Apple unveiled its M1 Pro and M1 Max chips at the Apple Unleashed event when it unveiled its new MacBook Pro 2021 (14-inch) and MacBook Pro 2021 (16-inch) laptops.

The company touted the power of its Apple silicon processors and made direct comparisons to PC laptops, so much so that even non-Apple fans took note of the raw power these new M1 processors supposedly have. On paper, the M1 Pro and M1 Max look to be game changers for the MacBook Pro line.

We now have the numbers to prove that the M1 processor is as powerful as we believed.

The MacBook Pro 2021 14-inch (M1 Pro 10-core GPU, 32GB RAM) and MacBook Pro 2021 16-inch (M1 Max 32-core GPU, 64GB RAM) were used with the Asus ProArt StudioBook 16, HP ZBook Fury 17.3- Inch G8, and Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio compared to three comparable laptops: the ProArt StudioBook and Surface Laptop Studio both have 32GB of RAM, while the ZBook Fury has 64GB .

Just to be sure, we also compared it to last year's MacBook Air M1 and MacBook Pro M1 to get a sense of how the new M1 chip stacks up against its predecessor.

In the Geekbench 5.4 multi-core test, the M1 Pro and M1 Max scored 12,477 and 12,683, respectively. These scores are higher than the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio's 5,820 and well above the Asus ProArt StudioBook 16's 9,158 and HP ZBook Fury's 9,716. M1 MacBook Air (5,962) and M1 MacBook Pro (5,925) also cannot compete.

The new laptop also wins the video transcoding test with Handbrake, converting 4K movies to 1080p in 4 minutes 51 seconds and 4 minutes 48 seconds, respectively, almost half the 11 minutes 24 seconds of the Surface Laptop Studio. m1 Both the Pro and M1 Max MacBooks also beat Asus and HP laptops in this category, but not by much. They also beat the MacBook Air M1 by 9 minutes 15 seconds and the MacBook Pro M1 by 7 minutes 44 seconds.

Finally, there is only one performance category where the new M1 Pro/Max laptops lose: in the PugetBench Photoshop test, the M1 Pro (806) and M1 Max (877) scored lower than the ZBook Fury (1017). However, their respective times (4 minutes 54 seconds for the M1 Pro and 4 minutes 44 seconds for the M1 Max) are comparable to the ZBook Fury's 4 minutes 56 seconds; we do not know the Photoshop numbers for the Surface Laptop Studio or Asus ProArt StudioBook 16. However, both new laptops outperform the MacBook Air M1 (653) and MacBook Pro M1 (649).

Gaming was one area where we expected the 2021 MacBook Pro to really shine. However, our tests revealed some surprising numbers: Sid Meier's Civilization VI runs at 46 fps on the M1 Pro (1512x982p resolution) and 46 fps on the M1 Max (1728x1080 resolution). These numbers are slightly better than the 37 fps and 38 fps achieved on the M1 MacBook Air and M1 MacBook Pro, respectively.

The new MacBook falls short of the staggering 92 fps achieved by the ProArt Studio Book 16 (1080p). The Surface Laptop Studio (66 fps) and ZBook Fury (83 fps) also performed better. As I said before, the MacBook Pro M1 Max is an absolute beast and a complete treasure for gamers.

Battery life is phenomenal compared to the competition, with the M1 Pro (14:08) and M1 Max (15:31) MacBooks lasting much longer than the ProArt StudioBook (6:16) and ZBook Fury (7:09). It also surpassed the Surface Laptop Studio's best time of 12:03. Like the MacBook Air M1 (14:41) and MacBook Pro M1 (16:32) before it, the new MacBook Pro with the 2021 M1 has excellent all-day battery life.

The MacBook Pro with M1 Pro and M1 Max is a serious business model, as our tests have shown. Apple wasn't kidding when it said the new M1 chip is the company's most powerful processor. Gaming performance is disappointing, but by every other measure, the new M1 outperforms the competition.