M1 vs M4 MacBook Air - Is it FINALLY Upgrade Time?!

Is it finally time to upgrade from the legendary M1 MacBook Air that launched about five years ago and get yourself one of these new M4 models? Well, in this video, we are going to compare everything from the designs, the displays, the speakers, and yes, of course, the performance. It is so cool to see this machine here back to that $999 price tag that the M1 Air launched at, but now we have more RAM, more performance, and a lot of improvements. Now, I love the classic clamshell design of the original M1 MacBook Air. It's so sleek, nice and thin at the bottom, but it is aging. And I love that with the new M4 model, of course, we have the MagSafe for charging and that opens up the other two ports for accessories and they are Thunderbolt 4 instead of Thunderbolt 3. With the new M4 models, you can have two external displays instead of one. Now if you can see, both these machines are at 100% battery life and that's one thing people loved about the M1 Air, the battery life was so good. And I want to also point out that this one, it's at 99% battery capacity, basically a new battery. So we are going to compare the battery life throughout these tests. Now the first thing that really pops out to me looking at them is the thicker bezels on the M1, especially at the top, compared to these nice even bezels and that notch on the M4 model. Now comparing the actual camera and microphone quality. If you look at the M1, this is a 720p webcam compared to 1080p. And if you notice on the M4, I'm sitting the same, but I'm not cut off. And that's because with this new revision, you actually have the center stage function. So you guys could see it is actually following me. It is zooming in. But then if somebody else joins in behind you, we'll have Vadim come in, well now it sees both of us. So that is a really nice update. And now here is the microphone quality from that M1 MacBook Air in its regular microphones. And this is the M4 MacBook Air's microphones. Of course, there's some different options that you could change, but let me know which microphone sounded better. Now as far as the displays, the technology and most things are identical. The only thing is the M4 is 500 nits, so it's brighter compared to the 400 nits. And of course, you get a slightly larger display. Both keyboards are very good, but the M4 feels slightly nicer. I also like that the function keys and the shortcut keys are a little bit larger at the top. And the trackpad, it looks like it's a little bit wider. They use the same technology, just small improvements with the M4. Now what you also notice is the speaker grills on the side of the keyboard on the M1, where on the M4 it's hidden. But this does have more speakers. So let's go ahead and compare the quality. Guys, this is interesting because the M1 is actually louder. The highs are sharper. That is impressive. Whereas the M4, it does have better mids and bass, but it's quieter overall. Now jumping into performance, I have Blackmagic Disk Speed Test opened up right here because when the M2 redesigned launch, they gimped SSDs. Now thankfully, these are doing pretty good. But the crazy thing is the M1 is actually faster than the M4. We have 2155 compared to 2105 for write, and 2849 compared to 2672 for the read. So yes, the M1 is slightly faster. But now jumping into the CPU with Geekbench, we could see that we have double the RAM on the M4 for that same 999, and we have higher clock speeds as well, along with two extra efficiency cores. So 10 core compared to 8 core, and of course, we're running on second gen 3 nanometer technology. That's a lot of improvements that have happened. So let's go ahead and check the results. And look at these scores, guys. We have almost 60% difference in terms of single core score. I mean, the M4 is the best any computer as far as single, and then multi-core, over 73% difference. We're getting near double the performance. That is very impressive. What does that mean in the real world? I have Speedometer 3.0 for web browsing and web applications running here, and the M1 is known to be extremely quick for a lot of tasks like this. And looking at the results, we have a big difference, 29 compared to 47.3. That is about 63% difference. And can you actually tell the difference in real world browsing? Well, I have to say yes, I can. I know a lot of people are saying, I'm super happy with M1, it's crazy fast, but when you try the M4, that's when you notice a difference. And what about web-based applications? Well, I have Figma opened up right here, and this project is brought to us by 500 Designs, one of the best design studios in California, and we have some high-resolution images and pages here. Let me go ahead and zoom in on the M1 here. Nice, very good. Even on the