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Qualcomm has announced the details of its next-generation mobile chipset, Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. In addition to a new naming scheme, the new mobile platform brings a number of firsts and improves upon its already-capable Snapdragon 888+ predecessor.

Starting first with the photo-centric improvements, Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor features Snapdragon Sight Technology—the name given to the 18-bit image signal processor (ISP) onboard the chipset. This marks the first time an 18-bit ISP has been developed for mobile devices and there are three of them onboard the new mobile platform. In total, the ISP can process up to 3.2 gigapixels per second, four times more data than its predecessor. That kind of bandwidth means you can up to 200MP photos from a single camera module or up to 36MP photographs from three camera modules at once. It also means 8K HDR and HDR10+ video will be possible.

Qualcomm says the new triple-ISP array can support up to 30 frames per second (fps) stills shooting with three 36MP cameras, one 64MP camera and one 36MP camera or a single 108MP camera, all with zero shutter lag.

The ISP will also have an array of dedicated engines for specific photo-related tasks. One is Bokeh Engine, a new tech that for adding background blur to images and video. Qualcomm has partnered with Leica to bring a collection of three new Leitz Looks filters that replicate the unique out-of-focus blur seen in some of Leica’s most iconic lens designs. The new 'Noctilux,' 'Street' and 'Vintage' Leitz Looks will be based on the bokeh from Leica's 50mm Noctilux, 35mm Summilux and 28mm Summilux lenses, respectively.

Another engine is a new Multi-Frame engine, designed specifically for merging multiple frames together to reduce noise and increase dynamic range in challenging scenes. The last is an Ultrawide Engine, designed specifically to de-warp the perspective distortion and minimize chromatic aberrations in images captured with ultrawide camera modules.

Aritifical intelligence is once again at the forefront of Qualcomm’s new processor and is behind many of the AI-powered features it has to offer. At the heart of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is a 7th Gen Qualcomm AI Engine that uses both high-performance and energy-efficient cores to deliver double the memory and speed of its predecessor. This not only powers the aforementioned Leica Leitz Look filters, but also Qualcomm’s face-detection capabilities, natural language processing for personal assistants and a health feature, designed in collaboration with Sonde Health, that uses on-device AI to analyze users vocal patterns to determine if the owner of the device is at risk for various health issues, such as asthma, depression, COVID-19 and more.

Qualcomm has also included a new Always-On ISP, separate from the three main ISP cores. This dedicated ISP will enable manufacturers to keep a single camera running at all times without draining the battery. While the privacy implications of this are certainly something to consider, Qualcomm says this technology can be used for always-on face unlocking and automatically locking the display or hiding sensitive notifications if the always-on camera module recognizes someone else is looking at the screen (or peeking over your shoulder for that matter).

Speaking of security, Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 features a dedicated Trust Management Engine for keeping users data secure on-device, including personal effects like digital car keys, drivers’ licenses and more using the Android Ready Secure Element (SE) standard.

As for connectivity, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 mobile platform includes Qualcomm Technologies’ 4th gen Snapdragon X65 5G Modem-RF System, which tops out at speeds up to 10Gbps. There is also support for more 5G bands than ever before, as well as global multi-SIM support. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity has also been improved, with speeds up to 3.6Gbps over Wi-Fi 6 and 6E and improved Bluetooth support, including lossless audio via Snapdragon Sound Technology, which uses Qualcomm’s aptX Lossless Technology for CD-quality playback over Bluetooth.

If past years are anything to go by, we can expect to see the first devices with Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 mobile platform in the first quarter of 2022. And, as always, it's up to the various smartphone manufacturers to include the required hardware and featureset to make the most of all of these capabilities. If you're wondering what is possible, XDA Developers have gotten their hands on a reference device and taken it through the paces to see what manufacturers could, in theory, develop.

Qualcomm didn't elaborate on much it in our briefing, but DPReview was informed that Qualcomm has partnered with Sony Semiconductor Solutions Group to develop an internal lab in its San Diego headquarters to develop future image sensors destined for smartphones.

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Winners of the Hasselblad Masters 2021 competition

Today, winners of the 2021 Hasselblad Masters competition were announced. Photographers from all over the globe submitted a set of 3 images, for a total of 63,000, to 12 categories including Aerial, Architecture, Portrait, Product, and Heritage – a newly added category to commemorate the camera maker's 80th anniversary. A panel of judges, including Isabella Tabachi, Tyler Shields, and our own Damien Demolder are part of the Grand Jury.

Aerial winner Florian Ledoux had this to say to DPReview: 'As a photographer using Hasselblad cameras through drone technology to capture the Art of Nature, it is one of the greatest honors to win the Hasselblad Master title. I believe this will lead to great mutual projects and collaboration with Hasselblad that I love for their quality and knowledge on the equipment we need to capture the Art that surround us.

These images winning the Hasselblad Aerial Master are the result of ten years committed to revealing the beauty of the powerful but yet fragile poles. Creating a craft representing the Art of Nature is much more than what you see simply at the surface. It is an emotional journey that starts far beneath our subconscious. Eventually, it surfaces in our mind, reaching the depth of our heart before continuing to flow throughout our blood to reach the tool that helps us to capture the elegance and grace of the natural world.

