11 Nov
Blog

Apple MacBook Pro (2021) In-Depth Review: Perfect Pro Laptop

The 2021 MacBook Pro with the lid open on a white table.

MacBook Pro (2021)

RRP $ 2,499.00

"It's the best MacBook Pro since 2015. And yes, it has a notch."

advantages

  • Incredible XDR display

  • Fantastic creative achievement

  • Extensive port selection

  • The keyboard and trackpad are perfect

  • Excellent speakers and webcam

  • Endless battery life

"We were wrong."

It's not a phrase you'll ever hear from a company like Apple. Nor will it crawl or ask for forgiveness.

Instead, Apple corrects its mistakes by releasing a product like the 2021 MacBook Pro. Whether it's the thickness of the case, the touch bar, or the ports, the MacBook Pro represents an inversion of almost every major design decision made in the previous generation.

And yet the 2021 MacBook Pro manages to be more than just a referendum on the 2016 MacBook Pro. It's brave in a way that makes it exciting, but familiar in a way that makes it comfortable. You could even call it the best of both worlds – that's exactly what you want from a “Pro” laptop.

One thing is certain: you don't have to apologize for it.

draft

The back of the MacBook Pro with the lid open.

If you take a step back, the 2021 MacBook Pro still looks a lot like a MacBook. It's still made from a unibody aluminum chassis, it's still available in silver or space gray, and there's still an Apple logo on the lid.

But the changes in this generation are not subtle enough to be overlooked. Black has become the dominant accent color and adorns both the Apple logo and the keyboard background. The black keyboard in particular looks like a statement piece when so many laptops have copied the MacBook look. Silver laptops with black keycaps have become ubiquitous in the laptop world, and the change to the MacBook Pro is refreshing.

It also instantly sets these MacBook Pros apart from the otherwise similar-looking MacBook Air (and 13-inch MacBook Pro). Like the Space Gray iMac Pro and its accessories, Apple uses the slightest change in color scheme to create a premium, exclusive feel. For this reason, the box is sure to come with a black Apple sticker. This is an expensive product and Apple would like to welcome you to the cool club. It's not dissimilar to the strategy used in the fashion and design industries.

The other small changes to the design include the removal of the "MacBook Pro" logo from the bottom bezel, new rubber feet on the bottom, and ultra-thin bezels on top. There is a tradeoff to this bezel, of course – although Apple won't hope you see it.

The notch

The notch of the MacBook Pro in which the camera module is located.

I've been wondering the idea of ​​a notch in a laptop since it debuted on the iPhone X in 2017. When companies like Dell pushed forward with wafer-thin bezels in the XPS laptops, Apple stayed on course with thick bezels in the years since then. In the early years of thin-bezel XPS laptops, a notch was even considered, but it never came into play.

And yet, to the surprise of almost everyone, the MacBook Pro 2021 has a large notch that hangs down from above and houses the camera module and a host of other sensors. It's a bigger and more intrusive notch than the iPhone, and it goes for a more boxy shape. And yes, Apple houses a number of important components in the notch that would have been very difficult to assemble without enlarging the frame or reducing the quality of the webcam.

I see the notch as a compromise, not a design flourish.

For the first time in a long time on a MacBook Pro, the notch ensures a frame of the same size in all directions around the screen and even enables Apple to introduce rounded corners. In that sense, it bears a lot of resemblance to the Surface Laptop Studio's screen.

However, the notch is also about branding. It does the same thing for the MacBook Pro as it always did for the iPhone, and creates a trademark. Like it or not, it's Apple's way of standing out in a sea of ​​identical plates and shells.

The MacBook Pro with the default wallpaper that hides the notch.

Do i love the look No i can't say I see it as a compromise, not a design flourish. However, given the options of a chunky top bezel (older MacBooks) or an inferior webcam (Dell XPS 15), this isn't a bad compromise. The notch looks more intrusive in the 14-inch model, which offers less space in the menu bar to accommodate the protrusion.

But in my time with the 16-inch MacBook Pro, it never got in the way. And thanks to the dark mode, default backgrounds, and translucency built into macOS, the notch wasn't as noticeable as I thought it would be. I don't like that your cursor completely disappears behind the notch.

Full screen mode was the only exception. I often use Split View when working and automatically move the top panel over the notch.

For the most part, Apple is finding sensible ways to get around the notch.

Size and dimensions

A side profile of the 2021 MacBook Pro.

Unlike the previous generation, the primary design tenet of the MacBook Pro 2021 wasn't ultra-thin. This is a departure from typical Apple products, but also offers creative professionals exactly what they wanted. Most would happily trade half an inch thick for extra power.

That's exactly what the 2021 MacBook Pro does. The side profile is thicker and rounder. And as some keen Apple historians have noted, it pays homage to an Apple laptop from 20 years ago, the Titanium PowerBook G4.

There are a number of reasons for the thicker chassis, including space for additional ports and better thermals. I have the 16 inch model, and it's now 0.66 inches thick and weighs 4.7 pounds. In both respects, that's significantly larger than the previous generation's 16-inch MacBook Pro. The 14-inch is just 0.05 inches thinner, but significantly lighter at just 3.5 pounds. Importantly, the 16-inch MacBook Pro I tested was larger than the previous generation Intel-powered, which was 0.02 inches thinner but almost half a pound lighter.

It's not often that Apple products grow in size, but then again, Apple's approach here is unorthodox. Many of the biggest features of the MacBook Pro 2021 simply destroy what the previous iteration insisted on. The Touch Bar is the most egregious example, and it's dead and gone on both the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros.

Ports

It's no secret that the MacBook Pro is doing the opposite with its ports. While it took way too long to get here, Apple made what I think was the best possible port selection possible. You still get three Thunderbolt 4 ports for all of that powerful docking you might need. However, they are no longer your only options.

Initially, charging is mainly done using the MagSafe 3 power adapter on the left. What a wonderful return! Before the 2016 MacBook Pro, the intuitive MagSafe adapter has always been one of the distinctive technologies behind the MacBook Pro. And now it's back.

A side profile view of the MacBook Pro's port selection.

It's also better than ever. It is more powerful and can deliver up to 140 watts of power. That's more than you can charge through Thunderbolt 4. It also feels like it has a stronger magnetic grip and it's naturally thinner. It even has a chic braided cord, which is beautiful. The MagSafe 3 adapter is included, so you probably won't be charging via USB-C too often (unless you're like me and have USB-C chargers plugged into almost every wall outlet in the house). .

In addition to charging, the MacBook Pro has an HDMI port and a full-size SD card slot. Technically, you don't need either. But as a convenience, it's something that the target audience of this laptop will really appreciate. I wish Apple had done us a favor and made this an HDMI 2.1 port for the highest possible bandwidth. On the other hand, that's a lot more useful on a gaming laptop right now than anywhere else.

The SD card slot in particular is a must. So many MacBook Pro buyers will be transferring files from a camera to a laptop. This was something that Dell brought to the XPS 15 and XPS 17 a few years ago, and it's great to see Apple follow suit.

Finally, the MacBook Pro includes the latest connectivity standards, including Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.

advertisement

The MacBook Pro 2021 marks the most significant evolution in the line's display technology since 2012. That shows how far Apple was ahead of the game at the time, but the competition has clearly caught up. It's not uncommon to see Windows laptops with great color accuracy and saturation, high resolutions, and even the use of OLED screens. The MacBook Pro was still among the best, but laptops like the 4K OLED Dell XPS 15 started to score higher in our tests.

The MacBook Pro takes the crown back, but not in a way that you might expect. Let's get down to the basic details first. It's a 16.2-inch screen with a rather strange resolution: 3456 x 2234. That means an increase in pixel density from 220 pixels per inch (ppi) to 250 ppi. That also means that at 15.4:10, it's slightly higher than the 16:10 aspect ratio. This also applies to the 14-inch model, only with a lower resolution of 3024 x 1964, which corresponds to a slightly higher 254 ppi.

The display of the 2021 MacBook Pro 16 inch.

Whichever one you choose, this will be the first Mac to receive the Liquid Retina XDR treatment, which also showed up in the iPad Pro in early 2021. These screens are operated with mini LEDs and not with standard LEDs. Mini-LED does not use individually illuminated pixels like OLED; Instead, they use thousands of local dimming zones that allow for deeper blacks and better contrast than LEDs.

This is exactly what I saw when I tested the screen with my colorimeter. In terms of black levels, the difference to OLED can hardly be distinguished. Both blow conventional LEDs out of the water and offer a much greater depth of quality.

To be clear, this MacBook Pro isn't brighter or more colorful than the previous model. It still achieves 100% sRGB and 90% AdobeRGB and a brightness of 475 nits. That's a lot bright, but you might be scratching your head over the 1,000 nits of sustained brightness Apple claimed in its announcement?

Well, that's for HDR content. And when it comes to supported content, it looks amazing. I went to YouTube first and found some HDR certified videos. If you already know about HDR on TVs, this is no surprise, but the visual difference is breathtaking. Switching back and forth between Apple's XDR preset and the default preset can be done right in the display settings, so the difference is easy to see. Highlights are brighter, the entire video is noticeably brighter, and in terms of fidelity, Apple's XDR implementation really brings the colors to life.

This is the best laptop I've seen for viewing and creating HDR content.

But let's be honest. Very few people buy a laptop to watch HDR movies. Finding HDR content on the web is still pretty annoying, and making sure you see it in HDR is even more frustrating.

Because of me. But the panel itself is commendable, especially since it now includes a 120 Hz ProMotion refresh rate. This allows the screen to automatically adjust the refresh rate between 20 Hz and 120 Hz depending on what is happening on the screen.

If you still think that high refresh rates are only noticeable or beneficial to gaming laptops, just try turning off ProMotion and locking the screen at 60Hz. Once you've seen it it's hard to miss. Animations and scrolling feel a lot smoother. Heck, even the reduced ghosting of the cursor improves the overall look of the system.

While 120Hz is the same refresh rate as some other high-end laptops like the Surface Laptop Studio and the MSI Creator Z16, laptops like the Dell XPS 15 and HP Specter x360 16 still lack it.No other OLEDs exist yet – or mini-LED panel that supports 120 Hz, which makes the MacBook Pro's screen a unique proposition right now.

Webcam

Apple updated both the webcam and speakers this time. First off, it's the first MacBook Pro to feature a 1080p FaceTime webcam for a breath of fresh air. There was no way Apple could have got away with releasing another MacBook Pro with a 720p camera. This upgrade is significant and results in a much sharper, smoother feed for your laptop controlled video calls.

Of course, Apple isn't the only one making laptops with 1080p webcams. The Surface Laptop Studio has one, and the 5-megapixel cameras on the HP Elite Dragonfly laptops are impressive too. Webcams have never been more important and laptop manufacturers are finally starting to find out.

As expected, Apple's image processing is top notch. It really puts the 2021 MacBook Pro in a league of its own. Now there were times when I felt that the smoothing effects were a little too strong or the color balance was a little too warm. For example, compared to the 2019 iMac I have at home, it's a brighter and better processed image. It's not a perfect webcam, but it's the best you can find on a laptop – aside from none.

speaker

A top-down view of the MacBook Pro.

The MacBook Pro 2021 maintains its reputation for delivering the best audio experience on any laptop. Apple increased the stakes this time with an improved six-speaker sound system. You still get two tweeters and four woofers, but they've each been upgraded for a more robust and bassier mix. The tweeters are both bigger, and Apple says the woofers now go half an octave lower.

This is quite a difficult thing to test myself out, but I can assure you that the 2021 MacBook Pros are a refined version of the previous generation. The bass booms harder and the stereo separation feels wider than ever. Of course, Apple was so ahead of the game that these little tweaks won't move the needle for anyone.

The spacing between the speakers on the 16-inch MacBook Pro and any laptop cannot be emphasized enough. Laptops like the Surface Laptop Studio and the Dell XPS 17 sound decent on their own, but are pale in comparison. The MacBook Pro actually offers a nice set of speakers for listening to music. You're still the only laptop I can say that about with confidence.

But more than that, chances are these will sound better than your average bluetooth speaker or computer speaker. I'm all for technology that makes another type of technology superfluous.

Keyboard and touchpad

The keyboard and touchpad, like the webcam and speakers, are without a doubt the best you can find on a laptop. No doubt on my mind

The keyboard has nice, springy keys with a comfortable 1.1 mm travel. This is the same Magic Keyboard as it was on the previous 16-inch MacBook Pro. Needless to say, yes, this is the replacement for the infamous butterfly mechanical keyboards of yore. I've loved this keyboard since it first emerged, and it's still one of the most comfortable and accurate laptop keyboards you can type on.

Apple MacBook Pro Review 2021 14

Apple MacBook Pro Review 2021 13

The Touch Bar is of course the big change from the keyboard in the 2021 model. It's gone. Broken. And for my part, I couldn't be happier. I'll admit that I loved the idea when it was announced, but after using it for many years I think it was a flawed premise from the start. The Touch Bar never kept its promise or received the support it needed to become something more useful.

So it's gone. And it has been replaced with something less ambitious but far more functional. The function line is back, but somehow improved. Well, Apple did it by increasing the size. They're now full-size keys, rather than the squat keys you'll find on almost every laptop, including older MacBook Pros. The Escape key is even wider and is flanked on the right by Touch ID. I love these changes.

I've always hated the miniature function keys on laptop keyboards – but I never knew I wanted them until I started using them. I've found that I don't type these keys incorrectly or reach for them as often. However, when making these keys bigger, Apple removed a few key function keys, namely the backlight brightness and the Launchpad buttons. There may be a keyboard shortcut that I am not aware of, but for now you can change the brightness of the backlight in the new Control Panel.

On the MacBook Pro, the keyboard brightness can now be found in the control panel.

I would have liked a slightly smaller escape key to make room for the brightness controls for the keyboard backlight, but everyone will have their own opinion on this.

The reason for this, of course, is that the larger the keyboard, the shorter the trackpad. This is certainly not a problem with the 16-inch MacBook Pro. It remains large and extensive and offers plenty of space for long swipes and multi-finger gestures. The Force Touch trackpad continues to stand out, simulating the feeling of a click with just a small motorized haptic feedback engine. We've seen this type of touchpad show up in other laptops like the Surface Laptop Studio, but the extra size of Apple's touchpad still makes it my favorite.