M1 machine, the M4, we already tested, I know it's ridiculously fast. Let me go ahead and zoom in right here. Very quick. I literally super smooth zooming in, and I saw that quick change, and you're not waiting multiple seconds for stuff to show up in full quality. But the real test is selecting these 12 high-resolution layers and exporting them to see how long it takes. So let's test that. And here are the results. We have two minutes and four seconds for the M1, and a minute 30 for the M4. Now of course, that's not double the speed, but it is a notable improvement. And now let's jump to graphics before we do some real heavy-hitting programs that can use both. And you guys can see we have seven GPU cores compared to eight. Both of these are binned versions of their respective chips. And looking at the results, we have 30,869, which is actually higher than we got before compared to 48,000. So we have over 50% difference and improvement with the new M4 for compute. And that actually will go along with the CPU and some of these other tests we're going to run. Now gaming performance can vary. So I have 3DMark opened up right here. We're going to run the Steel Nomad Lite in unlimited mode, so the resolution won't matter. And taking a look at this result here, we have 13.3 compared to 24.7. So it's not double, but it's about 85% improvement when it comes to gaming performance. That is great. But I also want to go back right here and I want to run this SolarBay test because this has ray tracing built in. And of course, the M4 chip has it where the M1 does not. And ray tracing is not only for games, but there's different applications that can make use of those cores to speed things up. All right, and now look at the results. If I look at the overall score, we have 5,500 compared to 13,800. That is a 2.5 times difference in overall performance. That is where some of the things get really, really fast. And when you're using ray tracing cores, you use less power as well. Now I'll give you the full battery results at the end, but look at this. We're already at 83% on the M1, 88 on the M4, even though it has a larger, brighter display and some other things that take more power. Now what about if you're a programmer and you are using Xcode? Well, the M1 takes 258 seconds for our Xcode benchmark compared to 142. I mean, that's not double the performance, but that is getting close. So that's very impressive. Now what about if you're maxing out the CPU for a long time? Well, we have Cinebench 2024 opened up right here, and I'm going to go ahead and start our 10-minute throttling test because both of these machines are fanless. Now when they released the M2, they did put in a better cooling system, at least this little strip over the chip. That might have helped a little bit. The test just started up right here. We actually hit 23 or so watts over here compared to the M1. We hit 15. Right now we're at 14. So it's using less power. This one is heating up a lot more. Actually right here with TG Fan, we're at 107 degrees Celsius compared to 89, the highest. So this thing, with all that extra power, heats up quicker. That means that it is also going to thermal throttle faster, but I will go ahead and let this run to see what we settle in at. Now it's been about five minutes, and what is interesting is that even though the M4 throttles faster and the M4's efficiency cores actually throttled down compared to the M1's that stayed flat, well, we're still getting 12.5 watts compared to 9.4. Our clock speeds are still higher. So even with the throttling, we should have a good result. Now I want to shout out a video we're going to work on right after this, and that is putting some cooling on this M4 chip to get some of that extra performance that is being missing, whether it's just a little cooling laptop stand or a couple other options. Make sure you subscribe so you guys don't miss that. Now take a look at this thermal footage. On the M1, the peak we're seeing is about 37.75 or so, right there where the chip is. Looking at the M4, so much hotter, 43.8, 43.9 there, right at that spot. Now it has been about almost 9 minutes or so, just over 9 minutes, and so there's so much more heat trapped in this M4. Alright guys, we just finished the test. The M4 did two full runs in that time compared to one. The M1 got 404 points. Let's check out on this one, 773. Almost double the performance, and if you get some cooling on this bad boy, it's going to go even higher. That is insanely, insanely impressive. To really put this into perspective, the M3 14-inch MacBook Pro, which cost $1,600, that got 651 score compared to 773, and with 16 gigs, that thing cost $1,800 with a fan. This is fanless. This is very impressive. Now what about Blender if you're doing 3D rendering? Well right now I