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Okay, so the main factor that I considered when buying the 16-inch MacBook Pro was the size of the display.

And I mean, let's get this part out of the way because it's the most obvious difference about this laptop.

And yeah, the display is bigger and it feels much larger than the 14-inch display that I'm coming from.

And I have to hand it to the 15-inch MacBook Air for making me crave the need for a bigger display.

When I reviewed that a few months ago,

I started carrying it around with me and although the display was technically worse quality than my 14-inch MacBook Pro,

I started getting used to that extra screen size on the Air.

And at times I would gravitate towards the Air because I felt more productive using the larger display.

And I fully admit I'm the type of guy that has a cluttered workspace, right?

Like I always have multiple windows open.

So a few Safari windows, my podcast or music player, my mail client, my calendar client, and not to mention all the professional photo and video editing apps I use on a daily basis.

More importantly, I had more room to full screen apps.

This is where I really felt the benefit of the 16-inch, not so much with multitasking, but by taking apps like Final Cut Pro or Affinity Photo, putting them maximum size on the screen.

And then that allowed me to see more of my video scopes and more of my tools without necessarily cramping those applications together because on the 14-inch model, something like Final Cut Pro can feel cramped.

Now, despite the 16-inch model costing more money for a larger display, that doesn't mean that the display quality is necessarily better, right?

Like these both have 120 Hertz mini LED displays.

They both look absolutely fantastic, but I will admit there's just something about having the 16-inch display size that makes it feel more immersive.

Like when I sit back and watch a movie, the benefit of having that larger display, it just feels more immersive.

And then even the speakers, right?

Like they both have really good speakers, but that 16-inch just has a little extra thump and loudness to it that makes you sit back and go, wow, that's actually coming out of a laptop.

Now, yes, there are some trade-offs for this bigger display and better speakers, and obviously that is size and weight.

Now, if you lay both MacBooks down flat in a table, you'll see that the 16-inch does take up a fair bit more room.

But what I will have to say is that even though the 16-inch MacBook Pro is larger, compared to laptops from like five or 10 years ago, the difference really isn't as bad as you think for most use cases.

For example, any of the bags that I used to carry my 14-inch model in, well, they were big enough to fit my larger 16-inch model as well.

And while it may take up most of the airplane tray table, you can still technically fit the 16-inch MacBook Pro on it.

Now, the thing that I don't like the most about the 16-inch model is the extra weight.

My old 14-inch MacBook Pro weighs 3.5 pounds, and the new 16-inch is more than a pound heavier.

I already have to carry around a lot of gear in my bags, things like cameras, hard drives, microphones, and those little things start to add up in weight.

So introducing an extra 1.3 pounds into the equation is not pleasant.

Now listen, it's not like I can't carry around the 16-inch MacBook Pro to like my car, or even walk around with it for an hour or something like that, but if I need to be on my feet for a while,

I really do notice the extra weight on my back, and it is uncomfortable.

It's kind of changed the way that I use my laptop on the go, because with my 14-inch,

I pretty much took this thing with me everywhere all the time because it wasn't that much of a pain to carry around.

But with my 16-inch, that extra heft means I'm a little bit more selective on when I bring my laptop with me.

Now, one reason I'm willing to put up with that extra weight is because I wanted to get the M3 Max model of the 16-inch MacBook Pro.

And initially, when I saw the specs of this thing were gonna go up to a 16-core CPU and a 40-core GPU,

I thought to myself, okay, that is going to be one powerful laptop.

And I was genuinely worried about the smaller size 14-inch model with that level of performance.

And I was kind of right and kind of wrong at the same time with this assessment.

So yeah, you can spec out the 14-inch and the 16-inch model exactly the same way.

So on paper, their performance is equivalent.

And if you're only interested in specing your model out with an M3 Pro chip, you really don't have to watch this part of the video because both the 14 and 16-inch are really gonna perform pretty much exactly the same on the M3 Pro.

It's only the M3 Max model where you're going to notice more than just a performance difference.

And honestly, based on all the tests I've seen and all the performance benchmark videos I watched,

I think real-world performance is really only going to take a little bit of a hit on edge case scenarios because the M3 Max 14-inch doesn't have the thermal capacity of the 16-inch and it will throttle a little more and be a little bit slower.

But I don't think you should make your decision based on performance.

Because again, for most tasks, these two computers are very, very close.

However, there is something you should consider and that is fan noise and heat.

One of the biggest benefits of switching over to my original M1 Max MacBook Pro was the fan noise.

I rarely heard the fan spin up on my 14-inch model when I was using it.