I believe these series show the positive impacts aerial images can have, revealing species in a way never seen before. The Hasselblad camera mounted on the drone (DJI Mavic 2 Pro) become then the extension of my soul and my heart, unlocking creativity beyond the limits.'

Winners will receive Hasselblad medium format cameras in 2022. All winning images in their entire sets can be viewed on the camera brand's website. Future competition hopefuls should also note that using a Hasselblad camera is not a requirement to enter.

Aerial Winner: Florian Ledoux (Norway)

Architecture Winner: Albrecht Voss (Germany)

Art Winner: Gavin Goodman (South Africa)

Beauty & Fashion Winner: Ramón Vaquero (Spain)

Landscape/Nature Winner: Honghua Shi (China)

Portrait Winner: Marek Würfl (Slovakia)

Product Winner: Paul Fuentes (United Kingdom)

Project//21 Winner: Yiaho Wang (China)

Street/Urban: Nikolay Schegolev (Russia)

Wedding Winner: Mati Machner (Austria)

Wildlife Winner: Alice Zilberg (Israel)

Heritage Winner: Marcus Møller Bitsch (Denmark)

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Shizuko Ina (middle) was recently identified by the Library of Congress in this image from 1942. Ina was imprisoned in the United States from 1942-1946.

World War II was a horrific experience for many people around the world. On American soil, Pearl Harbor was far from the only tragedy. Following the Japanese attack on Hawaii, over a hundred thousand Americans of Japanese ancestry became the victims of national security fears. President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 resulted in the internment of Japanese Americans in established restricted zones and internment camps from 1942 to 1946. A total of 10 camps imprisoned an estimated 120,000 Japanese Americans, approximately two-thirds of whom were American citizens, for the duration of the war.

Many prisoners remain unidentified, and the Library of Congress wants the public's help to learn more about the people who fell victim to rampant fear-mongering in the 1940s. Flickr is also joining the mission, asking people to look through an album of photographs captured before and during Japanese American internment. Survivors and descendants are encouraged to provide names of unidentified subjects and, ideally, offer additional context and history to be preserved in the Library of Congress's expansive catalog.

One such prisoner was unidentified for 80 years. However, the Library of Congress was able to connect with her daughter and grandson. Shizuko Ina is now identified in the catalog record for her photo (leading image) and additional context and history has been added. The image, captured by famous photographer Dorothea Lange, shows Ina standing at Kinmon Hall in San Francisco on April 25, 1942, waiting to be assigned a 'family number' before being imprisoned with her husband, Itaru Ina. The Ina family was moved to a concentration camp in Topaz, Utah, before being moved to Tule Lake Segregation Center in Northern California. The family was separated in 1945 and then reunited at a camp in Texas in 1946. This additional information was provided by Shizuko Ina's daughter, Satsuki, Ina, in February 2020.

Fear and war can bring out the worst in people. It's important that countries, including the United States, not brush over the ugly parts of their past. Even if it felt justifiable to some at the time, the internment of American citizens was little more than rampant racism and abuse of power. The clock cannot be turned back, but we can expand our understanding of those affected by the forced incarceration and ensure that the victims are not forgotten.

If you or anyone you know may be able to help, please send them to this gallery. There are 30 photos in need of similar treatment, context and history. The entire collection of 127 images can be viewed at the Library of Congress.

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Images courtesy of the Library of Congress and Flickr.

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After spending nearly 200 days in space during his second mission to the International Space Station (ISS), French astronaut Thomas Pesquet has returned to Earth after having captured nearly a quarter of million photos.

As we've seen, Pesquet has been very busy in space. He's photographed a rare blue 'transient luminous event,' he's shot 360-degree video tours of the Space Station, and he's photographed a blue auroral display. Pesquet has been sharing many photos on Twitter, including photos of airports (Pesquet has a background as a commercial pilot), rivers in Africa, stunning mountain ranges in Peru, and much more.

Thomas Pesquet captured a lot more photos during his second stint in space than during his first trip in 2017. In an interview, seen below, Pesquet discusses the importance of sharing photos from space. He also talks about the resonsibiilty he feels to show how Earth appears from above. 'I think there is a responsibility to share this point of view because you see the fragility of the Earth. All the astronauts who come back to Earth are going to tell you that here it seems limitless and infinite, but when you see the Earth from space, it’s very finite with limited resources. So there is a responsibility to share that viewpoint so that people understand the situation we are in.'

The four @SpaceX Crew-2 astronauts talk about the wide variety of @ISS_Research they conducted during their six months in space. pic.twitter.com/nOBnD07KtM

— International Space Station (@Space_Station) November 15, 2021

Pesquet also spoke alongside his fellow SpaceX Crew-2 astronauts about their experiences at the ISS. You can check out that video below.

The four @SpaceX Crew-2 astronauts talk about the wide variety of @ISS_Research they conducted during their six months in space. pic.twitter.com/nOBnD07KtM

— International Space Station (@Space_Station) November 15, 2021

Pesquet did another interview with the European Space Agency's Julien Harrod. Pesquet touches on multiple topics, including how the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft differed from the Russian Soyuz craft he was aboard in 2017. Pesquet also described the changes he saw on Earth after just a few years.

