Why I bought the CHEAPEST M3 MacBook Pro 14 inch - Initial impressions and Review

Hello, welcome back to a new video. Hope

you all had a lovely Christmas. I had a

great Christmas Day. I actually bought

myself one of these MacBook Pro 14-inch

M3 base model for my Christmas present,

and I wanted to talk about it. Today is

going to be like an initial impressions

kind of video. I've used it for about a

day now, and I'm going to do more videos

in the coming weeks, things like a proper

review— how good is it compared to the ROG

Ally, is it any good for gaming— but for

today we're just going to talk about why I

decided to buy it and some brief things

just to touch on it lightly. So I managed

to get this 8GB RAM model because actually

I did want the 16GB model, but they didn't

have it in the shop. They said I had to

wait until January 5th if I wanted the

16GB model, and the only 16GB model they

had was like the M3 Max, which is way more

expensive than what I can actually afford.

So I decided to get the base model M3 over

the M2 Air because Well, I did think the

M2 Air looks pretty cool, but the M2 chip

is like a year old now. I wanted the brand

new chip, which is the M3, and I could

have waited for the M2— I mean, the M3

MacBook Air to come out later this next

year. But honestly, I just didn't really

want to have to wait all the way until

next year to get a MacBook Air. And I

didn't want to get the M2 MacBook Air

because the M2 chip is actually less

powerful than the chip in my ROG Ally.

The Z1 Extreme chip in this ROG Ally is

actually more powerful than the M2 chip.

So I'm not going to spend all this money

to get this nice cool new MacBook and the

chip is worse than the thing that I've

already got. I want to get a new chip.

The M3 is actually way more powerful than

the Z1 Extreme, so I went for the thick

MacBook Pro. I also thought benefits of

the MacBook Pro over the MacBook Air would

be higher quality screen, better speakers.

It's got a fan inside so it can keep

things cool if I need to do high

performance tasks. And I think the M3 is

just obviously in general or more powerful

or more efficient than the M2. Okay, so

the reason why I decided to buy one of

these whilst I have the ROG Ally is

because actually I'm planning to go to

Japan next year and I'm gonna go on a

biking trip. That means I need a very

lightweight backpack, which is why I got

the ROG Ally in the first place. The

problem with the ROG Ally is the screen is

really tiny. It is a 7-inch screen, and

that's just way too small to do my my

gaming stuff and my editing and streaming

stuff. And I could get a portable monitor,

but then they'll just increase the overall

weight. So the weight of the ROG Ally is

600 grams, but if I add in my external

keyboard, my external mouse, and then if I

get a portable monitor as well, that's

going to be well over 1.5 kg. And the

MacBook Pro comes in at 1.6 kg, so Yes,

it is more than double the weight of the

ROG Ally, but the ROG Ally on its own is

not very useful as like a desktop computer

unless you add all this stuff to it. Then

it does become around the same weight as

the MacBook Pro. So I decided to get rid

of the ROG Ally. Now I'm going to try and

sell it and I'm going to keep this in

favor over that. Now you might be

thinking, how are you going to do gaming

on the MacBook? That is something I had to

consider. There are a lot of games I like

to play recently, like Red Dead Redemption

2. I've been playing a lot of that. I've

been playing a lot Diablo 4, Rainbow Six.

I can't play those games on a MacBook

unless you like sideload Windows, but then

the frame rate is going to be rubbish. So

I did have to take that into

consideration, and I came to the

conclusion that gaming is not really going

to be like a really important thing for me

when I'm in Japan, and maybe I should be

doing other things than just wasting hours

and hours every day playing stupid games.

Now you can do gaming on this if you go

onto the Steam store and filter games by

macOS. There's quite a lot of games on

selection. Like Baldur's Gate 3 is on Mac,

and there's a bunch of Warhammer Total War

games are on Mac, and some Resident Evil

games, and actually quite a lot of indie

games like Cult of the Lamb, Darkest

Dungeon, Hollow Knight. There's plenty of

games on this, so if you really want to

game, you can game. And I guess you could

say, well, if you wanted a lightweight

backpack, then why did you get the Pro

instead of the MacBook Air? And I nearly

did get the MacBook Air 13-inch. It was a

lot lighter when I was doing this with one

hand. I could lift it really easily. But I

can lift this really easily too with one

hand. Look, I'm just without any effort at

all, I'm lifting up and down. This does

still feel pretty lightweight actually.

