I got a late model MBP 16" i9. Zoom, Teams video confs, backups, and anything else even mildly intensive and it would ramp up to impressively loud levels, enough for people in the next room to ask what the noise was.
I swear my 16" i9 could eat the battery in an hour of a Zoom call.
Even doing just CPU-heavy golang code, I could out-run the stock power brick and drain the battery.
Totally agree. I have an M1 MBP for personal use, and a 16 inch i9 for my work laptop. The M1 is silent and not too bothered by zoom. Last week, in a pinch, I had to use my 16" MBP for a zoom call, and it didn't last much past an hour before it was complaining about needing to be plugged in to power. And it felt like it might melt the desktop. Really drove home how much better the M1 is.
I had a laptop that did that (got people noticing), I went to IT a few times to tell them that something was wrong with my laptop, as colleagues' were a bit quieter.
I wish that I'd have been more firm with getting a replacement. I now have tinnitus after a year of a really loud laptop. I'm in my early 30s. I can't even tolerate my desktop with relatively quiet fans.
One day in the office, I shutdown my laptop for the day after the air conditioners turned off at 5pm. There were about 6 people left in the room, everyone noticed that "something had just turned off".
Be careful that your laptop doesn't damage your hearing.
> Yes but what if he did that to drown out his laptop fan?
Nonsense.
The "rule of thumb" is that you are at risk of hearing damage in an environment where you cannot talk comfortably at normal voice level with somebody at arms length away.
I have owned many laptops in my time (including Macbooks). I have frequently pushed them hard (e.g. compiling code) to the point where the fans run for extended periods of time.
Not once have I had difficulty conversing in a relaxed normal fashion with somebody with arms length or even further away in the room. I've never had to raise my voice.
Its simple, if you don't believe me, get a calibrated decibel meter and take a reading in a controlled manner in a controlled environment. Frankly I'm willing to bet you hard money that the measured sound level with the laptop fans running at full whack will not be anywhere near hearing damage level.
> More likely you had the laptop speakers too loud, or you had headphones plugged in which were set too loud.
To which I suggested that maybe he had very loud headphones because he was annoyed by his laptop fan and wanted to drown out the noise. Which, I concede, is probably not the best life decision, but I can imagine someone doing it.
hmm while I do believe that your laptop is pretty loud, I seriusly doubt that it could damage your hearing. Ear damage occurs over 90-100 decibels, this is akin to leaning close to a loud vacuum and magnitudes greater than any laptop.
afaik tinitus is not necessarily damage to the (inner) ear, but could as well be psychological or physical damage to the brain (blood flow). Have a doc check that out.