Below, you can check out just a small sample of the photos Pesquet captured while aboard the ISS. If you'd like to keep up to date with him as he continues to share more of the hundreds of thousands of shots he took, follow him on Twitter.

🌎🔍 Repetitive forms on Earth, but on closer inspection very, very different landscapes. The mountains of Peru emerge from the clouds, looking similar to the landscape in Africa emerging from a river. #MissionAlpha pic.twitter.com/q1Edgu6sK3

— Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) November 27, 2021

Une victoire contre les @AllBlacks, ça méritait des photos de Nouvelle-Zélande ! Bravo à leur équipe 🏉 qui n’a pas démérité hier, et surtout félicitations au #XVdeFrance pour cette victoire historique contre la référence mondiale du rugby. Good game! #MissionAlpha #FRAvNZL pic.twitter.com/732GUPagN3

— Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) November 21, 2021

You know when you come back from a trip and need to organise your photos? I took over 245000 photos during #MissionAlpha 😬 some good, some for #timelapses, and some bad 😊 To not forget the magical @Space_Station, I'll post more now and again… like this one of #Europe at night. pic.twitter.com/xjHNPakxUU

— Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) November 18, 2021

Bittersweet feeling to leave @Space_Station. A magical place in the sky that grants superpowers like floating and seeing🌍in a glance. 🙏to the people that built it, for everyone's benefit. It gives me hope that humans can achieve anything, with good intentions, when we want to. pic.twitter.com/jTYA5aqa5B

— Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) November 8, 2021

We were treated to the strongest auroras of the entire mission, over north America and Canada. Amazing spikes higher than our orbit🤩, and we flew right above the centre of the ring, rapid waves and pulses all over. #MissionAlpha https://t.co/5rdb08ljhx pic.twitter.com/0liCkGvRCh

— Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) November 6, 2021

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Zhong Yi Optics has announced the release of its new Mitakon Speedmaster 90mm F1.5 lens, a fast, manual prime designed to be a more budget-friendly alternative to Leica’s $14,000 90mm F1.5 Summilux M.

The lens, which will be available for Canon RF, Leica M, Nikon Z and Sony E mount, is constructed of nine elements in six groups, including two extra-low dispersion elements and two high-refractive elements. It also has a nine-blade aperture diaphragm, a 110cm minimum focusing distance of 110cm (3ft8in), a 67mm front filter thread and an F1.5 through F16 aperture range.

The lens is fully manual, but Zhong Yi notes it’s tested the M mount version adapted to Nikon and Sony cameras using autofocus adapters (such as thoe Techart TZM-01/LM-EA7 and Megadap MTZ11) and it works in nearly all AF modes, including with Face- and Eye-detection AF modes. The lens measures 74mm in diameter (3in), 102mm (3.5in) long and weighs 770g (1.5lbs).

Below is a sample gallery of images, provided by Zhong Yi:

The Canon RF, Nikon Z and Sony E mount versions retail for $599 and are available in black, while the Leica M mount version retails for $649 and is available in both black and silver colorways. All of the mount options are available to purchase through Zhong Yi's online shop and authorized Zhong Yi retailers.

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All product photography by DL Cade.

By just about every metric you can come up with, Apple's transition to Apple Silicon on the Mac has been a success. The M1 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro put up performance and efficiency numbers that were hard to believe, at a price point that instantly placed Apple at the top of every "best entry-level creator laptop" list on the Internet.

But for many of the professional creatives in the audience – people whose livelihood depends on the performance and reliability of their computer – the M1 was just a taste.

With the release of the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros and the M1 Pro and M1 Max SOCs at their core, Apple has finally addressed our audience's needs by moving in two directions simultaneously: the company has undone the unpopular design decision that have plagued the MacBook Pro since 2016, while sending performance-per-watt into the stratosphere. We've been testing and benchmarking the M1 Max MacBook Pro for over a month, and all I have to say is buckle up: The superlatives in this review are about to get completely out of hand.

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Jump to:

Design, build and usability | miniLED Display | Performance benchmarks | Conclusion

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Key Specifications

For this first review of the new Apple Silicon Macs, we're testing out the flagship M1 Max 16-inch MacBook Pro – the most powerful laptop in Apple's current lineup. We hope to test some of the M1 Pro models in the coming months, but for now, this is what Apple sent over on launch day.

On the bright side, this gives us a chance to test the high water mark for performance for an Apple laptop. Any other Mac on the market should, in theory, perform worse than the computer we're testing today. On the not-so-bright side, this is one of the most expensive laptops money can buy, putting it out of reach for many prospective buyers.

As tested, our review unit with an M1 Max, 64GB of RAM, and 2TB of storage will set you back a wallet-searing $4,300. If you downgrade to 1TB of storage you can cut that down to $3,900, and the base model M1 Max with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage is $3,500, but no matter how you slice it this isn't a "bang-for-your-buck" or "entry-level" computer.

