Apple MacBook Pro 16 2023 M3 Max Review - M3 Max challenges HX-CPUs from AMD & Intel

Our review unit is the MacBook Pro 16 with the faster of the two M3 Max chips, which features 16 CPU cores and 40 CPU cores. The base price with 48 GB RAM as well as a 1 TB SSD is $3999, but our review unit is equipped with all options including 128 GB RAM as well as a massive 8 TB SSD, which increases the price to $7199.

Apple keeps the familiar chassis we know from the two previous models, but the colors have changed. You can still get the MacBook in Silver, but instead of Space Gray, the second color is now Space Black. The laptop looks very good in black, and the color appears brighter or darker depending on the ambient lighting, but there is always a visible difference to the black keyboard, which is noticeably darker. The smaller MacBook Air in the color Midnight was a pure fingerprint magnet and you had to clean it all the time, but the new black model is better in this regard, but you will still see fingerprints faster compared to the silver model. Apple uses a chemical process, which is part of the anodizing and not a coating.

The quality of the chassis is still excellent and the aluminum chassis just feels premium and very stable. The display hinges also leave a good impression, only the maximum opening angle (135 degrees) could be larger. The hard front edge of the base unit can be an issue and cut into the wrist when you use the keyboard for longer periods. Like on the smaller MacBook Pro 14, the base unit is not tapered at any side, but due to the larger footprint, the larger MBP 16 does not feel as bulky.

The MBP 16 M3 Max is the lightest device within our comparison group at 2.147 kg and also one of the most compact devices. If you are traveling frequently, however, you should take a look at the smaller MacBook Pro 14, which is noticeably more compact and also half a kilogram lighter. The 140W power adapter including the black MagSafe cable (2 meters) only tips the scale at 347 grams.

The port situation did not change compared to the previous model and you still get three USB-C ports including Thunderbolt 4 as well as a modern HDMI 2.1 output. The MBP 16 with the M3 Max can drive up to four external displays simultaneously (3x 6K @60 Hz via Thunderbolt and 1x 4K @ 144 Hz via HDMI) and the maximum resolution via HDMI is 8K @60 Hz or 4K @240 Hz. In addition to the MagSafe connector, you can also charge the large MBP via USB-C and it works with a 65W power adapter (you obviously cannot use the full performance in this case).

The SDXC card reader on the right side is still very fast, and we determined up to 226 MB/s with our reference card (Angelbird AV Pro V60) and still 163 MB/s when we copied image files from the card, which is a good result as well. Inserted cards protrude by around 1.5 cm.

Apple still uses last year’s Wi-Fi 6E module including Bluetooth 5.3 and the overall performance is very good with stable transfer rates in combination with our reference router from Asus. We did not experience any problems with large downloads or bad reception during our review period. Apple does not offer Wi-Fi 7 modules yet.

The image quality of the 1080p webcam is still good but not comparable to front cameras on iPads. Face ID or Center Stage are still not available, either.

The base warranty for the MacBook Pro is one year. You can purchase a warranty extension (Apple Care+) for three years, which costs $399. This also includes costs for accidental damage (each subject to a service fee of $99 for screen damage or external enclosure damage, or $299 for other accidental damage). It is also possible to pay $149.99 per year for AppleCare+.

The trackpad has been the benchmark for years and the implementation with macOS is just excellent. The clicking experience is also completely identical anywhere you touch since there are no moving parts. macOS also offers plenty of customization.

We already mentioned that the new M3 Max SoCs are equipped with additional CPU cores compared to the M3 Pro models for the first time. While the M3 Pro offers up to six performance and six efficiency cores, the M3 Max throws out two efficiency cores and offers more performance cores instead. The base M3 Max has 10 performance cores and the optional high-end version even has 12 performance cores.

The MacBook Pro 16 with the M3 Max offers three energy settings on mains and battery power: Low Power, Automatic, High Power. The profile Low Power limits the chip consumption to 24 Watts, but we did not notice a performance difference between the other two modes, but the fans were much louder in the High Power mode. We performed the following benchmarks and measurements with the default Automatic mode.

The single-core performance is also around 20 % better compared to the M2 Max and Apple can keep up with Intel's H45 CPUs. The HX models still have an advantage thanks to their extremely high turbo clocks, but they still require much more power.

During our analysis of the AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX, we checked the multi-core performance of the current HX processor from AMD and Intel at lower TDP levels, and the results once again show the impressive performance of the M3 Max. At 55 Watts, only the Ryzen 9 7945HX offers slightly more multi-core performance but uses 32 threads. Intel's HX CPUs do not stand a chance though, including the top model Core i9-13980HX (a 55-Watt processor in theory, but up to 157 Watts).

As per usual, the processor performance is not reduced on battery power until the battery level drops to 3 %. More CPU benchmarks are listed in our tech section and we also recommend our analysis article of the M3 Pro/M3 Max for more information about the efficiency, which will be published soon.

We also performed our Cinebench R15 Multi loop, but you have to keep in mind that this benchmark is emulated, which affects the performance. The performance is still very good and the loop clearly shows that the CPU performance is rock steady even under sustained workloads.

The high-end M3 Max chip is equipped with a 40-core GPU, which means there are two additional cores compared to the previous 38-core unit. We also suspect the core clock is higher. The performance is between 13-25 % higher depending on the test, but the maximum power consumption dropped from 64 to 60 Watts. The big advantage of the GPU is still the shared memory, especially during video editing. We edit our review videos for YouTube with DaVinci Resolve and occasionally run into the 16 GB VRAM limit on the RTX 4090 during editing.

Compared to current laptop GPUs from Nvidia, the M3 Max GPU can clearly beat the RTX 4070 Laptop in the cross-platform 3DMark Wildlife Unlimited test and is only 9 % behind the GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop at 125 Watts and 23 % the 4090 Laptop at 175 Watts, respectively. The GFXBench test shows a deficit of 4 % for the M3 Max compared to the RTX 4080 Laptop at 175 Watts. The OpenCL performance is worse and the faster RTX GPUs are clearly ahead, but the RTX 4070 Laptop at comparable 60 Watts TGP (Galaxy Book3 16 Ultra) is 11 % slower in Geekbench.

The GPU performance is completely stable during longer workloads as well as on battery power, which is not the case for the powerful GeForce GPUs. More GPU benchmarks are listed in our tech section.

Gaming on the Mac is getting more interesting, and the new macOS 14 (Sonoma) also offers a Game mode when you play in full-screen mode. In addition to emulated titles (like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Total War: Three Kingdoms), you can also use CrossOver to play Windows games. Depending on the title, this works well (like GTA V, Far Cry 5), but sometimes you have to experiment a bit, and we do not always see the expected differences compared to the base M3-SoC. Sometimes the emulation cannot utilize the full performance of the hardware, and GTA V, for example, shows almost no GPU load while the main load is taken by the CPU.

Native games for Apple’s silicon obviously work much better, and this includes titles like Resident Evil Village or No Man’s Sky. The performance of the new Apple M3 Max is really impressive and both titles run completely smoothly (+100 fps) in QHD and maximum settings, which is also visible in the following video with gaming benchmarks.