MacBook Pro 2021: How Well Does It Handle Adobe Lightroom?

The recent introduction of the MacBook Pro 2021, powered by Apple's M1 chip, has generated a lot of excitement and curiosity among photographers. As someone who relies heavily on Adobe Lightroom for their work, I was eager to put this new processor through its paces and see how it handles demanding photographic tasks.

But before diving into my personal experience with the M1 Macs, let's take a step back and explore why these chips are so important. Apple has been designing its own processors for the iPhone and iPad for over a decade, starting with the A4 chip in the iPad 2 and iPhone 4. This expertise has finally been applied to their Mac lineup, which marks a significant shift away from Intel-based processors.

In this article, I'll be focusing on my anecdotal experiences using the M1 MacBook Pro as a photographer's workstation, primarily working with Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. While there are many technical details about the M1 processor that have been extensively covered by other publications, I'll be taking a more practical approach to explore how it performs in real-world photographic workloads.

So, how does the M1 chip hold up when dealing with demanding tasks like photo editing? In my experience, the new MacBook Pro 2021 is just as capable in Photoshop and Lightroom as it is in synthetic benchmarks. With its Arm-based architecture licensed from Arm Holdings, these Macs are poised to remain a sweet spot for photographers, especially as Adobe and other creative apps continue to add native software support.

In this post, I'll be addressing the key questions on everyone's mind: How well does the M1 MacBook Pro handle Adobe Lightroom? Should you consider one of these Macs when Apple is rumored to have even more powerful silicon on the way?

Stay tuned for my in-depth review and find out how the M1 chip fares in real-world photographic applications.

Macbook pro 2021 lightroom