Price and configurations

Despite all the quality of life updates for the MacBook Pro, it really isn't intended for everyone. That's more true than ever for this latest generation of MacBook Pros, especially with the 14-inch model starting at $ 1,999. That price makes the MacBook Pro 13-inch (M1) look downright quaint for $ 1,399.

The MacBook Air and 14-inch MacBook Pro make the 13-inch MacBook Pro obsolete, especially as it retains the Touch Bar and lackluster port selection. The MacBook Air remains the best choice for college students and anyone else who does not spend most of their time on a heavy-duty application.

The screen of the MacBook Pro 2021.

When you come across the 16-inch model I tested, you'll pay at least $ 2,499. My device came with the M1 Pro, 32GB of RAM, and 2TB of SSD storage for a total of $ 3,899.

That sounds like a lot, but the 16-inch MacBook Pro has always been expensive. The starting price hasn't changed, and you can still set it at over $ 6,000 for a device with 64GB of RAM and 8TB of storage. The sweet spot for you depends on what exactly your needs are. Very, very few people are going to need 64GB of RAM, and the $ 2,200 Apple is asking for 8TB of storage is outrageous. Somewhere in between is probably where you want to be, regardless of whether you end up going for the M1 Max or M1 Pro.

It's important to note that there are two versions of the M1 Max, one with a 24-core GPU and one with a 32-core GPU. Essentially, Apple is charging $ 200 for 8 more cores of GPU power. It should also be noted that only an 8-core processor is used in the starting configuration of the 14-inch M1 Pro. This is the same as the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro, although the 14-core GPU should offer a significant improvement in graphics.

The lines get blurry on this lower-priced MacBook Pro, which is sure to be the most popular, but keep in mind that this is primarily a laptop for professional creatives. And for those who actually need a professional laptop, you've just found your ultimate tool.

Thanks to the vastly improved performance of the M1 Pro and M1 Max, these MacBook Pros can actually be used as professional content creators' machines. That means photo editors, color graders, website designers, programmers, video editors, 3D modelers, game designers, music producers, and more. If you're looking to try more than just these creative areas, it will pay off to put the money on one of these new MacBook Pros.

power

As I get my hands on more configurations of these new MacBook Pros, I intend to make more detailed comparisons between the different models, especially between the M1 Pro and the M1 Max. For now, however, my test unit was the 16-inch model with the M1 Pro. That means the 10-core CPU is paired with the 16-core GPU, all of which share 32GB of unified memory.

Both chips have two additional CPU cores (10 total) over the standard M1 (which is included in the 13-inch MacBook Pro and Air), and that helps with multi-core processing. If you look at how it fares in synthetic benchmarks, you can clearly see that a higher core count flexes its muscles.

Its multi-core score in Cinebench R23 was one of the highest laptop scores in our database and was only surpassed by the all-AMD Asus ROG Strix G15, a thick gaming laptop. The 16-inch M1 Pro MacBook Pro also achieved 39% better results than the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro in this benchmark. The 14-inch model will likely end up a bit softer, but that's still more of an increase in CPU performance than I assumed with just two additional cores.

The real benefit is for applications that can take advantage of these enhanced graphics.

Handbrake is another CPU-bound application that I tested the machine on, and it had a similar increase in performance over the M1. The 16-inch M1 Pro MacBook Pro encodes 4K video in H.265 38% faster than the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro. It's certainly a fast laptop, though it's beaten by laptops like the Asus Vivobook Pro 16X. Laptops like the Acer Swift X, Dell XPS 15, and Razer Blade 14 were only five or six seconds slower.

But the real improvement here is in the graphics. The M1 Max, in particular, offers GPU performance that is designed to rival discrete graphics cards found in competing gaming laptops and creative laptops. My device came with the M1 Pro with 16 GPU cores, which doubles the eight found in the M1.

The graphics on the 14-inch model are particularly noteworthy. While I haven't tested this particular model myself, the fact that both sizes use the same graphics configuration is a big deal. After all, the previous 16-inch MacBook Pro already had an 8-core CPU and a discrete GPU. Despite some thermal concerns, it was already a pretty powerful creative laptop. That was never the case with the 13-inch MacBook Pro. The 14-inch model fills that void, offering a really powerful option in a smaller size (and lower price than the 16-inch model).

The MacBook Pro with an Adobe Premiere Pro benchmark.

The real benefit here is in applications that can use these graphics. An obvious example is video editing in an application like Adobe Premiere Pro, which now runs natively on Apple Silicon. PugetBench for Premiere Pro tests everything from timeline playback to exporting to applying GPU effects. Here the M1 Pro also impresses in operation in the emulation. The export score wasn't very impressive, but it was still 29% faster than the M1. An 8-core Intel or AMD processor in combination with a discrete Nvidia graphics ensures a faster export time.

But when it comes to video playback, the MacBook Pro absolutely flies. It easily scores the highest score we've ever got in this test, and even outperforms gaming desktops and workstations. The MacBook Pro was designed for such tasks, and it is certainly one of the best video editing laptops you can buy. If you choose the M1 Max model, you will likely get a higher export score as well.

The MacBook Pro is not alone in this endeavor, however. There is no doubt that 2021 was a year of high-performance 14-inch laptops, be it the Razer Blade 14, Surface Laptop Studio, or Acer Swift X. However, unlike all of these laptops, the implementation of the MacBook Pro is the cleanest . The notebook's surface stays pleasantly cool at all times, and there is practically no fan noise. It's hard to compare this to a laptop like the Razer Blade 14, which is constantly buzzing and making your palms sweat.

Gaming performance

Apple didn't put the graphics at the center of the MacBook Pro for the purpose of gaming. And as Apple's graphics power increases, this point becomes clearer and clearer.

Finding heavy games that can pose a real challenge to the MacBook Pro is a challenge in itself – there just aren't a lot of modern AAA games on the platform. But there are a few, and I've tested Fortnite, Civilization VI, and Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Rise of the Tomb Raider on the 2021 MacBook Pro.

In Fortnite, when comparing the M1 Pro to the M1, you can play at high settings at almost 60 frames per second (fps) instead of being degraded to medium. That's closer to an RTX 3050 or 3050 Ti, which isn't too surprising. This level of graphics can be found in laptops of very similar size, such as the Surface Laptop Studio or the Asus Vivobook Pro 16X. Again, the main difference the MacBook Pro brings is the lack of fan noise. The fans on the MacBook Pro are practically inaudible in almost all situations, even while gaming.

The comparison wasn't so cheap in Civilization VI. The M1 Pro MacBook Pro averaged 64 fps in medium settings and only 49 fps in Ultra. Being 35% slower than the Surface Laptop Studio shows the importance of optimization. Civilization VI has always performed poorly on the Mac platform, and it's no different here.

Gaming is still no reason to buy a Mac, even on the powerful M1 Max MacBook Pro.

Often referred to as one of the few AAA titles designed for Macs, Rise of the Tomb Raider also struggled to hit 60 fps on the MacBook Pro. At the highest settings in 1920 x 1200, an average of only 40 fps was achieved and at medium settings 47 fps. In comparison, the Surface Laptop Studio averages 70 fps at medium settings, which is 33% faster.

Overall, the graphics performance of the M1 Pro is incredible. Aside from the M1 Max, they would be the most powerful graphics ever in an all-in-one system-on-a-chip package. However, they are not remarkable in terms of performance alone, especially not with the 16-inch model. We've seen 16-inch MacBook Pros with discrete graphics, and the 16 GPU cores here don't necessarily blow an equivalent discrete mid-range card out of the water.

Things may look different with the M1 Max, especially the 32-core GPU option. I'll know as soon as I've tested it myself, but with double the GPU cores like the M1 Pro, I expect it will actually improve gaming performance quite a bit.

But that doesn't make it a proper gaming laptop yet. But the games are simply missing. Unless Apple Arcade really takes off, gaming will never be a reason to buy a Mac, even on the powerful M1 Max MacBook Pro.

Battery life

Efficiency has always been the greatest strength of Apple's M-Series chips. Because of this, the M1 MacBook Pro and MacBook Air were miles ahead of the competition in terms of battery life.

Somehow, the 2021 MacBook Pros go even further. The 16-inch model I tested achieved a new record in our database for battery life when surfing the Internet. Our custom script goes through a number of popular websites until the battery runs out and the 16-inch MacBook Pro lasts for over 18.5 hours. When I say the MacBook Pro is a multi-day laptop, I mean it. Several full working days went by for me without having to recharge it.

The 2021 MacBook Pro, half open.

The only laptops that even come close to this battery life are some of the current AMD Ryzen systems. The Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED lasted 16 hours and 15 minutes, while the AMD-powered Surface Laptop 4 lasted 13.5 hours. The 16-inch MacBook Pro is the champion far and wide. It shows how much efficiency Apple can save by not having to build a hot separate GPU into its laptop.

Besonders beeindruckend ist auch die Standby-Zeit. Wenn Sie es eines Tages halb aufgeladen gelassen haben, ist es ein paar Tage später nicht tot. Das verlängert die Lebensdauer des MacBook Pro erheblich. Ich habe nur nicht annähernd so viel nach meinem Ladegerät gegriffen.

Laut Apples Schätzungen wird das 14-Zoll-MacBook Pro drei Stunden weniger Akkulaufzeit haben als das 16-Zoll-Modell, was hauptsächlich auf die unterschiedliche Akkugröße zurückzuführen ist. Der 16-Zöller hat einen 99,6-Wattstunden-Akku, während der 14-Zöller nur einen 70-Wattstunden-Akku hat.

Our opinion

Das MacBook Pro 2021 ist der Pro-Laptop, auf den Mac-Fans fünf Jahre gewartet haben. Es ist eine Rückkehr zum Ruhm für ein Produkt, das sich lange Zeit veraltet und untermotorisiert anfühlte. Es hat die besten Lautsprecher, Webcam, Tastatur, Trackpad, Display, Akkulaufzeit und Portauswahl aller Laptops, die ich je getestet habe. Das ist viel, um in einem Laptop richtig zu stehen. Unterdessen wird die Leistung diejenigen zufriedenstellen, die eine Maschine suchen, die mit ihren Arbeitsabläufen mithalten kann, insbesondere diejenigen, die in anspruchsvollen, kreativen Bereichen arbeiten.

Gibt es Alternativen?

Auf der Windows-Seite gibt es eine Reihe leistungsstarker, aber kompakter Laptops, wie das Dell XPS 15 und XPS 17, Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme, MSI Creator Z16, Surface Laptop Studio und viele mehr. Diese Laptops enthalten alle separate Nvidia-Grafiken und die meisten enthalten auch bis zu 8-Kern-CPUs.

Es gibt eine Vielzahl von Gründen, sich für einen dieser Laptops gegenüber dem MacBook Pro zu entscheiden. Einige sind leistungsfähiger, einige haben interessantere Designs und viele sind billiger. Aber keines bietet das Gesamtpaket, das das MacBook Pro bietet.

Wie lange wird es dauern?

Die Hoffnung bei einem so teuren Laptop besteht darin, dass er mindestens über fünf Jahre hält. Das MacBook Pro soll deutlich einfacher zu reparieren sein als in früheren Generationen. Während Arbeitsspeicher und Massenspeicher noch angelötet sind, scheinen Komponenten wie der Akku oder die Anschlüsse austauschbar zu sein, was die Lebensdauer des MacBook Pro um Jahre verlängern könnte.

Wie immer bietet Apple auch mit AppleCare+ erstklassigen Kundensupport. Es ist teuer, aber es verlängert die Standardgarantie von einem Jahr erheblich.

Should you buy it?

Yes sir. Es ist das beste MacBook Pro seit über einem halben Jahrzehnt und der beste Laptop für Entwickler, den Sie kaufen können.

Editor's recommendations



03 Jan
Blog

Apple MacBook Air M1 Review: Fast, Fanless, and Fantastic

Macbook Air M1

"The MacBook Air M1 finally delivers on the promise of a small laptop with no performance restrictions."

  • Apple's M1 blows Intel around

  • Phenomenal battery life

  • Excellent keyboard and touchpad

  • Very solid build quality

  • Just good looking

  • Supports an external display only

Apple was never afraid to break with the past, even if the transition might be painful. For example, when it found the floppy disk was out of date, it dropped it and went all-in USB. The same thing happened with Motorola CPUs, which were dropped for Intel when the PowerPC could no longer keep up. Now it's that time again, this time the MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro 13 and the Mac mini will be equipped with their own ARM-based silicon and Intel will be left behind.

For some MacBook fans, this could be a scary proposition because how well could the Apple M1 work if ARM's only showcase to date has been the very overwhelming initiative of Windows 10 on ARM? If you've read our MacBook Pro 13 M1 review, you already know the answer to that question. At least on this machine there is nothing to be afraid of. I put the MacBook Air M1 through its paces to see if the fanless version of Apple's initiative works too.

For this review, I got the entry-level MacBook Air M1 for $ 1,000 with just 8GB of RAM, a 256GB solid-state drive, and a 7-core GPU. There's another version that gives you 512GB of storage and an 8-core GPU for $ 1,250. My experience didn't even include the maximum 16GB of RAM that can be configured for a few hundred more dollars. Was I disappointed or did Apple pull a rabbit out of my hat?

performance

OK, I know it's not fair to imply that the Apple M1 is doing some kind of magic trick. After all, it is an eight-core CPU with four high-performance cores and four more that come into play for smaller tasks and a sip of electricity. It's just that it's an ARM-based technology that has pushed Intel's core CPUs into the background in terms of perceived performance for some time now. If the MacBook Air performs well, it's no magic. Rather, it is an impressive new technology that promises wonderful things to the MacBook range.

Macbook Air M1Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

There's no reason to keep you going: the MacBook Air M1 surprised me in a good way with its performance. And that's not just a comparison with the current Intel MacBook Air, which uses a 9-watt version of the Intel Core i3 and i5 CPUs that lag behind their 15-watt Windows 10 equivalents. No, the MacBook Air with the 10-watt Apple M1 is using the latest 12 to 28-watt Tiger Lake processors from Intel (this time, Intel gives a range rather than a static value) and in many cases gives them a good old value-fashionable beating.

