people are looking at these first Apple Silicon Macs wrong - these aren't Apple's powerhouse machines: they're simply the annual spec bump of the low end Apple computers with DCI-P3 displays, Wifi 6, and new the Apple Silicon M1 SoC. While the below Civilization VI scores are on slightly lower resolutions (1440 x 900 on Macs vs 1920 x 1080 on PCs), the M1 MacBook Air (37 fps) and MacBook Pro (38 fps) ran circles around the 16 fps rate from the ZenBook 13, and handily beat the XPS 13 as well. The MacBook Air has never been known as a gaming machine, but the M1 chip may change its reputation there as well. Again, though, this test isn't optimized for Apple Silicon - it's an Intel-based test running through Rosetta 2, so Apple's scores may improve when it's optimized. Oh, and on the PugetBench Photoshop test - which performs 21 different Photoshop tasks, three times per run - the M1 Air (653) and Pro (649) beat the XPS 13 (588). The Air's time is almost a third of the 27:10 the previous Intel MacBook Air needed, while both M1 scores are around half (or less) of the times posted by the XPS 13 and the ZenBook 13.

The M1 MacBook Air and Pro win again on our Handbrake video transcoding test, converting a 4K film to 1080p at 9:15 and 7:44 respectively.

Handbrake for mac m1