	As Tested	Less Storage	Base Model
CPU	M1 Max 10-core	M1 Max 10-core	M1 Max 10-core
GPU	M1 Max 32-core	M1 Max 32-core	M1 Max 32-core
RAM	64GB Unified Memory	64GB Unified Memory	32GB Unified Memory
Storage	2TB Integrated SSD	1TB Integrated SSD	1TB Integrated SSD
Display	Liquid Retina XDR Display 100% Display P3	Liquid Retina XDR Display 100% Display P3	Liquid Retina XDR Display 100% Display P3
Price	$4,300	$3,900	$3,500

As tested, our review unit with an M1 Max, 64GB of RAM, and 2TB of storage will set you back a wallet-searing $4,300.

That said, after running all of our benchmarks both on- and off-battery, and comparing the MacBook Pro against two of its closest competitors in both price and specifications, there is no question about it: you are getting what you paid for. The price is, dare I say it, justified. Not because there's an Apple logo on the back of the lid, but because this laptop can do things that no PC on the market can match.

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Design, build and usability

The new 16-inch MacBook Pro is noticeably thicker than the last Intel model... and that's a good thing.

We spent some time on design, build and usability in our first impressions a few weeks ago, but let's recap some of the major changes.

First and foremost, the new 16-inch MacBook Pro is noticeably thicker than the last Intel model. It's also somewhat "retro" looking, replacing the sharp edges of the past few models with rounded corners for an aesthetic that harkens back to the old plastic MacBooks or the 17-inch MacBook Pro that was discontinued after 2011.

The added thickness also makes room for two of the most important upgrades on this machine: the miniLED display and the return of several ports that Apple removed in 2016. The left side of the device contains a headphone jack that can power high-impedance headphones, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, each with its own bus, and a shallow MagSafe 3 port that can fast-charge the laptop to 50% in just 30 minutes:

On the right, you get an HDMI 2.0 port, one more independent Thunderbolt 4 port, and an SD card slot:

The pros are obvious. We get HDMI and an SD card slot back while giving up only one Thunderbolt port compared to last year's Intel models.

The cons are less obvious: the HDMI port is only HDMI 2.0 and not the newer HDMI 2.1 standard, and the SD card slot is only UHS-II, not the faster UHS-III we've seen on some high-end laptops. The lack of a single USB Type-A port is also a downside for some, but personally, I see it as the better of two options. If it's a choice between two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a USB Type-A, or three Thunderbolt 4 ports, I'll choose the latter every time.

Another benefit of the larger size is the larger keyboard, which trades the Touch Bar for a row of full-height function keys and a full-sized Touch ID button. Not much else to say about the keyboard – it's otherwise identical to the excellent "Magic Keyboard" on all the most recent MacBooks. The same goes for the massive glass trackpad, which is still among the best on the market in any laptop.

Neither of these has changed over the past few years, and they really don't need to. The only noticeable change is the black keyboard deck.

The controversial Touch Bar has been replaced by a full-height function row and a full-sized TouchID sensor.

Two more important design and usability touches worth mentioning are the Full HD camera and the exceptional speakers.

The previous 16-inch MacBook Pro already had arguably the best sounding speakers of any laptop on the market, and this model only improves on that. Whatever Apple's engineers are doing to get such a full sound profile out of laptop speakers, it's light years ahead of the competition. Every other set of laptop speakers sound tinny and small next to the MacBook Pro, including otherwise excellent speakers like the ones in the Dell XPS 17.

As for the camera, Apple combines Full HD resolution with some AI trickery to produce surprisingly good image quality for your Zoom meetings. It's not quite ready to replace your dedicated 4K webcam, and Apple's AI algorithms do a bit more skin smoothing than I personally prefer, but it's a huge step up from the 720p cameras in the vast majority of laptops on the market.

Finally, we can't talk about the camera without at least mentioning the notch. I addressed this in my first impressions, but I don't find the notch to be a very big deal. Weird early software quirks have mostly been fixed, and I appreciate the fact that there's a full 16:10 display underneath the notch. If Apple had chopped off a bit of my 16:10 display, I'd be annoyed. As it stands, they essentially added some room for the menu bar.

Of course, your mileage (and level of annoyance) may vary, so if it really bothers you there are a couple of solutions. Apple already lets you display the menu underneath the notch in full-screen mode on a per-app basis, and if you want to get rid of it all the time there are free utilities like Top Notch that will essentially extend the bezel down to the bottom of the notch, sacrificing that little bit of screen in order to hide it entirely.

Back to top

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miniLED display

We have a lot of ground to cover with this display, but here's the TL;DR: this display's combination of 120Hz refresh rate, exceptional HDR performance, phenomenal color accuracy, and brilliant integration of all of the above into a seamless user experience makes the "Liquid Retina XDR" technology inside the new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros the best option on the market for anyone who regularly switches between HDR and SDR workflows.

HDR performance

Similar to the display used in the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, the monitor in the new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros is made up of a color-accurate IPS LCD panel that sits in front of a special backlight made up of 10,000+ miniLEDs arranged into over 2,500 individually controlled local dimming zones. This allows the screen to hit an incredibly bright 1000 nits typical brightness across the whole display and 1600 nits peak brightness on smaller patches for a limited time.

The "Liquid Retina XDR" display inside the new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros is the best display on the market for anyone who switches between HDR and SDR workflows.

