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Question

LAPTOP RECCOMENDATION MACBOOK

Forum|Forum|5 months ago
September 8, 2025
3 replies
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my work- printing designs for large print sizes like billboards, booth designs, web design, video editing, after effects bit of 3D, want to future proof for atleast 6 years
purpose of getting mac- portability, better workflow, industry integration, design

right now I am super confused between two configurations in max chip I am leaning towards a 14 inch max with 36 gb ram but somewhere I am thinking that this amount of ram will lag in the future and affect my professional workflow, like 4k video exports, 3d renders or adding effects to big size illustrator files (somethings I face issue in my current windows laptop with 16gb ram and rtx 4070 laptop), then getting a 48gb ram in 14 inch what the apple salesperson advised me to avoid due to heating issues he suggested 16 inches for this configuration

now with 16 inches my portability will suffer and a 48gb ram is way over my budget to afford

looking for cases where you face problems with 14 inch macbook pro max so I can make an informed choice basis RAM

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

@Heenaaah

I found this article to be informative:
The Professional’s Guide to Buying a Mac with Apple Silicon – March 2025 by Jeff Greenberg, March 10, 2025

HeenaaahAuthor

Known Participant

thankyouuuuuu!

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

@Heenaaah

My first Apple Silicon based MacBook Pro was the 16-inch M1 Max 32GB/1TB. My second? The 16-inch M4 Max 128GB/4TB. The first MacBook Pro was to test how well Adobe applications run on Apple Silicon - which, simply, put, is fantastic. The second MacBook Pro was to switch over to more serious work (my primary workstation is still a desktop). My prior MacBook Pro was the 2013 15-inch Retinal MacBook Pro 16GB/750GB (close to the max configuration at the time) and I was very much in the habit of starting projects on that MacBook Pro and finishing them on a 2013 Mac Pro.

You might try with something similar to what I did with your first Apple Silicon based MacBook Pro. Go with 48GB/1TB to see how it works for you while keeping an upgrade in mind. If you go with the 14-inch model, you should get the same performance that you would get from the 16-inch.

The main reason I went with more RAM the second time around is that professionally I'm used to working with 128GB to 192GB of RAM to have After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro among other apps all open at the same time. The main reason I went with more storage is that I feel 2TB is really the minimum to have your OS, applications, Photoshop Scratch Disk, After Effects Media Cache and now things like LucidLink pin location all someplace that's very, very, very fast and not having to constantly offload files

All that said, I have a 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro 16GB/512GB for email, web-based project management, and Slack. Every once and a while I open After Effects or Photoshop and they run really well there. While it wouldn't be my first choice (once you've gotten used to the XDR display of the 16-inch and 14-inch MacBook Pros for optimized HDR work - it's hard to look at anything else), I'm not sure there's a wrong option across the Apple Silicon based Macs.

What may also be worth mentionting is that I first purchased the 16-inch M1 Pro MacBook Pro (I think it was 24GB/512GB) because that's all Costco had in stock at the time. A few weeks later, they got the M1 Pro Max instock so I quickly exchanged the Pro. For the breif time I had the Pro model, the performance was great, but I never go the change to really test it.

- Warren

HeenaaahAuthor

Known Participant

Hi, thanks for taking out time to share your mac journey. I am going with m4 max chip in 14- just a bit caught between 36gb or 48gb only because on the 14 one some people have views of it throttling due to smaller size and small fans and higher configuration (48gb has more cores also), while it is unlike windows heating, but since I render stuff illustrator, a bit blender and after effects, don't want the system to go zonk, if I need to do two workflows simultaneously. otherwise 36gb feels a bit risk in nothing but wanting to speed up professional work where RAM is required

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

The MacBook Pros handle heavy workloads very well.

One of the first things I did with the 16-inch M1 Max MacBook Pro was render a very effects heavy thirty second 2160p30 After Effects Composition. It took 89 minutes. My 2019 Mac Pro for work took 91 minutes. My 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro used for email took just under 9 hours.

It was the type of Comp that gets the fans spinning like crazy.

Peru Bob

Community Expert

want to future proof for atleast 6 years

By @Heenaaah

That's wishful thinking.

It's too hard to predict what hardware requirements will be that far out, unless you plan on sticking with today's versions.

@Warren Heaton10841144 can you help?

HeenaaahAuthor

Known Participant

just need a general idea on the workflow on a mac always used windows, while max chip is promising but the ram constraint is something I need to get more input on from people using

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