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Apple has announced its latest silicon for professional users, the Apple M2 Pro and M2 Max, and Apple is promising some seriously improved performance with this second generation.
With the phenomenal success of Apple’s switch to its own silicon in 2020, it’s not at all surprising that it succeeds the M1 Pro and M1 Max. Those chips powered some of the best laptops ever produced, the MacBook Pro 14-inch (2021) and MacBook Pro 16-inch (2021).
With the release of the MacBook Air (M2) and MacBook Pro 13-inch (M2) in 2022, all eyes were on the announcement of more dedicated Pro chips in 2023, and Apple didn’t disappoint, dropping a surprise announcement on its website and media accounts on Jan. 17 with barely a press invite to plan ahead for launch (thanks Apple!).
But now that the two chips have been unveiled, we know an awful lot about them and how they should have huge appeal to creative professionals everywhere.
Apple M2 Pro and M2 Max: straight to the point
- What is it? Apple’s latest professional system-on-a-chip for Mac desktops and MacBooks
- How much is it? The chips are part of a pack and so won’t sell on their own, but these are definitely premium upgrades when available.
- When can I get it? You can order the new MacBooks M2 Pro and M2 Max, as well as the M2 Pro Mac Mini, right now, with US and UK delivery from January 23, and Australian deliveries from February 3.
Apple’s new M2 Pro and M2 Max chips will be available in a few devices starting January 24, 2023. The M2 Pro will be available in both the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models, as well as the new Mac Mini, also announced on January 17. The M2 Max will (for now) only be available in the two new MacBook Pro models.
Apple M2 Pro and M2 Max: release date
The Apple M2 Pro and M2 Max will be in the latest MacBook Pro 14-inch and 16-inch models announced on January 17, 2023, and the M2 Pro will be available as an upgrade option to the Apple Mac Mini (M2) , also announced on January 17.
When you actually receive these products will depend on where you live, with US order deliveries starting January 23rd. Australia, China and others will have to wait a few more weeks for their orders to be delivered, which is expected to begin on February 3.
Apple M2 Pro and M2 Max: specifications
The M2 Pro and M2 Max aren’t as radical an innovation as the M1 Pro and M1 Max were when they launched, as these latest chips are an iterative improvement over the existing Apple silicon.
That doesn’t mean they aren’t a big deal, especially for creative professionals who can never have enough performance to get through resource-intensive workloads like video editing and 3D modeling.
Starting with the M2 Pro, Apple says it’s crammed in about 40 billion transistors on the chip, which is almost 20% more than what the M1 Pro packed in. Add to that a larger GPU and twice the memory bandwidth of the standard M2 (up to 200 GB/s) and you have a very powerful chip indeed. Whether the chip itself will live up to its specs, of course, remains to be seen.
The M2 Pro has a 10- or 12-core CPU and a 16-core or 19-core GPU (with up to 2,432 execution units in the 19-core GPU), and can be paired with up to 32 GB of unified memory. In addition, the eight performance cores in the 12-core M2 Pro feature 32 MB of L2 cache, with an additional 4 MB available for the four efficiency cores.
For the M2 Max Apple decided to go really big here and crammed 67 billion transistors onto this chip although it seems to be going mainly to the GPU as there are only 12 CPU cores but the number of GPU cores goes up to 30 for starters, with an option to go as high as 38.
All this can be combined with up to 96 GB of memory (with a memory bandwidth of 400 GB/s) and a dedicated media engine for hardware-accelerated video encoding and decoding for faster processing of 4K and 8K video streams, making it an ideal chip for edit video on the go or in the office.
Apple M2 Pro and M2 Max: Performance
It’s hard to say what to expect from the performance of the M2 Pro and M2 Max without testing it ourselves, but at least Apple makes some performance claims that we can at least put a pin in and see if they come true once we’ve done our testing.
Apple claims the M2 Pro will have about 20% better CPU performance than the M1 Pro, 30% better GPU performance, and 40% faster neural engine performance than an M1 Pro.
The M2 Max should have around 30% GPU speeds over the M1 Max, but that’s pretty much all for the numbers Apple gives us on these chips, and even then they’re best taken with a very healthy pinch of salt.