Already we're in uncharted territory. Before this display, the most dimming zones we'd seen in any computer monitor was the 2,000 miniLEDs in Dell's UP3221Q – a 2.5-inch thick 32-inch desktop display. The only other laptop with a miniLED display, the MSI Creator 17, has a paltry 250 dimming zones. Apple had to invent a whole new breed of miniLED backlight in order to make this display possible.

This exploded view shows the miniLED backlight, diffusion layers, and LCD panel that make up the Liquid Retina XDR display inside the new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro. Photo courtesy of Apple

However, it's not just the technology that makes this display so impressive. What really puts it over the top is how seamlessly Apple has managed to integrate HDR performance into the standard SDR experience you get when viewing most content. Unlike using an external HDR display in either Mac or Windows, there's no need to check an HDR box or turn an HDR switch to "On" in the Display settings. HDR content simply... works.

When you pull up HDR content, the backlight automatically brightens to DisplayHDR 1000 levels, but only under the content you're viewing. If you have a video up on only part of the screen, the rest of your desktop remains locked at the SDR maximum brightness of 500 nits. The result is a seamless integration of HDR into an SDR experience, which finally makes HDR usable for day-to-day content viewing because you don't have to pick one or the other.

The only other laptop with a miniLED display, the MSI Creator 17, has a paltry 250 dimming zones – one tenth what Apple offers.

The combination of industry-leading HDR performance and seamless integration makes the laptop a no-brainer for anyone who spends time working on HDR content. Nothing in a laptop even comes close, and I'm including OLED displays simply because they can't get bright enough. You will get some very slight blooming around sharp-edged bright objects, but with so many dimming zones and such an intense max brightness I'd still pick this display over an OLED with pixel-perfect contrast.

Gamut coverage and color accuracy

The new "Liquid Retina XDR" display covers 99% of the DCI-P3 color gamut (left) and 85% of AdobeRGB (right).

Panel gamut is good, but not industry-leading. The latest OLED displays and LCD panels used by some of Apple's competitors offer better AdobeRGB coverage with equal or better Delta E. In our testing, we measured 99% coverage of DCI-P3 and 85% coverage of AdobeRGB with a maximum Delta E 2000 of 1.85 when the MacBook Pro was set to "Apple XDR Display" mode in the Settings.

Panel gamut is good, but not industry-leading. The latest OLED displays and LCD panels used by some of Apple's competitors offer better AdobeRGB coverage with equal or better Delta E.

However, as you can see below, there is a substantial Delta E of over 4.0 between the measured and target white point in this mode. The white point is a little colder than D65, even when the laptop is set into to one of its many "P3 D65" reference modes. And since "Apple XDR Display" mode is not fine-tunable in settings, what you see is what you get.

Fortunately, Apple allows you to take a lot more control over your display primaries if you switch out of the XDR Display mode by selecting a different preset, fine-tuning that preset, or even creating a custom preset. Various reference modes exist, including:

• Digital Cinema (P3 - DCI)
• Digital Cinema (P3 - D65)
• Design & Print (P3 - D50)
• Photography (P3 - D65)
• Internet & Web (sRGB)

Each of these modes gives you access to a "Fine Tune" option that allows you to input the measured white point and luminance of your display and change them to a target white point and luminance that you'd prefer. As measured, the white point of the Photography (P3-D65) reference mode was still a little bit off – too much blue and not enough red, pulling the color temperature of the white point over to 6600K.

Apple gives you the option to fine-tune your preferred reference mode of the built-in XDR display, allowing creatives to dial in the perfect luminance and white point.

Using the fine-tune feature, I simply input the un-calibrated white point coordinates from my colorimeter under "measured" and the D65 CIE coordinates under "target," set my target luminance to 150 nits, and instantly the primaries and luminance of the reference mode both corrected themselves.

It's great to have this kind of control over a laptop display. Most PC laptop's I've tested don't give you any such control, and if they do it requires fiddling with RGB gains inside of a proprietary piece of display software until you hit the appropriate chromaticity coordinates – a daunting prospect for anyone who isn't already familiar with color space.

Once I got the white point fixed to my liking, I re-calibrated and got the results below:

I did have to give up a little bit of gamut coverage to hit my target white point, but it's a worthwhile trade-off in my opinion. The final numbers were much more satisfying:

• 98.4% DCI-P3
• 83.9% AdobeRGB
• 0.46 average Delta E
• 1.39 maximum Delta E
• 0.69 measured vs target white point Delta E

Pro Motion

The last impressive bit of tech inside the Liquid Retina XDR display is Apple's ProMotion adaptive refresh rate technology. Microsoft is working on something similar, but nothing on the Windows side is close to matching this kind of seamless experience... at least not yet.

Essentially, the display can turn the refresh rate all the way up to 120Hz, but it only does so adaptively when something is moving quickly across the screen. If you're playing a game or scrolling quickly through an article, the higher refresh rate kicks in; otherwise, the display will slow down to save battery and GPU resources.

If you're editing video and need to turn this off, you have the option to lock the refresh rate at 60Hz, 59.94Hz, 50Hz, 48Hz, or 47.95Hz. For everyone else, it gives you the benefits of a high refresh-rate display without the battery drain that usually accompanies it.