It's 1.6 kg. I think the MacBook Air

13-inch is about 1.2 kg, so it's like 400

grams difference in weight. It's not a

huge amount. I don't think you're going to

notice it that much. In comparison,

this keyboard plus the ROG Ally, this

weighs about 580 grams, this weighs about

600, so it's like 1.2 kg here. So it's not

really a huge difference going from the

ROG Ally to the MacBook Pro. And the

reason why I got the MacBook Pro is

because I really wanted, I really wanted a

bigger screen. Like I said earlier, I need

like a proper computer with proper

computer software, not mobile app software

like on mobile phones and tablets. I mean,

I could have gotten a tablet if I wanted a

screen, but tablets don't really have

Windows or Mac kind of proper computer

operating system type of programs that I

do use on a daily basis. So I had to get

some kind of computer, and I decided to

get the MacBook over Windows laptop

because Windows laptops, they just look

kind of boring or ugly. They're either

really cheap, like $400, $500 rubbish

notebook with some kind of Intel Acceleron

Cybertron Intel i5 Xe Iris

internal graphics, like some crap spec

like that. $500, yeah, you can get like a

basic notebook that can probably do the

things I wanted to do, but they look

boring. And then you can get like a really

ultra thin, like the LG Gram laptop looks

pretty cool, and the ASUS OLED laptops

look pretty cool. But then when I looked

at the price tag, they were around the

same price, actually more. Than the

MacBook. I think the ASUS OLED was like

nearly $2,000, which is about the same

price as this. So if you want a nice

Windows laptop, it's going to cost you

around the same price as a MacBook. A lot

of people say MacBooks are overpriced

pieces of junk, when really, when you get

a similar-specced Windows laptop that has

nice quality and nice finish and nice

build quality, they usually come in around

the same price as a MacBook. So take for

example Take for example my

previous laptop. If you remember, I had

the 17-inch Razer Blade Gaming pro gaming

laptop with RTX 3060 graphics and 16GB of

RAM. That thing cost me $2,500 to

buy back in 2021, which is $800

more expensive than this. This cost me

$1,700 and it's better quality,

it's lighter. The Razer Blade 17-inch

Gaming Pro gaming laptop weighed nearly 5

kg with the power brick. 5 kg! It made

my backpack so heavy. And this is only 1.6

kg, and there's no— there's not really a

power brick. There's just like a, like a

thing, a power adapter you plug into the

wall, but it's like, it's like that big,

and it's made out of plastic, not a big

massive brick. So this is way lighter in

the hand and in the backpack. So when it

comes to other things like the keyboard

and the speakers and the screen, the

keyboard has to be one of the best

keyboards I've ever used. It's really nice

and easy to type on this. The buttons are

nice and big. I mean, look how big the

keys are compared to,

compared to this where the buttons are

very tall, like they go in quite deeply

when you press it. What happens was when I

was typing quickly, I would accidentally

knock the adjacent keys with my fingers

before I let go of the key I just typed

in. So it was kind of annoying typing on

this. I much prefer the MacBook's keyboard

over this, and I also obviously prefer it

over this keyboard. Like, this was my

other portable solution. This is folding

keyboard. This keyboard is terrible. It

kind of has similar flat keys like the

MacBook does, but because it has this

hinge here And some letters like T and V

are strangely half-sized. It was really

hard to type on this, so that's rubbish.

The MacBook keyboard is really nice and

backlit, and the trackpad's pretty nice,

but I don't use the trackpad because I use

my plug-in mouse, wireless mouse. One

thing I don't like about it is there's no

USB ports, there's only 2 USB-Cs.

Only 2 USB-Cs, and to use my Logitech

wireless mouse, which has this USB

receiver, I need to use a USB-C adapter.

But the problem is, when you plug in the

USB-C adapter, it blocks the other USB-C

port. So you really need to just use a USB

hub if you're going to plug in a lot of

things, which is kind of annoying. I think

it'd be fine because I only have my mouse

plugged in, but if, let's say for example,

I want to plug in my mic and my mouse and

something else, I don't know, then yeah,

I'd need the USB hub. So far my initial

impressions would be, yeah, everything

about it is just very nice. The screen is

very nice. The speakers sounded a bit

boomy. I don't know how to describe it,

like it's got a lot of bass and I don't

know if I like that. I feel like I prefer

the speakers on my ROG Ally just because

it has less boominess, but maybe that's

just because I'm not used to having

speakers that actually have bass and

that's supposed to be a good thing.