Before we get into the numbers, let's get something straight. The Apple M1-based computers run the fastest with software written for the M1 architecture. This makes sense and includes all of Apple's software plus a few other applications and utilities. If it wasn't written for the M1, it runs through Apple's Rosetta 2 emulation layer. That means, of course, that it won't be as fast as native software. And sometimes, especially with software that requires hardware drivers, an application may not run at all.

Take Geekbench 5, for example, which runs natively on the M1. The fanless MacBook Air M1 performed slightly better than the fan-filled MacBook Pro 13 M1. We're talking 1,727 versus 1,707 in single-core mode and 7,585 versus 7,337 in multi-core mode, but it's still noteworthy that the less expensive and theoretically slower MacBook Air M1 was faster than the Pro. And with their four cores and eight threads, both machines achieved a significantly higher score than the currently fastest Tiger Lake laptops. The MSI Prestige 14 Evo, for example, has the fastest Tiger Lake CPU you can buy, the Core i7-1185G7, scoring just 1,593 and 5,904 points, respectively. Even the 45 watt Core i7-10850H with six cores in the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 3 couldn't keep up with the M1 and only managed 1,299 and 6,372.

Worried Apple would force you to give up performance on its transition? Do not be so.

Next, let's look at Cinebench R23, another benchmark app written for the M1. Here the MacBook Air M1 couldn't beat the MacBook Pro 13 M1, but it was in close proximity. And it came almost close to the Lenovo Yoga 9i with its 6-core Core i7-10750H in high-performance mode that cranks up the fans. Notably, the MacBook Air M1 was completely silent (no fans, duh) and barely got warm – I was able to comfortably hold it on my lap while it ran the test. I said before that it wasn't magic, but maybe I'm wrong.

I also did our handbrake test which encodes a 420MB file in two iterations in H.265. The first used Handbrake 1.3.1 which runs in emulation mode and the second used Handbrake 1.4.0 Beta which was written for the M1. In the first case, the MacBook Air M1 took about 4.5 minutes to complete the test. This is roughly the time it would take for laptops with the 10th generation Intel Core i5. In the latter case, the MacBook Air M1 completed the test in 2.8 minutes. This is comparable to 45-watt Intel laptops with six cores and Handbrake 1.3.1 and just eight seconds behind the MacBook Pro 13 M1 with the native version. Again, the laptop barely warmed up. These results provide an insight into the effects of a native on the M1 on an application.

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I ran some other tests in Adobe Premiere Pro (which is not yet optimized for the M1) using the PugetBench benchmark. MacBooks have been the go-to choice for many creatives in the past, but this has never been the game of the MacBook Air. Due to severe performance limitations on the Intel version, running one of Adobe's Creative Suites was a challenge. But the M1 changes all of that, even with the $ 999 MacBook Air.

The MacBook Air M1 competed heavily with the more powerful CPUs from Intel and made mince of the Tiger Lake laptops from Intel. I also ran a Premiere Pro encoding test that produced a 2GB 4K video and the MacBook Air M1 running in emulation was about 40 seconds faster than a Tiger Lake laptop.

Most impressive was that this level of performance ran through the emulation. Imagine how quickly Premiere Pro (and Photoshop, Lightroom, etc) will work if it's native in the M1. Getting that kind of performance on a laptop this thin, light, and fanless is a transforming moment for creative professionals who might want to carry around a smaller machine but don't want to compromise on performance. For the first time ever, you can get some serious creative work on a MacBook Air – and that's a big deal.

In practice, I've noticed some minor slowdowns in legacy applications like Microsoft Office (Microsoft released native versions right after the test report finished). This is especially true for the start: Office apps are only faster on Intel computers than on the MacBook Air M1. But the difference isn't so big that it bothered me, and if I didn't check the laptop, I probably wouldn't even notice. Of course, Mac OS itself and every application optimized for the M1 was incredibly fast.

What about games? I didn't run all of the gaming tests on the MacBook Air M1. This is supposed to be a productivity laptop, not a slot machine, after all. Fortnite ran at around 33 frames per second (fps), however, with a resolution of 1,680 x 1,050 and high graphics that are playable and faster than the Intel Iris Xe graphics from Tiger Lake. In Civilization VI, the MacBook Air achieved 51 fps with the same resolution and medium graphics and sank to 32 fps with ultra graphics. Again, this outperforms Intel Iris Xe laptops and competes with integrated low-end graphics such as the Nvidia GeForce MX350.

This completely silent, fanless laptop is a better slot machine than the equivalent Intel laptops, which you would never have expected from a MacBook Air. Note that I tested the seven-core GPU model. For $ 250 more, you can get an eight-core GPU model that will be … well … one core faster. This version also includes 512 GB of storage space.

Macbook Air M1Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Finally, I mentioned that not all applications will run on the MacBook Air M1, although I don't have many examples to give. The decisive factor was the software for my older colorimeter, which did not require the necessary drivers for the MacBook.

But most of the other apps I tried also ran in emulation and were as fast as I would get with at least a mid-range Intel laptop. There were outliers like the Epic Games Launcher, which was just as sluggish on the MacBook Air M1 as it was on the MacBook Pro 13 M1, but there were few.

Battery life

Performance is just one area in which the Apple M1 promises serious progress. The battery life is different – after all, it is essentially an ARM chip that is designed to be efficient. How efficient can a laptop be when it offers the same performance as CPUs that are purely designed for performance? Let's find out.

Macbook Air M1Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

First, I ran our standard web benchmark, which runs through a number of popular websites. This is the yardstick we use to emulate productivity longevity, and it works pretty well. The MacBook Air passed the 15.5-hour test, one of the longest results we've seen. The Lenovo Flex 5G with its own ARM processor – the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx – lasted about 50 minutes longer, but there is a catch. The Lenovo had a Full HD display (1,920 x 1,080), while the MacBook Air M1 has a Retina display with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600. That's a huge perk for Apple – give it a Full HD display (not what you want) and we'd expect a few more hours of it.

Next, I ran our video benchmark, which runs through a Full HD Avengers trailer until the laptop shuts down. The MacBook Air M1 lasted 18.5 hours. Again, this isn't as long as some of the longest-lasting laptops we've tested, but it's by far the longest-lasting device with a high-resolution display. The Lenovo Flex 5G was stronger again with almost 28 hours, but it also benefited from its lower resolution display.

We usually use the Basemark web benchmark test to see how long a laptop with its CPU and GPU will last under heavy load. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to complete the test on the MacBook Air M1 so I won't be able to report on its longevity if you press it hard. However, given the M1's inherent efficiency, we expect that the MacBook Air M1 will allow you to spend a lot of time, even if you ask a lot of it.

design

Macbook Air M1Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

The design of the MacBook Air M1 is unchanged from the Intel version. Literally. That said, it's the same wedge of machined aluminum that feels like an alchemical amalgamation of glass and metal. It is completely stable, without twisting, bending or bending. Apple is doing a few things right, and designing and manufacturing laptops that exude rugged elegance is one of them. You can choose from three colors – space gray, gold, and silver – and they all look beautiful.

It's also a very thin and light laptop that is 0.6 inches and 2.8 pounds. Windows 10 laptops like the Dell XPS 13 and HP Specter x360 13 have caught up and are either thinner and lighter or close to it, so the MacBook Air generally no longer maintains its superiority in that regard. And the MacBook Air M1 isn't as small in width and depth as some of its 13-inch rivals, either, as it still has the same relatively large bezels it struggles with. When you add a display with a 16:10 aspect ratio, you'll find that the MacBook Air M1 doesn't fit into the same tiny silhouette as some others.

Really, these are nits because the differences between these sizes are tiny. Perhaps the MacBook Air M1 would look a little more modern with smaller bezels, but it's not like you'll struggle to find room for it in your backpack.

Macbook Air M1Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Connectivity remains a weak point in the MacBook Air M1. You get two Thunderbolt 3 ports and a 3.5mm audio jack. That's it. There isn't even an SD card reader to get your photos and videos. Get ready to buy some dongles, and a Thunderbolt 3 dock would be a good idea. Note, however, that the M1 does not support external GPU cases.

The M1 version only supports a single external display, either via the Thunderbolt 3 ports or via a dock. The reasons are deeply technical and based on the M1 architecture. However, if you need more than one external display, the M1 version is not for you. Compare this to the typical Windows 10 laptop or Intel-based MacBook, which can support numerous displays of different resolutions. Even laptops in the same $ 1,000 price bracket can typically support more than one external display if they have a Thunderbolt 3 port, multiple USB-C ports, or even an HDMI port (hey, remember these?).

Display and speaker

Macbook Air M1Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Like the design, Apple kept the same display for the MacBook Air M1. It's a 2,560 x 1,600 IPS display that looks great. It's not in the same class as the MacBook Pro, but you still get good performance enough for everyone but the most demanding creative professionals.

The brightness was 389 nits, which is enough for a laptop with average productivity but not up to Apple's high-end standards. The color gamut is slightly wider than average at 100% sRGB and 79% AdobeRGB – most premium Windows 10 laptops are 98% sRGB and 73% AdobeRGB. These aren't that big of a difference, but if you're looking to edit photos and videos, you'll appreciate the extra percentage points. The accuracy is particularly good at 1.39, with 1.0 or less indistinguishable to the human eye and the quality standard and the contrast ratio of 1130: 1 is above average (we want to see at least 1000: 1, and so the MacBook Air M1 crosses our threshold here).

The bottom line is that you are going to love this display and you probably won't have many complaints. If you're a creative professional and need the widest color gamut, go for the Pro line. You can choose the MacBook Pro 13 M1, get the same performance, nearly the same battery life, and enjoy a higher quality display.

Macbook Air M1Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Another area where the MacBook Air M1 can't quite keep up with its Pro siblings is audio quality. The speakers are very nice, don't get me wrong. They are clear and bright, with excellent mids and highs and a hint of bass. There is no distortion at the maximum volume – the only problem is that the maximum is not very loud. So you're good at listening for yourself, but if you want to share with a crowd, you'll need external speakers. And when you want to rock, prepare to pull out your favorite headphones.

Keyboard and touchpad

The MacBook Air M1 features the new Magic Keyboard, which Apple designed to replace the unfortunate butterfly keyboard on previous models. And it's a damn good keyboard, maybe my favorite of all the laptops I've used and the only one that surpasses the excellent version that HP has added to its Specter range.

The keycaps are a nice size and there is enough travel that you don't feel like you are typing on a block of wood (I'm talking to you here, butterfly keyboard). Best of all, the switches are top notch, with superb precision and perfect ground action that lets you know you've pressed a button. I can type faster on this keyboard than any other, and I hate to give up on it when I switch to a Windows 10 computer.

Macbook Air M1Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

The touchpad is also superior due to its haptic nature. It's bigger than most of the touchpads you'll find on 13-inch laptops, it's buttery smooth, and once you get used to the haptic aspect you probably have more control than most touchpads. Windows 10 touchpads have gotten a lot better over the years, but still haven't caught up.

Finally, use the Touch ID sensor embedded in the power button to sign in without a password. This works fine. It's comparable to Microsoft's Windows Hello technology, though you won't find facial recognition in the MacBook line-up yet. I missed this while using the MacBook Air M1, although I end up preferring to use a fingerprint reader.

Our opinion

We said the 2020 Intel MacBook Air is "a respectable choice for Mac fans on a budget". I'm going to change that here for the MacBook Air M1: it's a respectable choice for any MacBook fan looking for a smaller device that is perfectly quiet, charges forever, and is almost as fast as the MacBook Pro 13 M1. Not only will you save money anymore – you get a laptop that will blow your mind with its performance (especially since more apps have been developed for the M1) while being extremely thin and light.

However, there are some limitations. You can't get more than 16GB of RAM (neither with the Intel version) and are limited to just one external display.

Are there alternatives?

The same competition that applied to the Intel MacBook Air also applies here. Only you will find that in many cases they are slower and don't last as long on one charge. The Dell XPS 13 is the obvious choice that you can get for $ 980 with a Core i3-1115G4 CPU and the same amount of RAM and storage – but the MacBook Air M1 will blast it out of the water. Configure the XPS 13 with its fastest CPU and you will find that it is still slower than the MacBook in many applications.

The HP Specter x360 13 gives you the option of a better OLED display and the flexibility of a 2-in-1 for a few hundred more, depending on your configuration. But here, too, the MacBook Air M1 is the faster laptop.

Finally, the MacBook Pro 13 M1 is for anyone looking for the fastest M1 machine available (although the difference isn't nearly as big as you can imagine). The display gets better and the speakers will blow your mind. You'll also be spending at least $ 300 more.

How long it will take?

The MacBook Air M1 should have a lifespan of at least five years as Apple keeps its laptops up to date. Certainly the machine itself will last forever because of the build quality, and you'll love the support from Apple (if not the industry-standard 1-year warranty). And the MacBook Air M1 is getting faster and faster as more software is optimized for the M1 CPU.

Should you buy it?

Yes. The MacBook Air M1 isn't just for MacBook fans looking for something smaller. It is intended for any laptop buyer who is happy to move to Mac OS and wants to participate in the real future of ARM-based computing.

Editor's recommendations




13 Dec
Blog

Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch M1 Review: The iPhone of Laptops

Apple MacBook Pro 13 m1 review 06

"With the M1 chip, the new 13-inch MacBook Pro is the most exciting Mac in years."

  • M1 is incredibly fast

  • Nice display, as always

  • Fantastic battery life

  • The speakers sound brilliant

  • Top notch keyboard and trackpad

  • Only two Thunderbolt ports

  • Touch Bar is still frustrating

Only Apple would dare to sell a laptop based entirely on its processor in 2020. The main audience is not exactly chip heads, who make purchasing decisions based on core count and power per watt.

And yet Apple has managed to spread a lot of hype around its new M1 chip and the familiar old Macs that run on it.