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Performance benchmarks

The M1 Max MacBook Pro is the fastest creator laptop we've ever tested, and it's just as fast on battery as it is plugged in.

Apple made some pretty big claims about the performance of the M1 Max SOC at their keynote, with some impressive (but vague) charts comparing this chip against the most powerful Intel CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs you can get inside a PC laptop. According to Apple, the M1 Max can just about match the performance of these components while consuming a fraction of the power, allowing the new MacBook Pros to run at full speed even on battery.

To test this claim, we put the M1 Max MacBook Pro 16 up against two of the computers it's actively competing against in the PC space: the MSI Creator 17 and the Dell XPS 17.

You can see the full specs of our three test machines below:

	MacBook Pro 16	MSI Creator 17	Dell XPS 17
CPU	M1 Max 10-core CPU	Intel Core i9-11900H	Intel Core i7-11800H
GPU	M1 Max 32-core GPU	NVIDIA RTX 3080 16GB VRAM	NVIDIA RTX 3060 6GB VRAM
RAM	64GB Unified Memory	32GB DDR4-3200MHz	32GB DDR4-3200MHz
Storage	2TB Integrated SSD	2TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD	1TB PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMe SSD
Display	miniLED 4K LCD 1000 nits 100% DCI-P3	miniLED 4K LCD 1000 nits 100% DCI-P3	4K UHD+ LCD 500 nits 100% AdobeRGB
Price	$4,300	$3,800	$2,800

In order to test Apple's efficiency claims, we actually ran all of our usual benchmarks twice: once while the computers were plugged in and fully charged, and then again while all three computers were running on battery. In order to keep the battery test as fair as possible, all three laptops were charged to 100% and unplugged moments before we started each run.

We obviously wanted to know how much performance dropped (or didn't) when the computer were on battery, but we also kept track of how much battery each benchmark chewed through from start to finish. This should give us a sense of how realistic it is to use any of these machines on battery – if importing, editing, and exporting 100 high-resolution Raw files demolishes a full charge, you probably won't ever wander very far from an AC outlet.

Adobe Lightroom Classic

For our Lightroom benchmark, we import 100 copies of the studio scene image from the 20MP Canon EOS R6, the 47MP Nikon Z7 II, the 61MP Sony a7R IV, and the 100MP Fujifilm GFX 100. This benchmark always takes the longest, simply because Lightroom is the most poorly optimized. You can learn more about that in our Lightroom Classic vs Capture One Pro comparison.

Right out of the gate, the import test – which relies mostly on CPU performance – shows that the M1 Max is about on par with Intel's 11th generation Core i9-11900H, one of the most powerful x86 processors on the market. As a result, the MacBook Pro and the MSI Creator 17 traded blows on this benchmark.

Plugged In	Canon EOS R6 Import	Nikon Z7 II Import	Sony a7R IV Import	Fujifilm GFX 100 Import
MacBook Pro	1:24	2:17	2:23	5:55
MSI Creator 17	1:23	2:24	2:37	5:44
Dell XPS 17	1:26	2:25	2:39	5:51

On battery, the MacBook Pro's performance stayed rock solid, never changing more than one or two seconds in either direction. That's well within a reasonable margin of error. By comparison, both the Dell and the MSI saw noticeable dips in performance, allowing the Mac to take the lead in every category.

On Battery	Canon EOS R6 Import	Nikon Z7 II Import	Sony a7R IV Import	Fujifilm GFX 100 Import
MacBook Pro	1:23	2:17	2:24	5:55
MSI Creator 17	1:35	2:43	2:49	6:29
Dell XPS 17	1:49	2:55	3:03	6:51

That all changes at export. Thanks to the Mac's 64GB of blazing fast unified memory, it makes minced meat of both PCs, cutting export times in half across the board.

Plugged In	Canon EOS R6 Export	Nikon Z7 II Export	Sony a7R IV Export	Fujifilm GFX 100 Export
MacBook Pro	2:27	5:11	6:39	11:06
MSI Creator 17	3:34	7:55	10:08	22:50
Dell XPS 17	3:42	8:03	10:19	25:45

This lead only gets larger on battery. Again, the Mac stayed rock solid, only changing performance by a second or two in both directions. The MSI and Dell, on the other hand, had their performance tank. The Dell in particular suffered badly on the longest export run, adding 10 full minutes to the time it takes to export the edited Fujifilm GFX 100 raw files.

On Battery	Canon EOS R6 Export	Nikon Z7 II Export	Sony a7R IV Export	Fujifilm GFX 100 Export
MacBook Pro	2:26	5:11	6:37	11:08
MSI Creator 17	4:15	9:21	11:52	26:45
Dell XPS 17	3:59	8:42	10:59	35:46

Finally, let's talk battery drain. A full Lightroom Classic export run on the MacBook Pro drained 23% of the battery, while the same run on the Dell XPS 17 and the MSI Creator 17 soaked up a whopping 83% and 81%, respectively. It's safe to say the PC's are essentially unusable for anything more than a quick edit session in LRC before you seriously risk killing your battery mid-export.

