Apple MacBook Pro (14-inch, M3) Review – Nearing Perfection but we Have Some Remarks

Temperatures and comfort, Battery Life

Max CPU load

In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.

Average P-core frequency; Average E-core frequency; CPU temp.; Package Power

The frequencies of the P and E cores are rock-solid but the CPU temperature hits 100°C in long loads.

Stability (Cinebench R23 30-min test)

After a 30-minute torture with the Cinebench R23 test, the score is just ~500 points lower than the first run which is a very good result.

Comfort during full load

The single fan isn’t working in light loads. When the CPU is stressed at 100%, the fan is noisy. Still, in this case, the keyboard and the two palm rest areas are cool enough for normal work.

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with the screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. The battery is a 69.6Wh unit, which lasts 16 hours and 40 minutes of Web browsing or 14 hours and 17 minutes of video playback.

Video playback

Brightness: 180 nits; Display Mode: SDR
Time to Full Discharge: Higher is Better

Apple MacBook Pro 14 70Wh

13h 34m

Apple MacBook Air 15 66.5Wh

9h 30m-30%

Apple MacBook Air (2022) 52.6Wh

17h 01m+25.4%

Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 14 75Wh

5h 56m-56.3%

Acer Swift Go 14 65Wh

9h 30m-30%

HP ZBook Studio G10 86Wh, 6-cell

15h 50m+16.7%

Web surfing

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.

Apple MacBook Pro 14 70Wh

16h 40m

Apple MacBook Air 15 66.5Wh

11h 40m-30%

Apple MacBook Air (2022) 52.6Wh

17h 23m+4.3%

Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 14 75Wh

7h 09m-57.1%

Acer Swift Go 14 65Wh

11h 29m-31.1%

HP ZBook Studio G10 86Wh, 6-cell

25h 00m+50%

Author: Nikolay Palaozov

Author: eng. Kroum NikolovHead of Engineering at LaptopMedia.com, inventor and innovator with 40+ years of experience in electronics and high technology.

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Parmar Gautam

2 years ago

Gautam

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