The design of the new MacBook Pro 13-inch itself has not changed at all with the M1 version. It's identical to the Intel-based model that came out earlier this year. But the M1 processor promises something that a new paint job could never do. It's ready to transform the 13-inch MacBook Pro from another laptop into something new. Something clearly Apple. And yes, finally something better.

performance

The 13-inch MacBook Pro is one of the first of a new generation of Macs that includes the new MacBook Air and the new Mac mini. They all run on the same M1 chip, although performance is different between the three systems. The performance of the professional should be somewhere between air and mini. At least that's the idea.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro was already the most powerful laptop of its size. The adapted 25-watt Intel chip that Apple uses already contains more juice than the typical 13-inch laptop. You can still buy this Intel model, but it starts at $ 1,799. Don't bother about it. It has two additional Thunderbolt ports, but Apple's own 8-core 5-nm ARM processor blows Intel out of the water in every way.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro is still very fast. The results published in benchmarks made me do a double take, regardless of whether it is Geekbench 5 or Cinebench R23. In terms of single-core performance, it is on par with the fastest Intel and AMD chips such as the Core i7-1165G7 in the Dell XPS 13. When it comes to multi-core performance, the M1 is awesome. With eight cores, it clearly outperforms the quad-core laptops against which it has a price. The only laptops with faster multi-core results in Geekbench 5 are large 45-watt laptops like the Dell XPS 17 or the Acer ConceptD 7 Ezel.

This also led to similar results in Cinebench R23. Single-core scores top the list, and multi-core scores are way ahead of the competition. But remember: the MacBook Air has the same M1 chip. Although there is no fan in a slightly thinner case, it is only 11% behind the MacBook Pro in this benchmark. There's only a $ 300 price difference between the Air and the Pro, but the difference in performance is smaller than it used to be.

Of course, these benchmarks have already been optimized for the M1. This does not apply to the vast majority of the apps available. However, this doesn't mean you won't necessarily notice the ones that aren't optimized, especially if your basic workflow consists of basic internet surfing and word processing.

The MacBook Pro isn't technically fanless, but I haven't heard the fans spin yet.

However, you will notice how this laptop is cooled. You'll notice it when you start a Zoom call and don't have to shout over the fan noise. Or maybe if you've hooked up a couple of 4K monitors and are multitasking without it getting warm at all. In contrast to the MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro is technically not fanless – it has a fan that can rotate if necessary. But I've never heard it spin. Not even. This is a far cry from the MacBooks of the past.

Good luck running a game like Fortnite on an Intel MacBook. Not only does it run poorly because of the lame built-in graphics, it turns your MacBook into a portable space heater. Your palms are sweaty, the keyboard feels hot, and the fans spin like they're trying to prevent a meltdown.

With the MacBook Pro 13-inch M1, the experience couldn't be more different. First of all, it easily reaches 60 frames per second (fps) at medium settings. More importantly, it does this without any slight heating. Even $ 2,000 worth of gaming laptops can't do that.

Of course, there are restrictions when playing. While these are built-in graphics, they are a huge leap ahead of what AMD or Intel can offer. Like the iPad or iPhone, the M1's built-in graphics ultimately turn the 13-inch MacBook Pro into a decent gaming machine.

Take all of this with a grain of salt. The performance you can expect from the M1 MacBook Pro depends a lot on the applications you need. So let's turn to the big elephant in the room: app compatibility.

App support

As mentioned earlier, the M1 chip marks a dramatic departure from Intel and traditional x86 systems. Such a drastic turnaround makes app compatibility a major hurdle. Apple has not shy away from making great demands on its solutions, but you are right to be skeptical. Look no further than Microsoft's app disaster with the original Surface Pro X for an example of how badly this type of transition can be handled.

The short answer is, almost any app or software you might need will run on M1 Macs. That doesn't mean it's going to go super fast, of course, but it's a promise you can make to the bank. So far, development support has not been in the charts.

It's no surprise that the MacBook Pro is insanely fast with Apple's own apps natively compiled for this new architecture. If you're running Safari, GarageBand, or even Final Cut Pro, you'll find that the MacBook Pro offers professional-quality performance. Would you like to produce music or edit videos on the side? No problem. The 13-inch MacBook Pro offers you protection, especially if you stick to Apple software. From what we've seen, even the MacBook Air can handle these workflows with no problem.

However, if you are a creative professional or hobbyist, you probably already have the applications you choose to work with – and they may not all come from Apple. Since the M1 is an ARM-based processor, it cannot run software written for x86. These are most of the applications you can download from the Internet. There are a handful of key developers who have already optimized their apps for the M1. Microsoft, for example, has already introduced its office suite. The same goes for Google Chrome. For many people, this covers the majority of their daily use.

There are some holes, however. Adobe's Creative Suite is the main example. Native versions of Premiere Pro, Photoshop, and Lightroom won't be available until 2021. They're coming, but for now the M1 needs an emulated version to run. But do not worry. Apple managed to make these apps work a lot better than you might think. Apple's solution is an app translation process called Rosetta 2 – and it's mind blowing how well it works.

Developers quickly update the software to be compatible with the M1.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro can export a video project to Premiere just as quickly as the average 13-inch x86-based laptop, including the Intel version of the MacBook Pro. That said, you can safely switch to the M1 MacBook Pro without worrying about performance in non-native apps.

Of course there will always be exceptions. For example, I tried downloading the Epic Games Launcher. It's extremely sluggish. Once you load a game, it's great – but the launcher and storefront itself are left behind. Legacy software tied to specific accessories or hardware might have similar problems.

It was also terribly slow coding video in Handbrake. It took five minutes and 28 seconds to complete a 4K video encoding for H.265. That is, until Handbrake released a new version (1.4) that was optimized for the M1. Now? This coding time is only two minutes and 38 seconds. That's 15% faster than the 10th generation Intel Core i5 MacBook Pro (13-inch) when performing the same coding task. It shows how quickly developers update software to ensure compliance.

Battery life

Of course, the advantages of the M1 processor go far beyond pure performance. The laptop starts up in a flash when you open the lid – and even connects quickly to external displays. The biggest quality of life improvement you will experience with it is battery life. The 13-inch MacBook Pro has never been a champion in battery life. It barely squeaked enough to be considered appropriate. But not with the M1.

This 13-inch MacBook Pro has the best battery life I've ever tested on a laptop, despite only having a 58-watt battery. The 13-inch MacBook Pro lasted well over 16 hours on a single charge when surfing the Internet lightly. That's a lot of screen-on time. It outperforms many of the best Windows laptops like the Dell XPS 13 or the HP Specter x360. On a lighter load like a local video loop, the MacBook Pro can last for more than 21 hours. Angry.

Nearly doubling battery life without changing battery size is a tremendous achievement.

The best part? Just because you see the low battery notification doesn't mean you are doomed. The 13-inch MacBook Pro can last for about an hour, especially if you turn the brightness down a bit.

ARM designed processors are known for their extreme efficiency. So I wasn't too surprised that the MacBook Pro excels in this area. Still, it's a tremendous feat to nearly double the battery life of previous models without changing the size of the battery.

design

A laptop is of course much more than just a processor. The display, keyboard, trackpad, speakers, port selection, portability, and battery life are all equally important. Not much has changed in that regard, but this is where the MacBook Pro still excels. Mainly.

The chassis is 0.61 inches thick and weighs exactly three pounds. When this design was first used in 2016, it broke new ground. Nowadays it is taken for granted. You can find thinner, lighter, and equally robust laptops like the Dell XPS 13, HP Specter x360, Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon, and Microsoft Surface Laptop 3.

Still, it's a very mature laptop with no hint of flex or bend – and that includes the lid.

There is room for improvement, however. All I want is a MacBook Pro with some modern looking bezels. Laptop designers have made great strides in this department, but Apple seemed content with leaving things as they are. To make matters worse, the 720p webcam in that fat bezel isn't terribly good anyway.

I expect all of that to change in 2021 with the introduction of a 14-inch MacBook Pro to replace this one. If you buy a MacBook Pro today, it won't help you much.

This particular MacBook Pro only has two USB-C / Thunderbolt ports, both on the left. These handle DisplayPort, charging and data transfers at up to 40 Gbit / s. Personally, for reasons of convenience, I prefer a charging port on both sides of the laptop, for example on the Dell XPS 13.

The four Thunderbolt ports of the Intel version of the MacBook Pro are really the only advantage over the M1 version.

Display and speaker

There was never much room for complaint on the MacBook Pro screen. The 2,560 x 1,600 "Retina" display is sharp, bright and color-accurate. With the plethora of 4K screens available in laptops, the MacBook Pro is a few pixels short in comparison. Not that you would notice, of course. Just don't be surprised if Apple goes to great lengths to surpass 5K in pixel count over the next year. It can even use mini LED technology!

One caveat: I couldn't get our colorimeter software to work. It's a good example of niche software that just refused to run on the M1. However, I have confirmed with Apple that this is an identical panel to the previous model, with a maximum brightness of 485 nits, a contrast of 1470: 1 and 91% AdobeRGB color space.

With the M1 chip, Apple can do the audio processing itself.

The 16:10 aspect ratio has been used by Apple for many years, but is now finally being adopted by companies like Dell and HP. Apple has been right all along.

Speakers are another area where Apple has always been ahead. No competitors even come close. Apple has taken this new model further and made some improvements to the speaker tuning. With the M1 chip, Apple can do the audio processing itself and thus tinker with the stereo spreading and the equalizer. This was previously done with the T2 chip, but tighter controls mean more options to adjust.

The result is fantastic audio quality, especially when listening to music. Unlike most laptops, it is actually a joy to listen to. The speakers get loud without crackling or distorting, and there's even a ton of bass. It's a wonder considering how small these speakers are, but Apple's added tech takes them to the next level.

Keyboard and touchpad

I'm not going to spend too much time complimenting Apple on their keyboard repair. Gone are the days of unreliable and inconvenient butterfly keyboards. Apple's Magic Keyboard, which uses a more conventional scissor switch, was introduced in the 13-inch MacBook Pro earlier this year. It's still here and it's still awesome.

The same applies to the trackpad, which is particularly large and responsive. Force Touch technology means there is no physical mechanism under the glass – just a highly sensitive series of motors that simulate the sensation of movement.

In the meantime, I will continue to lament the missed opportunity the Touch Bar offers. I almost never use it. And when I do this e.g. B. to adjust the volume or the screen brightness, this is annoying. I just hope Apple now has improved tools for better implementation in the future, but at the moment it doesn't matter much.

Our opinion

The $ 1,299 MacBook Pro 13-inch M1 is a fresh start for the Mac. The physical design will eventually catch up, but right now we have the start of a season for the Mac where it will be difficult to compete with.

Are there alternatives?

The closest competitor is the Dell XPS 13. I prefer the slim design of the Dell laptop as well as the option for a 4K model. However, the MacBook Pro 13-inch M1 is now a more powerful laptop and outperforms battery life.

If you don't need the added power of the Pro, then the MacBook Air should be considered. It uses a slightly underperforming version of the M1, but it only starts at $ 999 (or $ 899 with student discounts).

How long it will take?

The MacBook Pro 13-inch M1 is based on Apple's new system architecture and is a safe purchase. It will be supported for many years. That being said, a major redesign of the MacBook Pro is slated to hit the market in 2021, though it may be a while before we hear more.

All Apple MacBooks come with a standard one-year warranty. Of course, you can get Apple's great AppleCare + service for up to three years, although it comes at an additional cost.

Should you buy it?

Absolutely. More than any other MacBook Pro in the past few years, Apple has finally created one that has an undeniable advantage over its competitors.

Editor's recommendations




04 Jul
Blog

Dell XPS 17 Review: Leaving The MacBook Pro In The Dust

"The Dell XPS 17 is a remarkably small 17-inch laptop with incredible performance."

  • Almost perfect screen

  • Incredible performance

  • Four Thunderbolt 3 ports

  • Keyboard and touchpad are excellent

  • Surprisingly small

  • Disappointing battery life

  • Expensive

If you told me that you bought a 17-inch laptop in 2020, I would call you crazy. There are only a handful of 17-inch laptops, and with the good 15-inch laptops, they are hardly worth your time.

That said, unless you're talking about the new Dell XPS 17. Unlike most 17-inch models, the XPS 17 is more than just a large screen. It increases performance. Serious performance. The kind that even the XPS 15 cannot offer.

I expect a lot from a laptop that costs nearly $ 3,000, but with the Nvidia RTX 2060 under the hood and a sprawling 17-inch screen, this could be the ultimate content creation workstation.

design

17-inch laptops are massive. This is one of the reasons why they have gone out of style. However, Dell engineers and designers always strive to ensure that the laptops are as small as possible, and these principles apply here too.

The case is only slightly larger in width and depth than the 16-inch MacBook Pro. You won't notice a big difference if you push it into your backpack even though you have an inch more screen. I was surprised to see that the XPS 17 fits in the pocket of my backpack, which is only suitable for laptops up to 15 inches. This is impressive.

As always, the screen bezels on the laptop are key. With thinner edges around each side of the screen (including the lower chin), the XPS 17 can reduce its overall footprint. The display feels full. It's not as big a difference as upgrading from XPS 13 to XPS 15, but every inch counts. You will appreciate the extra screen, whether you are playing, editing videos, or just scrolling a website.

If you don't use a mouse often, you will appreciate the spacious and responsive touchpad.

Thickness is the only dimension in which the MacBook Pro 16-inch is even smaller. It measures at 0.64 inches and weighs 4.3 pounds. The XPS 17 is slightly larger at 0.77 inches and weighs 4.65 pounds. That's up to 5.53 pounds for the touchscreen option. It's not easy, although the new Razer Blade Pro 17 is still almost half a pound heavier.

However, if you've already seen the new XPS 15, nothing will surprise you. Many of the same design elements have been adopted into the larger form factor, including the keyboard, touchpad, 16:10 aspect ratio, and carbon fiber fabric in the palm rests.

The keyboard and touchpad are highlights. If you're like me and don't use a mouse often, you'll particularly appreciate the spacious and responsive touchpad. The click is quiet and the tracking is almost perfect. The loose mechanism in my test device of the XPS 15 was fixed in the XPS 17.

Ports and connectivity

Connectivity has been added to highlight the "Pro" nature of the Dell XPS 17. It has four Thunderbolt 3 ports, two on each side. That means you have access to display output, superfast transfer speeds, charging, and more.

