I published my review of the M3 Max MacBook Pro earlier this week, and suffice it to say I was pretty impressed. I’m fond of the Space Black color and the GPU performance in particular surprised me.
But one configuration of the new MacBook Pro went a little more under the radar – the M3 Pro model. Apple wasn’t keen on sending this exact unit out to reviewers, instead moving forward with its stronger foot, the M3 Max. And while the M3 Max and Pro were slightly closer in performance in the M2 generation, this time around, it seems like there’s more of a disparity between them.
There are two eyebrow-raising specifications regarding the M3 Pro. First, the core count has been changed, reconfiguring what is used in the M2 Pro. This time, the 12-core M3 Pro has six performance cores and six efficiency cores, while the M2 Pro had eight performance cores and four efficiency cores. In this, the memory bandwidth has also been reduced from 200 GB per second to 150 GB per second. Meanwhile, Apple has started selling base configurations with 8 GB instead of 16 GB of RAM, which has caused its own small backlash. none of these sound Nice, but ultimately, performance is what really matters.
So it’s good that some actual performance numbers started leaking out. The first leak revealed some early Geekbench scores that came out last weekend, which showed some pretty disappointing results. They showed a single-core score of 3,035 and a multi-core score of 15,173, which Youtuber Vadim Yuriev notes Practically equivalent in performance to the M2 Max. Compared to the results from my own MacBook Pro, this is 28% slower than the results I got from the M3 Max.
Of course, this doesn’t address graphics, which is the biggest advantage in the M3 generation. So, I think you’ll still see improvements from the M2 Max to the M3 Pro. But it’s still not a good look.
The first in-depth review of the M3 Pro came out from Ars Technica on Thursday, and many of the initial concerns were confirmed. The M3 Pro is clearly better than the M2 Pro and M3, but it cannot be compared to the Max models. While the M2 Pro used to be almost too powerful to make sense in the lineup, the M3 Pro is a much more modest improvement over the base configuration. All the while, prices have remained the same. So, while the M3 Pro works its way into the lineup, it seems like it’s mainly there to push people towards the more expensive M3 Max.
This doesn’t mean you should avoid the M3 Pro MacBook Pro at all costs. For some people, this may be enough performance at the right price. But I think it’s increasingly becoming a younger demographic than the M3 or M3 Max models.