Capture One Pro

Using the same benchmarks from Lightroom Classic in Capture One Pro 21, at import, the MSI pulls ahead of the MacBook Pro. The Creator 17's Intel Core i9 CPU paired with some hardware acceleration from the NVIDIA RTX 3080 GPU consistently posts faster numbers than the Mac, while the Dell just about matches the Apple laptop step-for-step:

Plugged In	Canon EOS R6 Import	Nikon Z7 II Import	Sony a7R IV Import	Fujifilm GFX 100 Import
MacBook Pro	0:43	1:04	1:17	2:00
MSI Creator 17	0:41	0:52	0:59	1:26
Dell XPS 17	0:43	1:08	1:29	2:03

Once we unplug, the Mac mostly closes the gap with the MSI, while the Dell sees a very noticeable drops in performance.

Unlike just about every other benchmark we ran, the Creator 17 managed to stay ahead of the Mac in three of four import tests while on battery, only losing 10 or so seconds of performance depending on file size. The Dell, however, nearly doubles its export time on every run, losing out badly to the other two.

On Battery	Canon EOS R6 Import	Nikon Z7 II Import	Sony a7R IV Import	Fujifilm GFX 100 Import
MacBook Pro	0:43	1:04	1:17	2:01
MSI Creator 17	0:47	1:02	1:10	1:40
Dell XPS 17	1:01	2:24	3:17	4:52

Once we move on to exports, where RAM once again plays a major role, there is absolutely no contest. The M1 Max MacBook Pro pulls way ahead of the competition, consistently exporting fully edited variants 1-2 minutes faster than either the Dell or MSI laptops, even when plugged in:

Plugged In	Canon EOS R6 Export	Nikon Z7 II Export	Sony a7R IV Export	Fujifilm GFX 100 Export
MacBook Pro	0:53	1:59	2:23	4:14
MSI Creator 17	1:30	3:08	3:48	6:10
Dell XPS 17	1:40	3:33	4:14	6:54

This gap only widens on battery, where the MSI slows down by a little bit and the Dell slows down by a lot. By the time we get to the GFX 100 export, the Mac's lead jumps to 4 minutes over the MSI Creator 17, and a full 5 minutes over the Dell XPS 17.

On Battery	Canon EOS R6 Export	Nikon Z7 II Export	Sony a7R IV Export	Fujifilm GFX 100 Export
MacBook Pro	0:53	1:58	2:21	4:18
MSI Creator 17	1:46	3:43	4:22	7:14
Dell XPS 17	2:25	4:58	5:42	9:25

Finally, battery drain is a lot kinder than Lightroom, but we see the same pattern. The Mac makes it through all of our imports, edits, and exports for a full run with only 4% battery drain, while the Dell and MSI laptops lost 36% and 38%, respectively.

Photoshop

To test Photoshop performance, we use version 0.8 of Puget Systems' PugetBench benchmark. As we've explained in previous reviews, we use v0.8 because this the last version that included a photo merge test, and the results are split into helpful category scores that are well correlated with CPU, GPU, and RAM performance.

By this point in the review, you can probably predict what's coming. The Mac posts the best performance of the group in in every Category score, logging the highest Overall score we've ever seen at 1253.9. Admittedly, some of the MacBook's impressive Overall score is due to the insane PhotoMerge score, but there isn't a single category where the MSI or Dell are able to pull ahead.

Even in the GPU score, where the RTX 3080 should outperform the M1 Max's 32-core GPU, the MSI Creator 17 falls just shy of beating the MacBook Pro with a score of 113.8 compared to the Mac's 115.9.

Plugged In	Overall	General	GPU	Filter	PhotoMerge
MacBook Pro	1253.9	123.9	115.9	108.8	161.4
MSI Creator 17	1019.6	111.4	113.8	84.5	117.9
Dell XPS 17	959.9	104.7	102.4	80.0	110.4

This only gets worse on battery, where the Mac experiences an ever-so-slight drop in General and Filter category scores but otherwise posts identical numbers. The MSI and Dell laptops, meanwhile, both see a significant drop, with the XPS 17 once again suffering the bigger drop. Every category suffers, and the Dell's Overall score drops from 959.9 to a paltry 692.7.

On Battery	Overall	General	GPU	Filter	PhotoMerge
MacBook Pro	1238.1	121.4	115.9	107.4	161.4
MSI Creator 17	805.0	84.7	87.1	62.9	107.2
Dell XPS 17	692.7	73.0	71.7	52.9	94.6

The difference in battery drain was also more drastic in this test, perhaps because the load is split more equally between the CPU, GPU, and RAM. While the Dell and MSI saw battery losses of 34% and 40%, respectively, the Mac was still at 100% battery after a full run of PugetBench. For the sake of putting a bar on this graph, let's assume the MacBook Pro lost a full 1% of its battery capacity:

Premiere Pro

The last of our Mac vs PC benchmarks shifts from photo to video editing. To test Premiere Pro performance, we render and export this 4K sample video shot and edited by DPReview's own Richard Butler using 8K footage shot on the Sony a1. We render the full timeline, export the master file using previews, export an H.264 file, and export an HEVC H.265 file. To wrap things up, we also test how long it takes Premiere Pro to Warp Stabilize a 15-second clip.

