Advice for a Windows Premiere Pro veteran switching to a MacBook M1 Max

I had to start using Windows for editing for freelance after decades of Mac use a few years back (still also using Macs). The biggest pain was getting used to the positioning of the 'control' key. Even now it takes a few minutes to 'brain switch' between the 2 systems.

It took me a year to get really comfortable with Windows OS ... mainly because I like to know how it works and be able to trouble shoot myself. It may take you a while to get comfortable with MacOS. Out of the two systems I do prefer Mac ... it's just more elegant (and has twirl down folders!)

Switched to MacBook Pro only editing (Premiere Pro) from tower Macs for all my own work many years ago and don't regret it at all.

At home and at the office I have identical Monitors that plug straight in. A single 27 inch with the MacBook Pro along side on a raised stand + external keyboard and mouse is enough for me. If I upgraded - I would go for a single larger monitor rather than 2 monitors.

Having a port extension device is nice, though not as necessary with the additional ports on the new M1 pro/max Macbook Pros. I use an OWC box - one cable to plug in on arrival and it provides power, monitor connection and additional ports.

I do prefer to go with the largest internal drive possible/affordable. Currently I've got 4TB internal. Means I can have multiple projects on the MacBook without having to worry about external drives on the move (except for backup and archiving). The internal drives on Macbook pros run pretty much faster than many external solutions. I get 2300MBps write and 2400MBps read speeds form the internal drive.

When travelling for work I like to organise an external monitor on-location if possible and carry a number of adaptors to handle most any monitor available (Thunderbolt 4 to DVI, to Display Port, to VGA etc). Apples adaptors are expensive but always work.

But I also take a 12.9 inch iPad Pro with me and use 'Duet' to use it as a second monitor in a pinch.

Premiere and AE have run well for me on MacBooks over the years.  Though I'm running on the fastest previous generation 16" Intel Macbook Pro. Prior to that a 2017 and 2015 Macbook Pro. There are sometimes Mac specific bugs but then there were Windows specific problems too.

I do avoid upgrading MacOS too quickly and wait for the bugs to be ironed out first - usually waiting for the next version of Premiere for Adobe to adapt to the OS changes .. or even longer.

Your existing monitors should work fine.

Good luck!

There are three early results from a maxed-out M1 Max-powered MacBook Pro (with 64 GB of unified RAM) in the PugetSystems PugetBench database. That system, at least in the standard preset testing in PugetBench for Premiere Pro, whalloped everything, desktop or laptop, short of a third-gen AMD 3000-series Threadripper tower workstation in all of the PugetBench video tests except for the GPU test. The overall performance of that maxed-out MacBook Pro compares favorably with the most powerful of the mainstream-platform desktop PCs on that list.

The 10-core M1 Pro would perform at about the same performance level as a typical 8-core desktop CPU-powered PC that's equipped with a good upper-midrange GPU.