These are two more Thunderbolt 3 ports than the Dell XPS 15 and even a 16-inch MacBook Pro with a full-size SD card slot. Photographers and videographers should be enthusiastic.

If you come from an older XPS, MacBook or even Razer Blade, older ports may be missing. If you need HDMI or USB-A connections, you have to rely on dongles or a Thunderbolt 3 hub.

The XPS 17 also features Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5, the latest wireless connections designed to provide strong network performance and a reliable Bluetooth connection.

performance

The Dell XPS 15 is already an extremely powerful laptop. When I heard that the XPS 17 would improve things a bit, I was curious how this could be achieved. After all, the two laptops have the same processor options. The basic model includes the Intel Core i5-10300H and extends to the Intel Core i9-10980HK with eight cores.

The Core i5 model only has four cores and integrated graphics, so you shouldn't expect anything special in terms of performance. It starts at $ 1,372, more than a base XPS 15, and you pay for the bigger screen. Laptops like the LG Gram 17 or the HP Envy 17 follow this approach – and remain relatively niche products.

The processor performance is not found in smaller laptops like the Dell XPS 15.

However, the processor used in my test device was the Intel Core i7-10875H, an 8-core piece of silicon. Together with 32 GB of RAM, the XPS 17 achieved impressive results in Geekbench 5 and Cinebench R20. It is 8% faster in the multi-core Cinebench R20 than in the 16-inch MacBook Pro with Intel Core i9-9980HK. Geekbench 5 single-core is also 9% ahead.

Laptops with the AMD Ryzen 7 3800H or the Intel Core i9-10980HK offer a slightly faster processor performance. However, a Core i9 variant of the Dell XPS 17 will close the gap. In the meantime, this upgraded Core i7 is very powerful, even for content creators, developers, designers, and anyone else running heavy-duty applications.

However, processor performance is not something you cannot find in the XPS 15. For me alone, this does not justify the larger space requirement and the higher price of the XPS 17. The graphics hardware is a different story.

Graphics performance

The Dell XPS 17 features a brand new heat solution that uses a combination of steam chambers and a redesigned airflow system. Better cooling enables the use of more power-hungry components like the Nvidia RTX 2060. We're not talking about a powerful graphics card for such a thin and light laptop.

The XPS 17 outperforms the Nvidia GTX 1650 Ti of the XPS 15 in 3DMark Time Spy by 35%. It's even on par with the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, a gaming laptop that uses the same RTX 2060 GPU. In contrast to the XPS 15, which always had limited gaming performance, the XPS 17 is a fully-fledged gaming laptop. It plays Assassin's Creed Odyssey at 41 FPS (frames per second) at 1080p and ultra detail, and this is an extremely challenging game. That's 37% better than the XPS 15 and just a few frames behind the ROG Zephyrus G14.

Of course, performance in lighter games like Fortnite, which was playable at almost 60 FPS, even held up to 1440p with Epic graphics settings. If you want to connect an external monitor with a high refresh rate, you can even enjoy frame rates of up to 116 at a resolution of 1080p with settings for high details. Of course it's not a good experience at 4K, but that's not surprising.

The XPS 17 had similar frame rates in Battlefield V. 4K is prohibited, but the 1440p gameplay was smooth and looks crisp.

The lack of a higher refresh rate or G-Sync support is the only function missing in the gaming experience. Limiting the frame rate and enabling V-Sync is probably the best way to avoid screen tears in most games, but it's not quite the experience of a high-end gaming laptop. As much as I wish all new laptops had 120 Hz or 144 Hz screens, we are not there yet.

But here, too, the XPS 17 is not labeled as a gaming laptop, and these inflated graphics have many other uses. It is blown through 3D modeling and AutoCAD and is an extremely powerful option for video editing.

The Dell XPS 17 cannot stand the performance of the Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch.

I tried some video renderings in Adobe Premiere, in which the graphics card can be fully used on some laptops. The XPS 17 was one of the fastest laptops in our test that exported a two-minute 4K video clip to ProRes 422. The task was completed in just five minutes and 47 seconds, and the XPS 15 was exceeded by three minutes. With an Intel Xeon processor, you might get more out of a chunky workstation, but the two are hardly worth comparing.

The Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch doesn't hold a candle for the XPS 17 despite the recent graphics card upgrade. The only device that could hardly beat in this test was the Microsoft Surface Book 3 15. In this 2-in-1 Device, the graphics card is in a separate housing. It's not a fair fight, but it shows how powerful graphics cards can be if the software is optimized for them.

The new Razer Blade Pro 17 can outperform it as a video editing option when it launches later this year. It offers the same eight-core processor in addition to the much more powerful Nvidia RTX 2080 Super Max-Q graphics card. I won't know for sure how it will work until I test it myself, but the specs look promising.

The base model of the XPS 17, of course, uses built-in Intel graphics, which means that you can't expect to be a slot machine. There's also an option for an Nvidia GTX 1650 Ti graphics card if you want a little more performance at a lower cost. The GTX 1650 Ti option can serve you well if you want to play games with medium detail settings.

Display and speakers

Like the Dell XPS 15, the XPS 17 offers two display options. One is 1,920 x 1,200, which comes in the base model. It's more pixels than a standard 1080p screen, but most people will want to choose the 3840×2400 display. It is almost perfect. It's the most color accurate screen I've ever tested, and its color gamut is up to 96% in the Adobe RGB color space. Not even the MacBook Pro 16-inch can compare it, although it is known to be a leader in picture quality.

The XPS 17's 4K display never has as high a brightness and contrast ratio as an OLED screen, but the XPS 17 isn't a problem there either. The contrast ratio is 1530: 1, which makes it a beautiful screen for games and films and produces a wide range of color depths. With a maximum of 491 nits, I never had a problem with screen glare even when working outdoors.

The speaker grille is larger, but the sound itself is not.

I had high hopes for the rest of the multimedia experience on the XPS 17. Like the XPS 15, the speakers are hidden under a series of laser-cut holes on the keyboard deck. Here the speaker grille is larger, but the sound itself is not.

The audio of the XPS 17 sounds almost identical to that of the XPS 15, which offers a little bass and a decently rounded sound profile. It's better than many laptops, even expensive options like the Razer Blade Pro 17. But do they compete with the MacBook Pro 16-inch or even the MacBook Air? Unfortunately not. The bass and the abundance of audio quality are simply not there.

Battery life

I didn't expect the Dell XPS 17 to offer good battery life. Most laptops with 4K screens don't last long on a single charge, and adding an extra 5 cm screen doesn't help. I didn't expect it to be that bad.

Despite a massive 97 watt-hour battery, the XPS 17 only lasted about four and a half hours on my normal day of use. My workflow is not overly large and mainly consists of web applications, dozens of tabs, and video or audio streaming.

If your workload is simple, endurance will improve significantly. In our video playback test, in which a local 1080p video is repeated until the battery is empty, the XPS 17 took almost seven hours. But in everyday use, the MacBook Pro 16-inch will still outlast it.

I also tested it on the Basemark 3.0 web benchmark, which simulates battery life and puts a heavy load on the CPU at the same time. The XPS 17 only lasted three hours. This is a poor score for a modern mainstream laptop and is more like dedicated gaming laptops.

Of course, if you choose a lower resolution screen, you should see at least a few hours of extra battery.

Our opinion

If the Dell XPS 17 had been nothing more than the XPS 15 with a larger screen, I would not have been impressed. However, if you're looking for absolute performance, there's a new king in town – and it's nowhere near as big as you might think.

It is not cheap and the battery life is disappointing. However, if you're looking for a sleek, professional laptop that can handle heavy workloads, the Dell XPS 17 is the all-in-one package.

Are there alternatives?

The MacBook Pro 16-inch is the main competitor of this laptop. However, it's more expensive and doesn't offer as powerful graphics performance.

The Razer Blade Pro 17 poses a major threat to the XPS 17. The updated model now offers the same eight-core Intel processor, but can be configured up to an Nvidia RTX 2080 Super Max-Q graphics card. It also has a much faster 300 Hz refresh rate screen for smoother games. The Razer Blade Pro 17 is bigger and heavier and can only be configured with a 4K screen starting at a whopping $ 3,800.

Finally, the Dell XPS 15 should be considered as an alternative. It's a little cheaper, smaller, has better battery life, and is still quite powerful.

How long it will take?

The Dell XPS 17 should last for at least five years. It is a well built and powerful laptop. However, you cannot update the memory or memory. There is also only a one-year warranty, although Dell offers an extended accidental damage service or premium hardware support up to four years.

Should you buy it

Yes. The Dell XPS 17 is an extremely powerful laptop specially designed for content creation.

Editor's recommendations




22 May
Blog

Apple MacBook Pro 13-Inch Review: For The Hobbyist

Apple MacBook Pro 13 review 2020 03

Macbook Pro 13-inch touch bar

"The new keyboard of the MacBook Pro makes it a worthy choice for aspiring creatives."

  • Industry leading display

  • Thin and light design

  • Excellent new keyboard

  • Hard-as-rock processing quality

  • Confusing processor selection

  • Average battery life

The MacBook Pro 13 plays a crucial role in the Apple product range. It's not a real "pro" laptop – that's the MacBook Pro 16. It's for the hobbyist. The amateur. The aspiring professional.

Let's be honest. The number of people who actually need professional services is relatively small, while hobby graphic designers, YouTubers, music producers and photographers are a dozen. It's a demographic group that includes some of Apple's biggest fans, and the MacBook Pro 13 shows why.

Price and configurations

The way Apple rates the MacBook Pro reflects the emerging hobby nature of this laptop. It is expensive. Even more expensive than before. The base model starts at $ 1,299, which sounds like a fair price.

Until you find that Apple sells old hardware in a new laptop. Except for the keyboard, this “new” MacBook Pro is identical to the one it sold a year ago.

This is not what other laptop manufacturers do. You can purchase the latest 10th generation processors in the Dell XPS 13, Surface Laptop 3, or HP Specter x360 in configurations starting at $ 1,200 or less. This is also not Apple's standard practice. The company tends to update its Macs more slowly than other companies. However, when a new model comes out, it often has the latest silicon.

And I can't imagine Apple launching a new flagship for iPhone or iPad that uses last year's processor. Instead, old designs are released with new processors like the iPhone SE.

This makes configuring a MacBook Pro a complete mess. Good luck choosing between the 8th generation Core i7 and the 10th generation Core i5. Oddly enough, it's the 8th generation that costs $ 100 more with a similar configuration. Apple charges you $ 200 for the modest leap from 8th generation Intel processors to 10th generation Intel processors. It also costs more for faster memory, perhaps when trying to sweeten the business with high-end models.

There is a glimmer of light in the new configurations. Warehouse. The base model now comes with a 256 GB SSD instead of 128 GB, and the $ 1,799 model has 512 GB. This is already the standard for many laptops, and I'm happy that Apple is following this example.

performance

One thing could change my bad impression of the MacBook Pro 13 hardware options. Performance. Maybe Apple has invented something special. This is possible because the 10th generation Intel Core chips in more expensive configurations are specific to the MacBook Pro.

My test device had the Intel Core i5-1038NG7, a 25-watt processor with four cores and eight threads. It is similar to the Intel Core i5-1035G7, a 15-watt processor that is used in many 13-inch laptops such as the Dell XPS 13, the HP Specter x360 and the Microsoft Surface Laptop 3.

Those 10 extra watts do bring some power, but as I've learned, it's a modest increase. The MacBook Pro 13 beats most other 13-inch laptops in Cinebench R20 and Geekbench 5 – especially laptops that don't put a heavy load on the CPU, like the Specter x360 or the Razer Blade Stealth. The Dell XPS 13 is a notable exception. It uses thermal tricks to push the processor more than others, and although it has a lower-performing chip, it outperforms the MacBook Pro 13 in most benchmarks.

The performance of the MacBook Pro 13-inch is a must for a hobbyist.

However, the MacBook Pro 13 strikes back in real applications. I encoded 4K video in Handbrake to H.265 in just over 3 minutes, which is 10 seconds faster than the Dell XPS 13. This is the best video encoding rating I've seen from a 13 inch laptop so far but not by much. This also applies to the $ 1,799 model with the 10th generation Core i5, 16 GB RAM and 512 GB storage.

This does not mean that the MacBook Pro is a content creation machine. Exporting a 4K 2-minute clip to ProRes 422 took a painfully long 16 minutes. The 16-inch MacBook Pro does this in about half the time thanks to more processor cores and a discrete graphics card. The problem is that starting at $ 2,499, the laptop is more than twice as expensive as the entry-level MacBook Pro. The $ 1,799 is priced in between, but not in terms of performance.

However, the MacBook Pro 13-inch will come over for a hobbyist. If you're producing music in logic, photography in Lightroom, or YouTube videos in Final Cut, the 13-inch MacBook Pro won't stand in your way too much unless you use the device with high resolutions or codecs. If you don't make a living from these applications, it's not possible to pay at least $ 2,499 for a laptop. In this case, you only have problems with hiccups or longer render times.

Of course, the MacBook Pro 13 can easily handle dozens of Chrome tabs, Slack, Spotify, and video streaming. If that's all you need to do, the cheaper MacBook Air is probably the better choice.

design

The four-year-old design of the MacBook Pro 13 is now being repeated for the fourth time. This is not unusual for Apple and is not necessarily a bad thing. There are areas where the MacBook Pro is still a leader. You can open it with one finger, but the screen isn't shaky. The speakers are unprecedented, blowing every other 13-inch laptop out of the water. They have more bass and a rich stereo spread that highlights details in songs like you've never heard in a laptop.

However, there are some wrinkles, including the screen bezels. With the MacBook Pro 16, Apple has reduced the frame in favor of a larger screen. This is less wasted space and more screen space. However, the MacBook Pro 13 is stuck with chubby bezels. Rumor has it that a 14-inch MacBook Pro is in the works that follows a similar approach, but is unlikely to be launched in 2020.

It has a super slim profile that dozens of laptops have tried but failed to replicate.