This is, perhaps, the most impressive performance of all for the Mac. It absolutely makes mincemeat of both the Dell XPS 17 and the MSI Creator 17, cutting render and export times nearly in half. Whatever Apple is doing with the new H.264 and HEVC encoders on the M1 Max SOC, it's working. That, combined with the speed of the unified memory, makes for startling performance:

Plugged In	Render All	Export Master File	Export H.264	Export HEVC/H.265	Warp Stabilize
MacBook Pro	2:04	00:05	1:42	1:42	1:48
MSI Creator 17	3:45	00:06	3:35	3:30	2:32
Dell XPS 17	4:01	00:08	3:56	3:52	2:48

On battery, the difference only gets more drastic. The Mac experiences no performance drop whatsoever while the MSI, and especially the Dell, add 30 seconds to 2 minutes to each of their times. The table and graph below tell the story better than I can:

On Battery	Render All	Export Master File	Export H.264	Export HEVC/H.265	Warp Stabilize
MacBook Pro	2:05	00:05	1:40	1:43	1:48
MSI Creator 17	4:24	00:32	4:11	4:09	2:54
Dell XPS 17	5:19	00:26	5:23	5:08	4:06

Battery drain performance ends up looking a lot like PugetBench. A full run of all these tests, one right after the other, drains the MSI and Dell batteries by 36% and 37%, respectively, while the Mac loses just 3%:

Final Cut Pro

Our last benchmark is a Mac exclusive, comparing the M1 Max MacBook Pro against the M1 iMac and a fully loaded 13-inch Intel MacBook Pro with a Core i7-1068NG7, Intel Iris Plus integrated graphics, and 32GB of LPDDR4X RAM. You can learn more about our Final Cut benchmarks here, but long story short: the M1 Max cuts rendering and H.264 export times in half, and does almost as much for HEVC encoding.

The only benchmark that doesn't move quite so much is Final Cut Stabilize, which was already blazing fast on the original M1. Still, the M1 Max posts a 6-second improvement over the M1, stabilizing a 15-second clip in just 19 seconds.

Plugged In	Render All	Export Master File	Export H.264	Export HEVC/H.265	Final Cut Stabilize
M1 Max MBP	2:43	00:45	1:15	1:10	00:19
M1 iMac	5:12	1:24	4:19	1:55	00:25
Intel MBP	9:57	2:07	6:55	2:59	00:55

We didn't do a battery comparison here, but we can confirm that Final Cut Pro on the M1 Max MacBook Pro runs at full speed whether or not you're plugged in to an AC outlet. And since this is the fastest and most efficient benchmark of all, you won't be surprised to hear that the M1 Max MacBook Pro was still at 100% at the end of a full run.

Performance takeaways

Taken individually, the CPU cores and GPU cores of the M1 Max can't quite keep up with the best that Intel and AMD can currently offer. But no computing task exists in a vacuum, and the combination of CPU speed, GPU speed, and unified memory with 400GB/s bandwidth that is fully accessible by both the CPU and GPU makes the M1 Max the fastest laptop we've ever tested on the vast majority of creative tasks.

With one or two minor exceptions, it outperformed the competition by a huge margin while draining far less battery and making far less noise. The fans barely ever spin up, and even when they do they make almost no noise. Meanwhile, both the MSI and Dell sounded like they were trying to take off from the desk during every export run, and you saw the battery drain figures for yourself, earlier in this review.

With one or two minor exceptions, the M1 Max MacBook Pro outperformed the competition by far, while draining far less battery and making far less noise.

There's no two ways about it, the M1 Max is the performance champ we expected it to be. It can legitimately cut your rendering and export times in half compared to the largest, most powerful, and heaviest PC laptops on the market... and it can do it on battery.

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Best creator laptop, period.

No other laptop on the market can compete with the new MacBook Pro's combination of power, efficiency, design and build quality. Select a different image

What We Like	What We Don't Like
Incredible performance Lots of ports, including SD card slot Industry-leading high refresh-rate HDR display Full performance even on battery Top-shelf keyboard and trackpad Full HD webcam	Thicker and larger than previous models No USB Type-A port HDMI port is 2.0, not 2.1 Card slot is UHS-II not UHS-III Unnecessary display notch No user-upgradable RAM or storage VERY expensive

In any single category, you can find a PC that can match or exceed the M1 Max MacBook Pro for less money. There are more powerful CPUs and GPUs, the latest 4K OLED displays cover a wider color gamut, and Apple's own M1 MacBook Pro and MacBook Air are far more efficient than the M1 Max. But no laptop currently in existence can match the M1 Max MacBook Pro step-for-step in more than one or two categories, much less across the board.

No laptop currently in existence can match the M1 Max MacBook Pro step-for-step in more than one or two categories, much less across the board.

Given what we saw from the M1, we expected great performance. We still didn't expect to see render times cut in half compared to one of the most powerful Windows PC laptops on the market. When you combine that with the ground-breaking display, the return of the ports, and the end of the Touch Bar, I genuinely had a hard time finding anything really significant to put in the "What We Don't Like" column other than the price tag.

After nearly six years of MacBook Pros that infuriated many professional users with a litany of design choices that ranged from mildly inconvenient to outright disruptive, we can confidently declare that the MacBook Pro is back... and it's back with a vengeance.

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