I thought that my fan never turned on. I was curious so I installed a fan meter (https://github.com/exelban/stats). If I'm playing a game and running a windows VM, it does sometimes turn on around 2,000 RPMs. I can't hear it even if I put my ear up to the vents.

So, it doesn't seem to turn on almost ever for me. I've had it for over a month and I've never heard it turn on. I've seen it turn on (via the menu-bar monitor) and tried to listen for the fan and just can't hear anything. I'll be using it with the vents covered by a blanket and it doesn't seem to notice.

It's one of the reasons that I love this machine. My 2020 Intel MacBook Pro would run those fans all the time making lots of noise. A web page would randomly start using a lot of CPU and my battery would drain, things would slow down, and the fans would sing their song. The magic of my new M1 Pro machine is that nothing seems to phase it. It's not like I had a crappy old laptop for comparison. I had a 2.4GHz Intel MacBook Pro that was over $2,000.

I was wondering if the fan would go on and it might go on more if you're doing a lot of high-end rendering, but it doesn't for my usage. IntelliJ, Windows VMs, whatever, it mostly stays off and sometimes turns on, but low enough that I can't hear it even with my ear to the vents. It feels magical.