So initial testing shows the 8gb model can handle 10bit h265 200mbs 4K 60fps Fuji videos just fine in Davinci Resolve. Colour graded, transitions and some stabilisation. Very minor lag briefly at the start of the first clip, but playback and scrubbing is fine. Rendering is quick, will do back to back comparison soon.
Lightroom editing is also fine. Changes are instant, switching between images is instant, even importing seemed a touch quicker than my 16inch.
However, I’ve found it’s Achilles heel!
Now bear in mind this is partly caused my Amazon debacle I posted in off topic. I ordered a 1tb nvme drive to arrive today and 3 empty boxes turned up. So I’ve migrated all my 16 inch files onto the 13inch, which were supposed to go on the nvme and not the ssd, so at the moment I’ve only got 4gb of ssd space left!
Trying to merge 20 DJI mavic 2 pro raw files into a 180 degree panorama brought up a low memory error and crashed LR.
So I deleted a load of files to get 80gb back and tried again.. This time it worked but was markedly slower than the 16 inch when initially merging And then processing back to the library.
Interestingly I still had over 1gb of RAM left, but it decided to stick 5gb on the swap memory.
So it works if you have plenty of ssd space left, but is considerably slower than my 16inch with 32gb ram. Again I will reiterate, the m1 cost just over £1k, the 16 inch cost over £3k a year ago.
Another test I did was noise reduction using topaz labs Denoise started via LR.
I tested several images and both loading the plugin, updating the preview and exporting back to LR was noticeably faster than the 16inch. In fact opening the plugin is so fast it barely shows the splash screen before it’s loaded the image and generated the preview.
So far impressed, but I will reserve full judgment until I’ve got the nvme set up with my Lightroom library and video files, leaving much more space on the 512gb ssd.