But you can't blame Apple for its unibody aluminum case. Many have tried to duplicate Apple's machined aluminum case. The space gray color scheme still looks fresh and sophisticated, especially when it sits next to light gray surface devices or one of the countless nondescript black laptops. I wish the MacBook Air's gorgeous gold finish was an option.

I also can't complain about the size. The MacBook Pro isn't the thinnest or smallest 13-inch notebook in the world, but it still feels slim. Without the setting next to the 0.58-inch XPS 13, it wouldn't be crazy to assume that the 0.61-inch MacBook Pro is thinner. The unibody structure gives it a super slim profile that dozens of laptops couldn't replicate.

The MacBook Pro 13's Thunderbolt 3 ports were a trendsetter when first released, but they're pretty standard today. The $ 1,799 model has four Thunderbolt 3 ports, while the $ 1,299 model only has two. In the cheaper model, Apple places both ports on the left side, which is somewhat impractical for charging purposes.

Display quality

The MacBook Pro series is a leader in display quality, although this image has slowly changed in recent years. The MacBook Pro 13's 2,560 x 1,600 screen is particularly sharp for a 13.3-inch screen. If you are used to a 1080p screen, you will immediately notice the difference in sharpness.

Laptops like the XPS 13 or Specter x360 now offer 4K screen options that are even richer in pixels and yet are just as bright, vivid and color accurate. The 4K Specter x360 is $ 500 cheaper while the XPS 13 is $ 140 cheaper. HP even offers an OLED option that offers incredible black levels that traditional LEDs can't match. These days, these screens are even better equipped than MacBook Pro for precise photo editing.

Rumor has it that Apple is investing in the next development of its display technology, the mini LED, but it looks like we have to wait further.

The magic keyboard and touch bar

In addition to the internal updates, the Magic Keyboard is the most important feature of the MacBook Pro. Is it a sad state? Perhaps, but on the one hand you can count how often Apple has reversed the course so sharply. It's big business.

I am not convinced that this will be Apple's last attempt to reinvent the keyboard, but at the moment it has withdrawn to a traditional design. Each key has a scissor switch, a rubber dome and a full millimeter of travel.

However, it's not a return to the MacBook Pro 2015. The keycaps are more stable and less shaky, and the keystrokes have a sharper click. It's fantastic – a quiet, comfortable keyboard that made me feel right at home. The reverse T-shape of the arrow keys is available again, as is the Esc key. All of this came first for the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro 16-inch, but I'm still happy.

The Magic keyboard is a quiet, comfortable keyboard that made me feel right at home.

The trackpad hasn't changed and it shouldn't. A lot of technical magic happened on the first design in 2016, and it's still the best trackpad on a laptop.

The touch bar is instead of the function line and has not grown as I hoped in recent years. It still freezes occasionally and I can't decrease my music or screen brightness. It is rarely useful and I often forget that it is there. I was thrilled when Apple introduced it in 2016. What an exciting innovation! Since then, however, Apple has done very little to develop a function that is considered necessary.

The Touch ID is still located in the top right of the touch bar and offers quick registrations and purchases for applying payments. I miss facial authentication in terms of Face ID or Windows Hello. The Mac is still the only major operating system that doesn't implement facial recognition.

Battery life

The current MacBook Pro has never had excellent battery life. You can expect a single charge to last around 6 to 7 hours, depending on how hard you push it. In my typical workflow for web apps, the average was 6.5 hours.

Compared to 1080p laptops like the XPS 13 or the Specter x360, the MacBook Pro breaks down. The XPS 13 should give you an extra 4 hours of battery life, which makes the MacBook Pro look rather weak in comparison.

However, once you jump on the 4K screen, the score is a bit more even. I haven't tested the latest 4K model of the XPS 13 yet, but in previous generations it lasted 45 minutes less than the MacBook Pro when surfing the Internet in the same battery test.

Our opinion

The MacBook Pro 13-inch is a mixed update. It fixes the problematic keyboard, but Apple's decision to stick with legacy hardware for entry-level configurations is a big issue. The design ages in some ways, but remains slim and can be compared well with most alternatives. The MacBook Pro gives you the feeling that you can do anything, but you only have the right tools if you choose the most expensive configurations – which are indeed very expensive.

Are there alternatives?

The best 13-inch laptop is the Dell XPS 13. It beats the MacBook Pro in most areas and looks just as good. Even the 4K model undercuts the price of the MacBook Pro.

If you're set up on a Mac, your other two options are the MacBook Air and the 16-inch MacBook Pro. Both offer better value for money than the MacBook Pro 13. The MacBook Air configured with the quad-core Core i5 is ideal for students and anyone who runs simpler applications. The MacBook Pro 16 is the best choice for serious creatives.

How long it will take?

The MacBook Pro 13 should last for at least five years. Apple is known for making extremely reliable products. However, if you buy the entry-level model for $ 1,299, this processor lags a year behind other new laptops you buy in 2020.

Should you buy it

Yes. It offers just enough extra power to be a solid option for aspiring creative professionals.

Editor's recommendations




01 Apr
Blog

Apple MacBook Air (2020) Review: Mac 101 In Session

MacBook Air 2020

"The MacBook Air is a great choice for Mac fans on a budget."

  • New keyboard is an improvement

  • More affordable

  • Better graphics

  • Outstanding workmanship

  • Performance is still lacking

  • Bezels are out of date

The MacBook Air is important. This is the entry point to the Mac lineup. It's the college laptop, the freelancer companion, and a favorite of any Mac fan on a budget.

Many people get a first impression of the Mac here. That means it has to balance both performance and price. I tested two versions of the new MacBook Air to see how each of them does the balancing act.

The Core i3 model costs $ 999 and the Core i5 costs $ 1,199. Everyone wears the new "Magic Keyboard" as a heading function. Is the latest MacBook Air the perfect introduction to the Mac or, like many newer entry-level Macs, a bad first impression?

keyboard

Luke Larsen / Digital Trends

The Magic keyboard is a highlight of the MacBook Air. It is responsive, clicks and offers a full millimeter of travel. It's a joy to tap on it, and a real relapse to the popular MacBooks that were sold before the 2016 redesign of the MacBook Pro that introduced the Butterfly Switch keyboards.

You can't say that about the last two years of the MacBook Air. Apple blew up the hapless keyboard mechanism from the MacBook Pro for the 2018 redesign. It did not work. Flat key travel made typing particularly daunting for long periods. It was loud and worst of all unreliable.

Fortunately, those days are gone and the MacBook Air now has one of the best keyboards on a laptop. It even holds a standard feature set full of old-fashioned buttons instead of jumping to the touch bar, a feature I don't miss. The touch bar has never added much meaningful functionality. I use reliable and convenient escape and mute buttons every day.

Luke Larsen / Digital Trends

At the top right of the function line is a Touch ID fingerprint sensor, which also acts as a power switch. It's really time for Apple to move over to face recognition on Mac, a feature Apple introduced on iOS devices. Still, Touch ID works very well. It's the fastest and most intuitive fingerprint sensor you'll find on a laptop.

Let's not forget the trackpad while the keyboard steals the limelight. It's big, its pursuit is second to none, and its Force Touch click is practically silent. This is not a surprise. Mac laptops have long had great touchpads. However, it should be remembered that Apple continues to lead the field.

performance

The MacBook Air has never been a powerful laptop and never claimed it. This is the option for users whose requirements consist of word processing, email and online apps. Think of it as a Chromebook, except for Mac apps.

In 2020, however, the air received a respectable boost. This is the first Air with quad-core processors, which is an important upgrade. More cores and threads usually mean more muscle for heavy use and multitasking. Quad-core chips have become the standard for most laptops, including small laptops like the Surface Pro 7, the Dell XPS 13, and the MacBook Pro 13-inch.

Luke Larsen / Digital Trends

The jump to the quad core does not make the Air a workhorse. It is still behind the competition.

I tested both the Core i3 ($ 999) and Core i5 ($ 1,099) models, both with 8 GB of RAM. These will likely be the most popular options due to their attractive pricing. The processors used by Apple are part of Intel's 10th generation Ice Lake family, but they're not the same chips you'll see with most MacBook Air competitors. These are variations of chips in the Y series, which Intel produced in collaboration with Apple exclusively for its laptops.

The cheapest $ 999 Air has the Core i3-1000NG4, a 9-watt chip with only two cores and four threads. On average, this means a 15% increase in benchmark performance over the Core i5 MacBook Air two years ago. This is not essential and you are unlikely to notice this increase in daily performance. Nevertheless, it does the daily chores well. Apps open quickly, and if a few dozen Chrome tabs are open, it won't slow down.

Doubling the cores does not mean double the performance.

What about the quad core i5-1030NG7? Doubling the cores certainly doesn't mean double the performance. Since it is still a 9-watt chip, there is an upper limit on the possibilities. Compared to the Core i3 model, the Core i5 model is 27% better in multi-core benchmarks thanks to these two additional cores, but only 8% faster in single-core benchmarks. This is likely due to the fact that these two processors have a low base clock rate of only 1.1 GHz in common.

Here, too, the performance feels appropriate. The problem is not everyday use, but the comparison of the MacBook Air with other laptops that are sold at the same price. The HP Specter x360 for $ 1,100 also has a 10th generation Ice Lake Core i5 processor, but offers 30% faster multi-core performance over the Core i5. The difference is the performance. A 9-watt processor will never hit clock speeds that can compete with a chip that can consume up to 25 or 35 watts in short bursts.

Luke Larsen / Digital Trends

Of course, the MacBook Air benefits the most in Apple applications. If you stick to restricted solutions like iMovie and GarageBand, you can create light content on the side. Just don't be crazy about Air's upgrades. You can buy a Core i7 model that can hold up to 32 GB of RAM, which greatly increases the price. Still, it will lag behind the competition. The MacBook Air is not a device you want to run Logic or Adobe Premiere on. So don't try to make it a workstation.

Apple prides itself on quiet products, but the MacBook Air can be noisy. You can't access a zoom call without fans getting active on both the Core i3 and Core i5 models. These laptops have a larger CPU heatsink than previous models, but I still wish they would give and take thermals more efficiently.

Graphics and games

Switching the MacBook Air to 10th generation Ice Lake processors brings another important improvement. Graphic. Macs have never been slot machines, but with Apple's increasing focus on supporting Apple Arcade, a decent graphics option is important.

All versions of the Air contain Iris Plus graphics, although the Core i5 and Core i7 models each have 25% more execution units. This leads to acceptable entry-level games as long as you are ready to pull the graphics settings down.

Fortnite is not playable on the Core i3, but it is manageable on the Core i5. With a resolution of 1,440 x 900 and medium settings, the Core i5 MacBook Air managed about 40 frames per second. That may not sound impressive, but it is a big leap over what the previous MacBook Air can do.

Just don't expect to play challenging games like Battlefield V or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Windows laptops are still much better suited for gaming, and no modern Mac questions this longstanding fact.

Design and display

Nothing has changed on the casing of the MacBook Air. It is still a single piece of aluminum carved into a light wedge shape. It is rock hard, perfectly processed and still very attractive in its simplicity. The golden color is a highlight, but you can't go wrong with Space Gray either.

It's still the thinnest and lightest Mac you can buy at 0.6 inches and 2.8 pounds thick. This is pretty small, although some Windows competitors are smaller these days. The XPS 13, Surface Laptop 3 13 and ThinkPad X1 Carbon are all leaner and lighter.

Luke Larsen / Digital Trends

Part of the problem is Apple's stubborn refusal to downsize its bezels. The company has taken extreme measures to reduce the size of its phones for years, and has even used a notch to house its camera. Fortunately, four years have gone out of style here. That's not a good look for a design-first company like Apple. This feels even more inexcusable after Apple trimmed the bezel of the 16-inch MacBook Pro.

However, the screen between these chubby bezels is good. Apple has only ever offered one display option for its laptops, and this continues to be an advantage with these cheaper options. Even at $ 999, you get a sharp, 2,560 x 1,600 screen with great contrast. It is simply the best laptop screen at this price. You pay over $ 1,500 to get a higher resolution screen from Dell or HP.

With the port selection, Air offers just enough to get you through.

The MacBook Pro screen is of course still blowing the air when it comes to color rendering. The Air achieves 100% of sRGB and 79% of AdobeRGB, which makes it colorful for everyday use, but somewhat inadequate for photographers and video editors. It also offers a maximum brightness of only 389. This is bright enough in most circumstances, although the XPS 13 and MacBook Pro are brighter.

When it comes to port selection, Air offers just enough to get through – and nothing more. Both USB-C ports are Thunderbolt 3, which means they're fast and can process multiple 4K monitors with ease. I wish they had put at least one on each side for simplicity.

Well. Limited ports are a fight Apple has already won. As long as there is more than one, I'm happy enough.

Battery life

Luke Larsen / Digital Trends

The MacBook Air was once the king of battery life. These times are long gone. The lower screen resolution of the Specter x360 and XPS 13 makes it a battery life champion that can easily survive a long day at work.

The MacBook Air isn't bad, but it can't quite keep up. In all of our tests, it's a few hours behind these devices, including easy internet use (nine and a half hours), video playback (10 hours), and heavier applications (three hours). With my usual selection of Chrome tabs, web apps, Slack and Spotify, the MacBook Air lasted an average of six hours.

These tests were carried out on the Core i3 model. I don't expect the Core i5 model to change these results significantly, but I'll update this test later with my final tests.

Our opinion

The new MacBook Air is a respectable choice for budget-conscious Mac fans. The price reduction, the improved keyboard and the additional memory (now from 256 GB) are all improvements in the quality of life. However, the performance remains below average regardless of the selected configuration.

Are there alternatives?

Apple has been slowly lowering the price of the MacBook Air in recent years, and that positions it much better than the competition. The dual-core configuration for $ 999 is in direct competition with the Dell XPS 13, which also uses a dual-core core i3 processor. Many premium laptops do not offer lower performance configurations.

Laptops like the ZenBook 13 UX333 or the HP Specter x360 offer you better battery life and performance for less money, even though you forego the screen resolution and high-end build quality.

If you're set up on a Mac, the MacBook Pro 13-inch is also an option. The screen and processor are a big step up and still the better choice for photographers. Unfortunately, the keyboard is the older version with a butterfly mechanism, and updating memory or RAM is expensive.

