I'm just wondering, at the speaker, if there is any measurable difference in the quality of these two products. Not that I'm saying there is or there isn't, but when talking about the build quality, if someone isn't actually measuring audio quality at the speakers, then I end up a bit concerned in what is actually going on.
No question that the build quality is quite different and they clearly put in place some cost cutting measures. But, that doesn't mean that actual audio, or more often, video quality would be changed. More importantly, if there is a change, is it even noticeable in blind testing between the two models?
Maybe it is quite visibly not as good at the screen. Or as good to the ears. But, I'm not sure this is the case. Especially with how digital information is transmitted and received. Still, it doesn't mean that there isn't some difference.
What I really wonder, is if these boards are all opened up, what is the actual difference in the electronics which were used? Apple has been pushing their ARM architecture and custom chip design for a short while now, but their results have been incredibly good and test results on their chips have them running cooler and drawing far less power than the competition while improving performance a great deal. This is how they are able to make the Mac Mini in such a tight case while delivering consistently high performance. They REALLY know their stuff. This means they also will know what noise impacts the actual quality and which noise will have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the final audio and video quality. Certainly power draw, in a world where iPhones exist without cooling at all, and solid computers require minimal fans, if any, they know how to regulate power to performance incredibly well.
Looking things up, the jump in the processing is from a A12 Bionic Chip to the A15 Bionic. The A15 is 50% faster in single and multi-threaded tasks while being nearly 30% more power efficient in this process. This is HUGE! It means that if all that power isn't needed, then it can draw far less power overall, while still delivering the same performance as the old device. What's crazier is that in real world stressful performance testing (gaming), the A15 measured about 80% better performance over the A12!
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https://nanoreview.net/en/soc-compare/apple-a15-bionic-vs-apple-a12-bionic
The performance jump of these chips is pretty much ignored in the video, and that's extremely disturbing to me. Especially when power draw is mentioned as a 'negative' to the product, when in fact, the word 'refined' is much better, and perhaps far more accurate.
I would prefer a lot more in the way of measurements presented in this video. There is a lot of good information about the quality of raw materials being clearly better on the older 2021 A2169 and the newer 2022 A2843. I'm just not sure, with how well Apple has been designing their chips, that this raw material quality difference actually matters at the devices at the end of the chain.