have it loaded up right here with the PartyTag test. I'm optimizing the kernels, and the sweet thing is with the M4, we have the ray tracing cores, so it's able to use those for the GPU compute. Let's see what kind of difference we get. Okay, and take a look at this guys. I was like tired of waiting. The M1 took 5 minutes and 26 seconds on its second run with the optimized kernels compared to a minute and 48. That is getting close to three times faster performance. This is why you can't always just look at Geekbench and then expect your programs are going to be that much of a difference. I mean this is pretty dang massive here. And now I have Adobe Lightroom Classic open, the latest version. We have 50 images opened up right here, and let's see what kind of difference this makes because this uses the CPU, the GPU, the graphics, everything. Flipping through, both are very quick. We saw the SSDs. Of course, we have a lot of new AI features, so let's check out the neural engine performance. I clicked to find the subject. That one is done. That one's done. So definitely faster, maybe twice as fast or so. Let's go ahead and select the sky here. Bam, bam. So maybe not double the performance, but we have these minor differences with the usability. And now let's go ahead and export all 50 of these images here. And our M4 is just flying. And the crazy thing is it's not using that much more power, maybe slightly more in certain cases or even less, even though the performance is so much better. So that took 58 seconds on the M4 and two minutes and 32 seconds on the M1, two and a half times faster. And I have to say that these are just 50 photos right here. If you're exporting more, it takes a lot longer. For example, if you have 500, the M4 took 15 minutes and 58 seconds. The M3 version of the Air took 2451. How long would the M1 take? I'm not willing to sit here that long, but you guys see a difference. I'm guessing 45 minutes or so. That is where you're saving major time. Now I have Final Cut opened up right here with some 4K HR265 footage. This is what most people are using right now. Now I also have some film grain applied. I have some LUTs applied. So there's stuff going on and both can play it pretty well. We were really happy with the 4K editing performance when this computer came out. Now one thing you'd see is that we are getting more use out of the GPU. Not a massive difference here when we're playing this back. But exporting this timeline, we have two minutes compared to two minutes and 30 seconds. Also not a big difference, but the M4 is the first chip since Apple launched these computers where the encoders are actually faster. But where the M4 really starts to stand out is when you're working with tougher footage or you have more titles, animations, and effects. So here I have this ProRes RAW playing and you guys could see in the CPU history, here we're using all eight cores, whereas the M4, it's literally just using the efficiency cores as well as the graphics. So that is cool to see. And the M4 chip actually has ProRes decoders and encoders, which helps it out. And exporting this five minute project, we should see a good difference. Look at that. The M4 is almost done. Bam, right there. While this is at 32%. Okay, guys, we have a minute and 20 seconds on the M4 compared to five minutes and nine seconds. That is getting close to five times faster. That is incredible. And the same result would be happening if you're using background rendering or it's creating those ProRes files. So for video editing, yes, the M1 can still work, but it's a noticeable difference going up to the M4. Okay guys, and now let's look at the battery life. After all of those tests, the M1 is at 44% battery remaining. The M4 is at 57% battery remaining. Even though it has the brighter screen, it has a lot more performance, and a lot of that takes a lot more power as well for the extra cores, higher clock speeds, you still get noticeably better battery life. So if you have been thinking about upgrading from your M1 machine, finally, to get a new one, now is the right time. This machine is better in every single way, and if you use our link down below, you can actually get it for less than the $999 price, which includes 16 gigs of RAM. If you waited, you skip the M2, skip the M3, good job, and now this is the one that is worth getting and not waiting for M5 or whatever else. It is such a big jump, even in just daily use, even just regular battery life, that you will absolutely notice it and you will enjoy it. So thank you guys for watching. Make sure you guys subscribe so you guys don't miss out on the video where we are going to get even more performance from this machine. Check out one of those videos right over there. This has been Max, and I will see you in the next video.