Video shows benefits of upgrading to 16GB of RAM with M1 MacBook Pro

2020 M1 13 Inch Macbook Pro Lifestyle (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

Max Tech has compared the M1 MacBook Pro with 8GB and 16GB of RAM.
Benchmark tests show major performance improvements for some heavy workloads.

Reported by MacRumors, YouTuber Max Tech has released a video highlighting the benefits that users will enjoy by upgrading the RAM in the new M1 13-inch MacBook Pro.

The base model M1-based 13-inch MacBook Pro comes with 8GB of RAM, but users can choose to upgrade to 16GB of RAM. The video compares both the 8GB and 16GB model across a number of benchmark tests including Geekbench and Cinebench.

The biggest difference was seen in an 8K RAW R3D to 4K export, which took the 8GB MacBook Pro 13 minutes 57 seconds to complete, while the 16GB MacBook Pro was able to complete it in 5 minutes 59 seconds, a time on par with the 2019 16-inch Core i9 MacBook Pro with 32GB RAM.

8k Raw To 4k Export M1 Macbook (Image credit: Max Tech)

The report notes that, even with some of the more intensive tests, temperatures on either 13-inch MacBook Pro did not reach levels requiring the fans to kick in.

Notably, during these benchmarking performance tests, Max Tech saw low performance temperatures that didn't often require the fans to kick in, which was a huge difference when comparing the M1 MacBook Pro models to Intel MacBook Pro models.

If you want to see all of the benchmark tests and performance comparisons between the 8GB and 16GB M1 13-inch MacBook Pro, check out Max Tech's video below.

Joe Wituschek is a Contributor at iMore. With over ten years in the technology industry, one of them being at Apple, Joe now covers the company for the website. In addition to covering breaking news, Joe also writes editorials and reviews for a range of products. He fell in love with Apple products when he got an iPod nano for Christmas almost twenty years ago. Despite being considered a "heavy" user, he has always preferred the consumer-focused products like the MacBook Air, iPad mini, and iPhone 13 mini. He will fight to the death to keep a mini iPhone in the lineup. In his free time, Joe enjoys video games, movies, photography, running, and basically everything outdoors.