Maybe. I'm not sure if I'll get used to

it. I guess I have no choice. Yeah, the

keyboard's nice, screen's nice, speaker's

nice, everything's nice. People think,

oh, 8GB of RAM is not enough, but I've got

this RAM, uh, RAM tracking app

thing that shows you how much RAM is being

used at the top of the screen, and most of

the time it says I'm using about 6GB of

RAM, and it feels completely fine. I don't

feel like it's stuttering or it's slow.

I've got like 5 apps open on Safari— I

mean, 5 tabs open. I got Discord open,

I've got Steam open, watching YouTube. It

never really goes above 6GB of RAM, and I

don't know what to do to like really get

it to push above 8GB of RAM usage. Maybe

if I like edit a video and export a video

whilst watching YouTube and chatting on

Discord, it might get close to 8GB, but I

don't really do anything that really needs

needs more than 8GB. So I feel like for

what I do on a laptop, which is not a lot

apart from watching YouTube, chatting on

Discord, and editing a few videos, or

maybe doing some live streaming, I don't

really need a lot of RAM. So for me, 8GB

of RAM is completely fine. I don't feel

like it's slowing down the system. And for

the battery, I have been testing the

battery life, and I've been using it on

battery for about 5 hours. Yeah, 9 AM,

now it's 2 PM, so that's 5 hours on

battery and I have 20% battery

left. So 80% of the battery used in 5

hours is pretty damn good, and I'm not

using eco mode or battery mode, I'm using

full power mode. That's pretty impressive

considering the fact that the Razer Blade

17-inch pro gaming laptop would only last

about an hour and a half even on battery

mode on battery And that's just pretty

crap compared to— I can probably get 6

hours out of this. Now tomorrow, or maybe

after today, I will do another battery

test using eco mode and low power mode

and then see if we can get like 10-hour

battery life, which would be pretty

insane. So yeah, I'm pretty impressed with

the battery life so far. Actually, at

first I ordered the Space Gray model, but

then I went into the Apple Store and the

silver model just looks so much better to

me. Look at the, the way the black

keyboard contrasts against the light

silverness. The Space Gray basically looks

like this, but it's just like darker.

So I went into the store and I asked them

if I could switch the color, which was

kind of annoying because they said no.

They said I would have to refund my first

order and then buy a new MacBook. So I

ended up buying 2 MacBooks. They still

haven't refunded my money yet. They said

it could take like a week. So I've paid

for 2 MacBook Pros actually because They

can't— I don't know why they can't just

give you the silver one instead of the

Space Gray one, but they have to do

everything properly, I guess. And it's

kind of nice because here in Thailand this

only costs 60,000 baht, which in pounds

is £1,366. If you wanted to buy this in

the UK, it would cost £1,699.

So I saved like £400 by buying this in

Thailand instead of buying it in the UK.

I don't know why it's so expensive in the

UK. So yeah, those are my thoughts so far.

I actually used to have an M1 MacBook Air

about a year ago, but I decided to sell

it to my sister. And comparing the M1

MacBook Air to this M3 MacBook Pro,

so far I haven't really noticed anything

different. I can't really tell what's

different really. It feels exactly the

same as the M1 MacBook Air. The only

difference is it's heavier and it doesn't

have the tapered edge like the MacBook Air

M1 does. I don't know if I should have

just gotten an M1 Air or not sold it to my

sister in the first place, but I quite

like this so far. I'm sure there's,

there's like a usage scenario where the M3

just blows the M1 out of the water, like

for gaming. I mean, I can do some gaming,

which is nice. I don't know if I could do

the same quality of gaming on the M1

MacBook Air, but it's nice to know that I

have a fan inside. So if do some gaming,

it's not going to blow up and get really

hot or anything. So yeah, I have

to see how it goes with my workflow. I

haven't really done any workflow yet

because I haven't gotten the chance to

stream yet. I haven't gotten the chance to

really do some proper video editing on it

yet. And, um,

yeah, I guess we'll have to wait until a

few weeks until I have my proper full

usage review, and then we'll do a review

and stuff like that. But so far, my only

complaints would be— hmm,

my main complaint, I honestly don't

know yet. I quite like it,

so I think I'll be setting the ROG Ally.