Apple M1 Pro in 2026: Performance Five Years Later

The Apple M1 Pro was released in October 2021 alongside the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro. Five years later, it falls behind newer generations of Apple Silicon in single-threaded performance, but it still handles development, photo processing, video editing, and sustained multithreaded workloads with ease. The 10-core M1 Pro features eight performance cores and two efficiency cores.

10 Cores and Up to 32 GB of Memory

The M1 Pro is built on a 5 nm process and contains 33.7 billion transistors.

The 10-core version was available with either a 14-core or 16-core GPU. There was also a lower-end M1 Pro with an 8-core CPU and 14-core graphics, but its performance differs and is considered separately.

The M1 Pro supports 16 or 32 GB of unified memory with bandwidth of up to 200 GB/s. 16 GB is enough for development, photo processing, and most video-editing projects. 32 GB is primarily needed for large projects, virtual machines, demanding video editing, and working with large volumes of data.

M1 Pro Performance

The 10-core M1 Pro scores around 2200 points in Geekbench 6 Single-Core and approximately 13,900 points in Multi-Core. In Cinebench R23, the results are around 1534 and 12,370 points, respectively, while PassMark CPU gives it approximately 21,900 points.

Its single-threaded performance is already noticeably lower than that of newer Apple Silicon generations, but its ten cores allow the M1 Pro to handle compiling large projects, rendering, and other workloads that use all the cores effectively.

The 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro feature active cooling, so they lose less performance under sustained load.

14-Core or 16-Core Graphics

The 10-core M1 Pro was released with either a 14-core or 16-core GPU. In 3DMark Wild Life Extreme Unlimited, the 14-core version scores around 9267 points, while the 16-core version scores approximately 10,352 points.

The difference is around 12%. Therefore, when buying a used Mac, the memory capacity and condition of the device are usually more important than moving from 14 to 16 GPU cores.

Both versions are significantly faster than the 7- and 8-core graphics in the regular M1 and can handle video editing, photo processing, graphics applications, and undemanding games.

The M1 Pro does not support hardware ray tracing, which was introduced with the M3 generation.

The chip also features a dedicated media engine with hardware acceleration for H.264, HEVC, ProRes, and ProRes RAW. It reduces the load on the CPU and GPU when working with supported video formats.

Which Computers Used the M1 Pro

The 10-core M1 Pro was installed in the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models from the 2021 generation.

The 14-inch MacBook Pro was available with either a 14-core or 16-core GPU. The 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro featured a 10-core CPU and 16-core graphics.

When buying a used Mac, it is worth checking not only the M1 Pro designation, but also the number of GPU cores, the memory capacity, and the SSD.

Is It Worth Buying a Mac with the M1 Pro in 2026?

The 10-core M1 Pro still handles programming, photo processing, video editing, and other demanding work tasks with ease. Its multithreaded performance has held up especially well.

For a 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro, 16 GB of memory, and a 512 GB SSD, a reasonable used-market price is around $600-700. A configuration with 32 GB of memory can reasonably cost up to approximately $750-800 if the device is in good condition.

At around $800 and above, it is already worth comparing the M1 Pro with a MacBook Pro featuring the M2 Pro. If the M2 Pro costs only $100-150 more, the additional cost is justified by its newer architecture and higher performance.