This thing was pretty much always running on silent even when I was doing more intensive tasks like exporting video.

And the laptop would barely even get warm when the fans were running.

It was so impressive at the time to see a smaller laptop not only perform well, but be silent most of the time doing it and also being able to spec both sizes exactly the same.

Don't forget, on older Intel MacBook Pros, you couldn't do that.

The 13-inch model was always weaker.

And it's sad to say this, but I believe that is no longer the case.

If you are getting the M3 Max model, it is likely as you push the performance of the 14-inch model, you are more likely going to hear the fans over the 16-inch.

I've watched multiple videos and talked to Patrick Tommaso who made a great video about his MacBook Pro.

And one of the things he mentioned to me is that he does hear the fans well up on his 14-inch model and sometimes said it could be as loud as the fan noise on older Intel MacBook Pros.

So this is something I didn't want to deal with on my MacBook Pro.

And it's probably the biggest reason I'm glad

I went for the 16-inch model because I hate hearing loud fan noise.

And so far, thankfully, I have not heard a peep out of my M3 Max 16-inch model.

And that's important to me because while my 14-inch MacBook Pro was kind of a side laptop I would use alongside a more powerful desktop Mac Studio,

I bought this 16-inch model with the intention of replacing both my laptop and my desktop.

So hopefully, as my primary computer,

I wanted to make sure that this thing had not only the performance headroom, but I also wanted to make sure that I didn't lose out on quality of life upgrades like hearing the fan noise or having my MacBook Pro get hot when I'm using intensive applications.

And so far, that hasn't happened.

So I've been very happy with the 16-inch.

Of course, one other thing I have to mention before I end this is one side benefit of going for a larger laptop this time is even more battery life.

Now, I don't know how accurate these impressions are because I am coming from an older 14-inch MacBook Pro.

I've used it for two years.

The battery health on this thing has fallen below 90%.

So maybe my battery life impressions are also kind of colored by the fact that this is a brand new battery in this device.

But basically, oh man, the battery life on the 16-inch model, it just keeps on going and going and going.

Like, I don't ever think about battery life with this laptop.

And what I mean by that is I've been using it portably and I do all my work on it.

And then, you know, maybe I connect it up to my display and my display automatically charges it.

And then I go use it again portably.

And during all this time using my 16-inch model, not once have I looked at the battery life and went, oh, I better go charge this thing.

Like, I'm able to get all my work done.

And then I go connect it to my display for, you know, to get a bigger display and get my work done there.

And basically for me at this point, it is just like, there's no battery anxiety with this device, which hopefully means that I'm gonna be more productive with this laptop because I could just keep working on it and working on it and working on it.

And that means more videos for you, which means you get to see more of this beautiful face.

And I get to make more videos for you, which is something I wanna do because I wanna be more productive.

I wanna make better videos.

And that's kind of like the, you know, ideal here.

You get a new laptop, you get a new tool.

It has some better things going for it.

And those quality of life improvements means that you can get your work done faster and more efficiently.

And with battery life, that's kind of true here.

So yeah, did I make a mistake moving over from the 14-inch MacBook Pro to the 16-inch model?

I don't think so, but I will admit, there are some things I don't like about this bigger laptop.

But I think this year in particular, with the M3 Max model that I picked,

I would probably have been more disappointed going for an M3 Max 14-inch model.

For me at least, the pros of the 16-inch far outweigh the cons.

However, I will also say, my biggest potential regret right now might be wondering if maybe I should have just stuck with my M1 Max 14-inch for another year.

Because honestly, this thing is still really so powerful.

And honestly, it has aged gracefully.

It had the perfect size, weight, power, and thermal combination that I think might make it one of the best MacBook Pro releases ever.

And based on Apple's recent strategy of making the Max chips even more powerful than the Pro variants, this might be the norm going forward, at least for the next few years.

And the 14-inch could be a laptop that, yes, gets more powerful, but also has drawbacks of that power hitting a ceiling that it previously didn't.

And when you think about if that makes it a better product in terms of real-world benefits, like I try to cover in this video, more than just, you know, it's a more powerful laptop, it might kind of be a step backwards.

And I'm not sure how I feel about that.

So yeah, listen, Apple Silicon's still great, but this was such a good laptop.

And it served me really well.

But yeah, that's the video.

That's why I chose the 16-inch model over the 14-inch MacBook Pro.

And hopefully it helped you out.

If it did, please give me a like.

If you wanna see more from the channel, well, obviously make sure you get subscribed and I'll catch you in the next one.