How long it will take?

Apple laptops have a reputation for quality, and Apple supports products more often than other manufacturers when problems arise. This makes the MacBook Air a good choice if you want to keep it for five years or more.

Though performance is already behind the curve, it should remain reasonable if your daily use consists of internet surfing, basic productivity, and online streaming.

Should you buy it

Yes. This is a solid option for Mac buyers who want an affordable daily driver.

Editor's recommendations




26 Feb
Blog

Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch Review: The Best Mac in Years

MacBook Pro 16 inch (2019)

"Apple's MacBook Pro 16 is a much-needed return to the glory days of the MacBook."

  • The best keyboard on a Mac

  • Excellent performance for content creation

  • The 16 inch screen is beautiful

  • Incredible speakers

  • Touch bar is still not useful

  • Size can be unwieldy

This review was updated on January 24, 2020, with new competitors and rumors about an updated 13-inch MacBook Pro.

Complain. Emergency Repair Program. An infinite flood of online criticism. That's the last three years of the MacBook Pro, in short.

The PR nightmare had just started when I requested a Mac as a work laptop. The MacBook Pro was my standard choice at home and, despite its small size and long battery life, took care of music production and games. My 2015 MacBook Pro never let me down.

However, my experience with the MacBook Pro 2016 was very different. On my desk next to the stack of excellent Windows laptops, I found the keyboard frustrating. The design looked dated. Even his performance felt limited.

Mac fans, including myself, want Apple to bring the MacBook Pro back to its former glory. The MacBook Pro 16 offers the first glimmer of hope in years. Is this the laptop I've been waiting for?

The Mac Apology Tour

The new 16-inch MacBook Pro is not revolutionary. It wasn't presented at a glittering press event. It is not a leap forward in design and certainly not innovative. It is a patch.

At its core, the design of the MacBook Pro is retained. The unibody aluminum case is still a strength, and Apple didn't dare to touch it this time. The same applies to the Thunderbolt 3 port selection and the massive Force Touch trackpad.

However, once you've got the space gray behind you, small changes show the desire to please fans.

Even the thin frames around the new 16-inch screen show that Apple is hearing criticism. The chunky boundaries of other MacBooks have been looking dated for years. However, shrinking the bezels would have meant a smaller footprint, a smaller touchpad, and less space in the case for components.

Instead, Apple added an additional 0.6-inch display, which results in a resolution of 3,072 x 1,920. The massive screen provides a more complete view of your work, ideal for multitasking or working in a complex application like Adobe Premiere. It's not quite the 17-inch laptops it used to be, but it's close.

This is the best Mac keyboard ever released.

While the new display looks great, the keyboard is the most drastic change. Apple tried to corner itself in an attempt to modernize the keyboard. The company calls the new inputs a “magic keyboard” that matches the still popular iMac accessories. Its full millimeter of travel feels like an ocean compared to the previous design. The physical escape key and the inverted T arrow keys return.

This is the best Mac keyboard ever released. It's a step further than the 2015 model, with its larger keycaps and faster mechanism, and it's head and tail above the MacBook Pro 15's butterfly switch keyboard.

The touch bar remains and still feels useless. I accidentally mute my music and wonder why it's not more useful. On the other hand, it usually stayed out of my way. I will endure the touch bar as long as the keyboard sniffs.

When every millimeter counts

The new MacBook Pro offers more than a fixed keyboard. In fact, an additional thickness of 0.03 inches in the case has allowed Apple to add Significant quality improvements such as larger battery cells and a newly designed thermal system.

The larger battery is an important upgrade. Larger laptops with high-resolution screens often have battery life issues, as does the 15-inch MacBook Pro. The larger battery cells of the MacBook Pro 16 Increase total watts of juice from 83.6 to 100, the largest battery you can clog in a FAA approved laptop.

However, larger batteries do not always mean more time away from a socket. In the case of the 16-inch MacBook Pro, powering the extra pixels seems to steal the extra juice that the MacBook Pro 16 contains. The new model couldn't drive me through a whole working day.

Under my standard workload, which includes dozens of tabs, streaming music in Spotify and Slack, the 16-inch MacBook Pro lasted about five and a half hours. In other words, this 16% larger battery doesn't produce a 16% longer battery life.

If you sit under bright office lights all day, be careful. I kept the screen brightness constant above 75%, which explains why the overall performance dropped. It's not as long as I want, but it matches Windows options like the Dell XPS 15 with 4K display.

A video editor's best friend

Inflating the case doesn't mean better battery life, but it does contribute to performance. The ultra-thin design of the 15-inch MacBook Pro performed reasonably well in 2016. However, the first Core i9 processors were announced in 2018 and suddenly introduced new functions for laptops. Content creation. Video editing. Creative work. It has always been possible, but now it is much easier.

Apple threw them into the 15-inch MacBook Pro. The result was severe throttling. It was so bad that the Core i7 in a MacBook Pro 15 could often keep up with the Core i9. unless you have operated the Core i9 in a freezer.

The updated 2019 MacBook Pro 15 with a newer Core i9 that added two more cores to the mix improved the situation. Laptops like the Dell XPS 15 still handled the chip better.

With the 16-inch MacBook Pro, Apple returned to the drawing board to redesign the thermals for this new class of high-end processors. Thinner fan blades, larger heat sinks, additional ventilation slots. It's a complete makeover.

The difference is amazing. Although the 16-inch MacBook Pro uses the same processor with the same 32 GB of RAM, it leaves its predecessor in the dust in every benchmark and real-life test I've done.

I rendered a two-minute 4K clip in just 4 minutes and 41 seconds in Premiere Pro in ProRes 422. The same clip on the 15-inch MacBook Pro? It took twice as long. The MacBook Pro 16 is now as fast as the Dell XPS 15 as it should always be. I shudder when I think about how quickly this clip could be rendered in Mac-optimized software like Final Cut Pro.

The fantastic performance offers more than just increased airflow.

These fantastic results offer more than just increased airflow. The latest software optimizations from Adobe play a major role, as does the new onboard graphics.

As with all newer MacBook Pros, the 16-inch model uses a custom card from AMD. However, the Radeon Pro 5300M and 5500M are not an average update compared to last year's graphics. These are based on AMD's next generation Zen 2 7nm graphics architecture and help make the MacBook Pro 16 a powerful video editing device.

Who is it for again?

The sparkle of a new MacBook Pro can seduce you in a number of ways, even if it's not meant for you. IIf you don't have to run intensive applications in your everyday life, you can hardly use an 8-core (or even 6-core) laptop.

For example, the new graphics indicate better gaming performance. The MacBook Pro 16 does not meet these expectations.

The MacBook Pro 16 is fast, but not a gaming laptop.

Games like Fortnite and Rocket League are smoother than before and run consistently at frame rates of around 60 FPS in medium settings. You always have to pay attention to the graphics settings, especially due to the unusual resolutions that the 16-inch Pro can display natively.

Civilization VI had this problem because it refused to run in full screen mode and only achieved 53 FPS at medium settings. The Dell XPS 15 with its Nvidia GTX 1650 is always a better choice for gaming. It offers a more conventional resolution and enough power to improve the settings a bit. It can reach 50 FPS in Epic settings in Fortnite and 82 FPS in Civilization VI in Medium.

You can also consider it for simple everyday tasks, but again it is more powerful than you need. Unlike Dell or Microsoft, Apple doesn't offer a larger MacBook Pro without a six- or eight-core processor, discrete graphics and 16 GB of RAM.

The sheer size of the 16-inch MacBook Pro is also cause for concern. With a footprint of 14.09 x 9.68 inches, it's not a laptop you want to take on a plane, and it will take up most of the table at your local cafe.

However, there is a case for someone who wants to spend a high-end media experience on their laptop. Apple has tuned the speakers well and claims an additional half octave of bass. These are by far the best speakers you can find on a laptop, and you can feel it in the rumble of an explosion in The Mandalorian or in the kick drum in a song.

This display is also beautiful, although this is to be expected. It is bright, the colors are accurate and the contrast is high. The best displays from Dell and HP can keep up with the MacBook Pro 16, but this huge screen offers an impressive movie experience. However, the 16:10 aspect ratio means that you will always see mailboxes.

Our opinion

For the first time in years, I can breathe a sigh of relief and recommend a MacBook Pro. It does what Apple needed it to do and resolves all the complaints I've had against the MacBook Pro. That lifts it back to the top row of premium laptops.

Are there alternatives?

If you're not using your laptop for content creation or other tough tasks, you probably don't need a laptop that is that big or powerful. Choosing a 13-inch laptop like the Dell XPS 13, HP Specter x360 or Surface Laptop 3 will save you hundreds of dollars. If you have to choose a Mac, the 13-inch MacBook Pro should get an update in the first half of 2020.

However, the best real alternative to the 16-inch MacBook Pro is the Dell XPS 15. When configured with similar specifications, the XPS 15 is over a thousand dollars cheaper than the 16-inch MacBook Pro. That's a lot of savings with performance, an OLED 4K screen, and better port selection.

Another option for content creators is the Asus ZenBook Duo Pro. In addition to the unique second screen of this laptop, the Duo Pro has an OLED 4K screen and fantastic Core i9 performance. It is still one of the most powerful implementations of this chip for video editors and content creators.

How long it will take?

Reliability has become a problem for Apple. The new keyboard is unlikely to have many of the same problems as before, and the laptop is no longer part of the emergency repair program. Given how well these laptops are built and fully loaded, they should last for at least five years.

The MacBook Pro offers 90 days of technical support and a standard one-year warranty. Of course, you can extend coverage with AppleCare + and in-store repair to up to three years.

Should you buy it

Yes. If you've been waiting for a powerful MacBook you can rely on, this is the one.

Editor's recommendations




25 Feb
Blog

MacBook Pro 13-inch Review: Why We Can’t Recommend It

Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch review: why we don't recommend it

"The MacBook Pro 13 with touch bar is beautiful, but flawed."

  • Exquisite appearance

  • The screen is among the best we've tested

  • Loud, pleasant speakers

  • Spacious, responsive touchpad

  • Excellent hard drive performance

  • Adapters are required to connect most devices

  • The keyboard is below average

  • Touch bar has no obvious purpose

  • The battery life takes a step back

This review was updated on January 23, 2020 with the context of the 16-inch MacBook Pro and rumors of an updated 13-inch MacBook Pro.

The MacBook Pro 2016 redesign was, to put it lightly, disagreed. With its chic new touch bar, reduced connectivity, and sticky keyboard, the new model's reception wasn't as warm as Apple had hoped.

Many of these issues have been resolved with the new 16-inch model, which is the best Mac product in years. The problem? The 13-inch MacBook hasn't solved the problem yet, and not everyone needs the performance and size of this larger MacBook.

Fortunately, Apple lowered the price of the 13-inch MacBook Pro in mid-2019 and lowered the base model (which now includes the Touch Bar) to $ 1,299. These include an 8th generation Intel Core processor, 128 GB SSD storage and 8 GB RAM. Is the current 13-inch MacBook Pro worth your money with an update coming soon?

Still the most luxurious laptop

A look at the MacBook Pro 13 is enough to know that it is a Mac. Despite the many imitators, the MacBook Pro design still stands out. This was all the more impressive when Apple decided to avert attention from its branding and paint the bright white apple in favor of a sleek, subtle glossy logo that resembles that on the MacBook, iPhone, and iPad.

As always, the MacBook Pro 13 has an aluminum unibody design with no visible seams other than the bottom seams. It is sturdy like a stone without a hint of bend in one corner of the device. That remains true even though it's only 3.02 pounds and only 0.71 inches thick. It's not as extreme as in 2016, but the MacBook Pro remains a very portable laptop to travel with.

Apple MacBook 13-inch touchpad

Apple MacBook 13-inch touchpad

Apple MacBook 13-inch touchpad

Apple MacBook 13-inch touchpad

  • 1.
    Someone who wears the original Macbook like this

When this design was originally launched in 2016, the bezels looked slim and modern, although they weren't as aggressive as Dell. We noticed that users with the older Pro model appreciate the improvement.

The MacBook Pro is available in space gray or silver. The new MacBook Air also has the gold option in the mix. The color selection may seem petty, but it does add a touch of personality, and we hope Apple brings some of it to the MacBook Pro. Even Dell has expanded the XPS 13's conservative color scheme, and the HP Specter x360 also offers some fancy color options.

Regardless, there is no argument about the elegance of the MacBook Pro. The beauty of Apple design has always been subtle, which is why the company is sometimes accused of being safe or boring. The professional doesn't even try to avoid this criticism. It is neither the smallest 13-inch laptop nor the lightest. There's something to be said for design that works, even if it's not innovative, and the MacBook Pro remains the most luxurious laptop there is.

Although the MacBook Pro 13-inch has a headphone jack, it makes another connectivity option that is equally controversial and functionally more important. Apple has decided that USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 are the future, and has thrown every other port overboard.

Yes, USB-C is all you get. The MacBook Pro 13 with Touch Bar has four of these ports, two on each side. Even the card reader is missing. The decision has advantages. The ease of port selection is difficult to dispute, and each port is a charging port, so you can connect the wall adapter to any port. The ports are also fast, so you can connect multiple displays or use fast external SSDs without worrying about connectivity bandwidth.

You need adapters, and you may need many of them.

Now for the bad news: you need adapters, and you may need many of them. Are you using an external display? That is an adapter. External hard drive? Adapter. Any kind of wired input? Adapter. Ethernet? Adapter. SD card? Adapter. At best, you need to buy one or two dongles. In the worst case, you need a dock solution that can add another $ 100 to $ 200 to the price.

The greatest irony? Even Apple's iPhone cannot be connected to a MacBook Pro 13 without buying an adapter.

Thanks to Apple's lead, however, this has increasingly become the norm, whether good or bad. Laptops like the HP Specter 13, the XPS 13 and the Huawei MateBook X Pro now have similar connectivity options – and this will still only be the direction in which things are going.

At least it can communicate wirelessly. Speaking of which, the new Pro 13 has the usual 802.11ac WLAN adapter, which is now coupled with Bluetooth 5.0.

