A quick spoiler: both DaVinci Resolve and Final Cut Pro are awesome. It might’ve been the end of my review, but nah, I wanna be a pain in the ass and compare them.

I used to be a Windows person for years, but when MacBook Air M5 came out this year, I finally caved and got one. And since I’ve been hearing good things about Final Cut Pro for ages, I naturally wanted to try it. But it didn’t end there. I’ve also seen plenty of positive reviews, filled with praise, about DaVinci, which I never tried even though it runs on Windows too. So I decided it’s time to have a testing session on my new Mac and see which of these two matches my vibe.

My experience with Final Cut Pro

I started with Final Cut Pro because tbh I was more interested in it, since I’m sorta an Apple fanboy and I wanted to see what they’re offering. I tried iMovie on my iPhone and even iPad before but felt like it was too limited and kinda boring. They say Final Cut Pro is a completely different thing, and now I know that it really is.

First, the interface. You know, when you see the word “Pro” in the software name, you expect something…uhhh…idk, complicated? To my surprise, Final Cut Pro is extremely intuitive. It’s not cluttered, all features and tools are right where you expect them to be, and I managed to make a simple montage with a bit of text and a couple of transitions in less than 30 minutes.

But then I obviously got curious about more advanced features. I tried generating subtitles automatically, and they worked pretty well (not perfect of course, but I got a solid result with just a few mistakes), I played with masking and keyframe animation to create zooms and animated text. I also applied motion tracking to make the text follow my hands in the video.

The stabilization feature also worked great for some of my hand-held shots. It didn’t do wonders, but the result was much better than my original footage. Color grading isn’t really my thing, but color correction is a total must, so I also tried that to add some visual appeal. And one more thing I loved using was the slowmo/speedramp effect.

There’s more stuff feature-wise, of course. Final Cut has multicam editing, color wheels and curves, Smart Conform for vertical/square formats, background noise reduction, roles for audio organization, and now AI-ish stuff like Magnetic Mask.

There are also plenty of presets and templates for effects, transition, and titles. But if I’m being honest, I’m not a big fan of presets and templates, so I didn’t really apply them that much, but it’s still nice to know they’re there, especially if you’re a beginner.

To sum the “what features does it have” section up a bit, I’d like to say that Final Cut Pro covers 100% of my editing needs and I can’t even think of anything I might need for my projects that isn’t in Final Cut.

One more thing, performance is ridiculous. On my MacBook, Final Cut Pro felt stupidly smooth, I don’t even remember having any glitches or freezes. I knew that it’d probably be like that because people have been saying that it’s super optimized for Apple devices, but I was still suprised.

My experience with DaVinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve is very different. It was definitely a challenge to learn editing in this program. I knew that the editing workflow was divided into several tabs there like “edit” for a regular timeline, “color” for color correction/grading (duh), “fusion” for effects, and “fairlight” for audio. And it just felt unnatural to me.

I can’t really say that I’m completely used to how DaVinci works even now, but it does get better over time (shout out to everyone who’s uploaded a DaVinci tutorial on YouTube).

The biggest Resolve win is how much you get for free. The free version gives you proper editing, excellent color correction/grading, audio tools, motion graphics/VFX, stabilization, keyframes, effects, transitions, masking, tracking, and a lot more than I expected. Some of the coolest AI tools and advanced features are in DaVinci Resolve Studio, which has to be purchased, but the free version is still insane. I didn’t even know what to start with.

I basically tried to edit the same project I did in Final Cut: zoom transitions, some animated text, a bit of masking, a bit of tracking, some color correction. And everything felt nice and perhaps even a bit more rewarding because it was definitely more challenging than doing that in Final Cut.

As I’ve said, I’m not a fan of color grading, but DaVinci made me want to try because of how good its “color” page is. I’m still not sure I made my footage look pretty, but well, I tried. Anyway, once you understand the logic, it’s way more flexible than just stacking random adjustments.

Performance on my Mac was interesting. Final Cut was smoother overall, but Resolve also ran well, especially considering how big and powerful it is, but it felt heavier. With basic edits with few effects, it was totally fine, but when I wanted to go bigger with effects, I noticed small issues. Nothing terrible, but still noticeably slower than Final Cut.

What’s the verdict then?

Honestly? I’m torn between getting smth really powerful for free (DaVinci) and paying for a much simpler, smoother experience (Final Cut Pro). My lazy ass wants to choose Final Cut, but my greedy side wants me to stick to DaVinci haha

So I can’t say that I’ve made my choice. I’ll keep both for now and think about it some more, but for now I feel like Final Cut Pro is the first program on my mind when I think about editing a quick video.