Hello,

I'm looking for a new laptop to replace my current one, mainly for mobile recording and general production purposes. I've seen many Intel Core m powered laptops which seem to have good battery life and many of them are fanless, so that's a bonus for its silence.

My plan is to be running ProTools as the DAW, and sometimes will be using a few instances of Kontakt and Diva in CPU efficient mode for some mobile production, also doing mixing with under 16 tracks.

Is anyone here on a Core m machine? How do you think of them?

 

You need a real CPU like a i7 to run those programs....

 

two words: Forget it!

 

Intel Core M processors are really frugal indeed and really strong in comparision on how many Watt they are using. I thought it's around 5 or 6 Watt. Compare this to my processor that's using around 84 Watt for example. It's so incredible low.

Intel Core M processors are really good and great options for office and multimedia tasks and so on. But also for it's longer battery and low heat. Although, I am afraid that they are not so good for music production. Especially with a heavy CPU plugin like Diva.

 

I wouldn't just forget it, but you could find it tough to work with such a frugal CPU at your hand. I mean in your laptop.

You might rather try some i5 CPU that consumes about 40 watts instead. It won't be as quiet, though.

 

• You don't choose the CPU in the laptop. You choose the laptop, which has a CPU.
• It's inevitable that you'll have less CPU to use.
• Performance varies by model. Which specific laptop/CPU?
• 16tracks seems ok, but you're using heavy plugs. Might be ok, but consider switching to alternatives.

 

looking back your question was specifically about a Core m machine. I would be looking for more than 2 cores
Dont do it.

 

I have and first Gen Intel M i5.... It sucks balls... Les than 4000 on the CPU Bench Mark......

 

Thanks for the info guys!

I'll have a look into i5+ powered models instead. My old/current laptop is quite noisy so I thought maybe I'll go for a quiet or even fanless model this time LOL

 

I've had a laptop with m CPU and a Surface Pro 4 with i7 and one with i5 for testing 2 weeks. Ordered them from Amazon and tested side by side.
I found the Surface Pro with i5 most usable.
The m CPU is not powerful enough, even for demanding office use. The i7 Surface Pro behaved like a hairdryer. The i5 Surface Pro is capable for audio processing in combination with an external USB audio I/O (NOT with the internal audio device). It doesn't get too hot, because of the well designed heat dissipation solution.
If I'm not at home, I use the Surface Pro 4 with the docking station (try to buy a used one). This way I get enough USB Ports to connect my gear (Ableton Push2, MIDI Keyboard and Steinberg UR242).

 

Thanks for sharing, are you using the model with i5-6300U 2.4 GHz?

 

at first, forget about ProTools, it's not an optimized daw, better learn and use Reaper or some other freshly-coded up-to-date daw,
for recording, you shall be fine with literally any at least 2-core cpu and what matters more is an SSD (for reliable writes),
for virtual instruments, you need enough system memory (ram), that said 8GB seems as bare minimum, 16GB would be definitely handy,
for production "on the go", you should always bounce/freeze tracks so there is not much stress on simultaneous processing,
talking about cpus, let's take mid-2012 MacBook Pro as a decent reference, the i7 model has i7-3520M which outperforms i5-6300U or even i5-7200U by slight margin, so as can be seen within 5 years cpus haven't evolved almost at all in terms of performance, just the power consumption and heat,
imo another very important component is audio interface, something like RME Babyface is minimum you should consider for reliable audio workflows,
usb hub is a worthy companion as well, I recommend externally powered 4-port usb 3.0 hub,
if you intend to do lots of realtime mixing, then external DSP such as UAD-2 Quad might be worthy

 

i5 6300U, 3GHz, Intel Skylake U, 8GB DDR3 RAM, Intel HD Graphics 520, 256GB SSD.
It's not the newest model, thus the drivers and software are well balanced between speed and battery life


P.S.: There is always a BUT (I forgot to mention yesterday)
Please test the software you intend to use on the laptop or tablet prior to purchase. If it is a High DPI model, as Surface Pro 4 is, not every piece of software is capable of using it. There are workarounds for that, but not for each and every software. For instance Waves Instruments like Electric GRand 80 won't run (usable) on those machimes with HiDPI displays.

 

Last edited: Aug 16, 2017

which cpu are you using at this moment ?
Just do a test.
Load the plugins you need and compare the cpu performance to your future cpu model.
e.g.: http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-4770k-vs-Intel-Core-M3-6Y30