Best MacBook for Graphic Design Pro vs Air
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He often writes for Creative Bloq, helping creatives find their perfect laptop or PC. The charger included with the MacBook Pro 14-inch is now a proprietary MagSafe connection. Since the launch of the M1 chip last year, an increasing number of app makers have created versions of their programs that work on Apple silicone, including the likes of Adobe. Of course, all of Apple’s software, including Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro, are optimised for the M1 family of chips. For more mainstream creative work, the base model should be plenty powerful enough.
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Whether you’re a newcomer to graphic design/development or a seasoned veteran, you know that color reproducibility is a crucial aspect of design. While the most capable graphic design apps were previously only available only for Mac, that’s no longer the case. Color reproducibility on the better Windows machines has caught up since then.
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You can read more on how we test laptops to see how we evaluate these products. For now though, read on to find out our thoughts on Apple's latest MacBook. The good news is that in practise, the MacBook Pro 14-inch easily lives up to those promises. The model we reviewed comes with the 10-core Apple M1 Pro chip with 32GB unified memory, and it performed brilliantly in all of the workloads we threw at is.
The Best Macs for Graphic Design
This is an extremely long battery life for a laptop and something I didn’t appreciate until I had tried it myself. In the past, battery life was something that I never really worried about as I would normally work near a power source throughout the day. However, Apple’s new line of chips boast amazing battery life, with some reports claiming that the battery can last up to 20 hours on a single charge. Apple’s displays are one of the most talked-about features of its MacBook Pro and iMac lines.
The display covered 161.7% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, nearly double the premium laptop average of 84.4%. It also averaged 532 nits of brightness, well above the 392 category average. If you’re looking for the best Mac for graphic design on a budget, the M2 Mac Mini offers great value for money and portability. The original M1 Mac Studio was originally released with an M1 chip in 2022 alongside a new monitor the impressive 5K Apple Studio Display which, when combined with the Mac Studio, offers the ultimate graphic design setup. If you get the MacBook Pro with M3 Max chip, you can customize it with up to 128GB of RAM.
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Even more impressive, it scored a whopping 20,444 in our 3DMark Fire Strike graphics benchmark, over four times the premium laptop average of 4,351. With scores that high, this is also one of the best workstation laptops, so it can handle data and graphics-intensive tasks with ease. The screen brightness could be a bit better with the top display coming in at 335 nits and the bottom at 344 nits, which is lower than the 392 nits category average. The battery life was also a tad low at 9 hours and 18 minutes, below the category average of 10 hours and 32 minutes.
Are MacBooks really that much better than Windows laptops when in comes to graphic design?
Whenever a reader messages me on Instagram or TikTok about how much RAM they should get, this is what I say. While most Macbook Pro and iMac models come with 8GB of RAM, if you are looking for optimal performance and can afford it, I recommend upgrading to 16GB or more. This will allow you to store large files and work on multiple projects simultaneously without your computer slowing down.
Why you can trust Creative Bloq Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Although there are also other much affordable external monitors for Mac that can give you an excellent image quality. If you own a 3D design studio or do it professionally as a freelancer, the Mac Studio Pro will save you enormous amounts of processing and rendering time. While it is not upgradeable, its performance is so superior to other Macs that it has a very long lifespan and, consequently, ends up being very cost-effective. For me it’s an advantage, especially if you consider that you can buy the accessories you need according to your budget, without Apple forcing you to buy theirs.
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Media files can be quite large, and if you're working with a design that features a lot of layers or effects added into the mix, these are all going to fill up your app's RAM memory allocation very quickly. In our tests, we found Apple's claims to be on the money, with the MacBook Pro 13-inch (M2, 2022) lasting 15 and a half hours in our battery test, which involves playing a looped 1080p video. Overall, we found the performance of the MacBook Pro 13-inch (M2, 2022) to be very good, and a step above the previous model.
If you want the most powerful Mac money can buy, then you need at least $5,999 for a Mac Pro. These high-end machines are, of course, designed for professional animators and 3D visual artists. For the rest of us, the most powerful option is the 27-inch iMac (2020).
When choosing which laptop is best for graphic design, there’s no one answer. With so many makes and models on the market, the trick is to first identify how you’re planning to use the device. While it keeps the same design, the new MacBook Air gets a redesign that slims down the bezels, and also increases the screen size to 13.6-inches. That means it actually has a bigger screen than the 13.3-inches of the MacBook Pro 13-inch. With this in mind, the MacBook Pro 13-inch no longer seems like the default suggestion for creative professionals, especially those who work with visual mediums.
This kind of battery endurance means designers don't have to be chained to electrical outlets. It provides flexibility to work from coffee shops, client locations, or wherever inspiration strikes. Creative work requires mobility, and MacBook Pros deliver solid battery life to work on the go.
Normal productivity workflows can achieve 8-10 hours on a single charge. Lastly, the super fast PCIe SSD storage enables quick access to large design files and fast app launch times. Overall, the specs provide more than enough power foreven the most demanding design workloads.
They also offer significantly higher power efficiency, with up to 3 times the battery life of the prior generation. In addition, the M1 and M2 chips include Apple’s Metal API, which provides significant enhancements for graphics and computing applications. The new MacBook Air with M3 chip not only allows you to use it with two external displays, but it has also reportedly addressed a storage problem that plagued the previous M2 model. The laptop now finally has much faster storage performance since Apple has switched back to using two 128GB NAND modules instead of a single 256GB module on the SSD drive.
The factory calibration is near perfect too so you won’t have to calibrate it like most laptops used for graphic design. We strongly recommend going for an external Solid State Drive (SSD) for graphic design as they are much faster than traditional mechanical drives. In our extensive testing and research, we found that the M3 MacBook Pro is the best choice for graphic design of 2024 due to its incredible power, display and portability. If you’re not quite sure whether you should purchase a Mac or Windows for graphic design, then check out my article Why 99.9% of Graphic Designers Choose Mac here.
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