The keyboard of the future is not very good

The 12-inch MacBook released in 2015, which has since been discontinued, first introduced a brand new "butterfly" switch that is much thinner than any previously used in a laptop keyboard. Although Apple found it great, we complained that "(our fingers) were typed with a dull ache for more than an hour" because the keyboard feels stiff and can only be moved to a limited extent.

This keyboard is now also on the MacBook Pro. Well, not exactly the same thing. When launched, the Pro's keyboard was a "second generation butterfly mechanism" with slightly more travel than the first. And it is an improvement.

Apple MacBook 13-inch touchpadBill Roberson / Digital Trends

Bill Roberson / Digital Trends

That doesn't mean that it will serve you well. While travel has improved, the keyboard continues to suffer from a stiff, abrupt ground movement that can tire long typing processes. To what extent this will bother you is a matter of preference. Some Digital Trends authors thought this was perfectly acceptable and most thought they could learn to live with it. Nobody said they preferred the older MacBook Pros.

And it is not clear why this sacrifice was made. The new MacBook Pro 13 is thin, but just as thick or thicker than many competitors with better keyboards like the HP Specter x360, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon and the Dell XPS 13. Whatever the reason, Apple had to compromise on size , Performance and keyboard quality, with the latter getting the bad end of business.

The increasing complaints (and complaints) about sticking keys doesn't help either. Even with Apple's latest keyboard update, the third-generation butterfly, it was clear that the problem with sticking the keyboard wasn't fixed. We expect Apple to use the new "Magic Keyboard" of the 16-inch MacBook Pro when the rumored 2020 update for the 13-inch model comes on the market.

The keyboard suffers from a stiff, abrupt movement of the ground, which can tire long typing processes.

A revised oversize touchpad is located under the keyboard. In contrast to the keyboard, this is an absolute plus. The spacious surface improves the usability of multi-touch gestures that work well throughout. While the new, larger surface means constant contact between it and your palms, we haven't noticed a single unintentional input during our tests. Windows touchpads have improved significantly in recent years, but are still not as luxurious as Apple's.

And don't forget Force Touch. The haptic feedback system, which uses vibrations to simulate a click, can emulate real motion so well that most users won't notice a difference. It is quieter than before without affecting the satisfactory clarity of the click. The touchpad also offers sensitivity to force, which can enable special interface functions – just like the iPhone. The feature isn't widely accepted even by Apple's own software, but is great when it is offered.

The touch bar searches for the purpose

If nothing else, the Touch Bar is great to look at. It has a retina-equivalent pixel density, which means that symbols are rendered with crisp, vivid graphics. And because it is OLED, black tones look so dark black that it is often difficult to find the limits of the touch bar.

So it stops as a conversation starter. As a functional tool? Fewer. Apple tries to integrate the Touch Bar in such a way that it is also relevant in everyday web browsers, when taking notes and when viewing photos. The display changes constantly when new apps are opened and old ones are closed. It works well and keeps pace, no matter how quickly apps are switched or how many are open.

Apple MacBook 13-inch touchpadBill Roberson / Digital Trends

Bill Roberson / Digital Trends

However, it is rarely used a lot. At best, it offers a quick way to scroll through lists like your photo stream. This can also be useful if you want to scroll through a video. It's great for capturing such content and activating a scroll bar, even when you're surfing YouTube.

In other cases, however, it is clearly a solution that looks for a problem. Immediately take the input. As you type text in Safari, Word, and other apps, the touch bar keeps flashing suggested words. This feature works well on iPhone, where typing is often slow and cumbersome.

It's not that easy on a laptop. For example, type "office" and the touch bar will suggest alternatives. Did you mean "officers"? Or maybe "off season"? This happens regardless of whether a word is spelled correctly or not. Even if you make a typo, it is hard to imagine why a user would look for help on the touch bar when MacOS is already showing a correction on the screen and in most cases will automatically correct the spelling.

Since its release, more and more apps have been offering touch bar support – including Evernote, Microsoft Outlook and LastPass. But even with more developer support than at startup, the touch bar isn't quite as important to the MacBook user experience as Apple would like it to be.

If nothing else, the Touch Bar is great to look at.

Even though it could be useful, the size of the touch bar is limited. Automatically opened Safari tabs with thumbnail content previews appear, a feature that may prove helpful. However, the thumbnails are so small that it is often difficult to distinguish the tabs from each other, even if only three or four are open. If you open six, eight, or ten tabs, the previews get even smaller until they are so small that it is difficult to guess which one is right. Similar problems affect the photo preview and video preview functions.

In theory, you can scroll through photo collections. In practice, this is more difficult than with the touchpad. Asus has developed a competing idea with the ZenBook Pro 15's ScreenPad. While this is not perfect, it does offer an enticing insight into something better than the Touch Bar. In the future there will even be fully equipped dual-screen laptops like the Surface Neo or the ThinkPad X1 Fold.

In short, the touch bar is not great. However, transferring the function line to an OLED display offers an important advantage called Touch ID. Yes, you can now log in with your fingerprint and it works just as seamlessly as on the iPhone. Fast and secure login authentication methods are an excellent way to improve security for the average user. Windows users have been enjoying this for several years thanks to Microsoft's Hello functionality. Touch ID is built into Apple Pay, so you can securely shop online – in stores that accept Apple Pay.

The most powerful function of the MacBook Pro: the display

A quick glance at the technical data could give the impression that the new MacBook Pro 13 from Apple had an old display. It's still retina, which means that the resolution is still 2,560 × 1,600. That was breathtaking in 2012, but today it seems mediocre alongside QHD + (3,200 × 1,800) and 4K (3,840 × 2,160) screens.

But don't worry, loyal to Mac. You can remove all concerns about the display from your head. It's awesome.

We measured a maximum brightness of 548 lux. This is ridiculously brilliant and a complete overkill for indoor use, but it can help the screen, which is still very shiny, can be used in extreme situations. In comparison, the Dell XPS 13 with QHD + display only achieves 278 lux and the HP Specter x360 355 lux. Both systems can have a problem with glare in bright lighting conditions. However, Dell gives you the option to combat this with a matte display option.

Apple MacBook 13-inch touchpadBill Roberson / Digital Trends

Bill Roberson / Digital Trends

Brightness is only important in a bright room. What will amaze you no matter where you use the MacBook Pro 13 is its color. The display can achieve 100 percent of the sRGB color space and 91 percent of the AdobeRGB. It also delivered an average color error of 0.72 (lower is better). Everything under one is generally imperceptible to the human eye, and this reading is among the lowest we have ever recorded on a laptop. Only the XPS 15 from Dell with its excellent 4K IGZO ID display had a better average error value of 0.6.

The contrast ratio of 1,200: 1 is also excellent. The Pro can easily deliver dark blacks alongside brilliant colors.

The only error we found is gamma, which occurred at a value of 2.3. The ideal curve is 2.2, and the MacBook Pro 13's result indicates that the content is displayed slightly darker than it should. However, this is a very slight fluctuation that many competitors miss.

The retina display may not be the title of this professional, but it remains the most attractive feature.

When the numbers are counted, the new Retina display wins. It defeats the Dell XPS 13, the HP Specter x360 and the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon and surpasses them in terms of color gamut, color accuracy and contrast ratio.

But that doesn't mean that there is a lack of competition. Microsoft's Surface Book 2 can be used from head to toe in some categories. Our tests showed that the surface book had an even better contrast ratio of 1,460: 1 and that the gamma curve display was the correct 2.2. But they also don't quite match in terms of color accuracy and brightness.

There are also a small handful of Windows systems like the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga that are available with OLED displays. These affect the high contrast ratio of the MacBook Pro 13 and offer an even wider color gamut with precise gamma. However, they don't match the Mac's ready-to-use color accuracy.

Aside from the numbers, the MacBook Pro 13's display is excellent and looks like this in everyday use. Games and movies are crisp and vivid, and high-quality photos are rendered with such detail that you may think your screen has been replaced by a canvas print. The retina display may not be the title of this professional, but it remains the most attractive feature.

Sound quality is another important multimedia feature, and Apple has always shown an affinity for audio quality that is rarely found elsewhere. Simply put, the MacBook Pro is no exception. In fact, the speakers are the best we can remember in a 13-inch system. That says a lot, because some newer laptops in this category, like the Asus ZenBook 3, surprised us with their quality.

The MacBook Pro 13 offers a wide range of volumes and is at most much louder than most people need for normal use. It can fill a large room with music. The bass is there and is taken into account in minimal but noticeable amounts – the beat can be felt at higher volumes via the keyboard. The sound in the high and middle range remains clear and distortion-free.

External speakers are an improvement as always, but the audio quality here is surprising and can convince you that you don't have to connect anything to the headphone jack.

A fast processor that faces tough competition

Specifications have never been Apple's focus, but this was more of a marketing problem than an indication of the company's preference for hardware. However, this has changed in recent years. The MacBook Pro fell behind and took over new Intel processor lines late.

When it was updated in mid-2019, we were happy that the MacBook Pro 13-inch was updated to the 8th generation Intel processors. Intel now has 10th generation processors in most new laptops, which means the 13-inch MacBook Pro already looks out of date.

Drive performance is often overlooked by consumers, but is important to the overall performance of a system. Apple knows that and has been a leader in storage performance for years. The new MacBook Pro range is no exception. Read speeds of 3.1 gigabytes per second and write speeds of 2.2 gigabytes per second are specified.

We can't do an apple-to-apple comparison with Windows competitors here because the tools we normally use to test performance aren't compatible with MacOS. However, we tested two benchmarks that only run on Apple's operating system.

In the first place was Blackmagic, a test to inform experts whether a drive is suitable for processing content with certain frame rates and resolutions. A write speed result of 1,348 megabytes per second and a read result of two gigabytes per second were achieved (annoyingly, this seems to be the maximum result that the benchmark can show). This is a big improvement over the MacBook Pro 13 with Retina (2015). It achieved a write speed of 647 MB ​​/ s and a read speed of 1,056 MB / s.

It is clear that the MacBook Pro 13 with Touch Bar offers excellent drive performance and can handle all the workloads you want.

We also launched DiskMark. The sequential read performance was 1,826 MB / s and the sequential write performance 1,289 MB / s. We had never tested with this benchmark before. So take the numbers with a grain of salt. Still, they're good numbers and they pretty much match Blackmagic.

These benchmarks also do not run on Windows, so we cannot compare the hard drive performance from apple to apple. However, the numbers from CrystalDiskMark, our Windows test, indicate that Apple is at the top.

The Dell XPS 13 with 512 GB solid-state drive achieved a read speed of 1,893 MB / s and a write speed of 475 MB / s. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon, on the other hand, could keep up better with 2,121 MB / s and 1,832 MB / s.

If all of this sounds confusing, don't worry. Although the numbers are excellent, you don't have to think about them. It is clear that the MacBook Pro 13-inch offers excellent drive performance and can handle any workload that you ask of it. This is possibly the most future-proof component in the entire system.

Mac games are still a bad idea

As in most previous incarnations, the Apple MacBook Pro 13 is based on integrated Intel graphics. If you want a more powerful discrete graphics solution, you have to accept the MacBook Pro 16's larger footprint.

We launched Civilization VI and tested it at 1440×900 resolution on the MacBook Pro 13 and at the same resolution on the HP Specter x360, with a minimum of detail and memory usage selected.

Apple MacBook 13-inch touchpadBill Roberson / Digital Trends

Bill Roberson / Digital Trends

The game was identical on both sides – and bad – and delivered 21 frames per second over the in-game benchmark. However, the HP was the better experience because the Mac had graphics errors that were not present on the HP Specter x360.

If you're curious as to why the game is performing poorly despite more technical skill, blame Apple's OpenGL support, which hasn't been updated significantly in years. Instead, the company prefers Metal, its own API that can be used on both iOS and MacOS devices. The problem? Porting a game from the popular Windows DirectX API to Metal is unknown. Windows PC game developers don't have a good option for porting to Mac. The result is often an accomplishment that is less impressive than expected.

With games ported from iOS, like CSR Racing Pro 3, Super Octagon and Limbo, you're lucky. There is a fair selection of such games in the Mac App Store. You can also play some games that are available in Apple Arcade, but the Mac doesn't get the full library.

A smaller battery leads to sufficient endurance

While the MacBook Pro 13 has significantly improved processor performance, it has also significantly improved battery capacity. The previous model had a 74.9-watt-hour battery, but the 2016 MacBook Pro 13-inch was launched with a 49.2-watt-hour battery (the model without a touch bar has a slightly larger 54.5-watt-hour -Battery pack). That was a capacity reduction of almost 35 percent. In the 2018 update, the battery was increased to 58 watt hours, although Apple's lifespan estimates have remained unchanged.

If you want excellent portability, you should choose the Dell XPS 13 with 1080p display and Core i5 processor, the Asus ZenBook 13 UX333 or the HP Specter Folio. The best of all battery life options is the Surface Book 2 13, which had an amazing 17 hour battery life in our video playback test. The MacBook Pro 13 used to be the last word in battery life, but the new model – or at least the Touch Bar version – has lost the crown.

Our opinion

Apple's new MacBook Pro 13-inch is a gorgeous device, but it has some flaws that make it difficult to recommend. It doesn't have the performance of the MacBook Pro 16-inch or the new keyboard. Despite the recent price cut, it's a little too expensive for what's on offer, especially if you consider the other alternatives.

Is there a better alternative?

Both of the other MacBook options offer better values ​​for what they are. The MacBook Air isn't that powerful, but it's great for students and affordable for just $ 999. The 16-inch MacBook Pro offers content creators fantastic multi-core performance.

If you are open to choosing between Windows 10 and MacOS, there are numerous competitors. The best is the Dell XPS 13, which is faster and cheaper, and includes an option for a 4K display. It also includes much better battery life as long as you stay at 1080p. The 13-inch Surface Laptop 3, the HP Specter x360 13 and the ThinkPad X1 Carbon are all good rivals.

How long it will take?

Apple has control over the life of each Mac by determining which systems receive MacOS updates. A new MacBook Pro 13-inch should last as long as any Mac currently available.

Especially with this MacBook, the real danger is in the keyboard, which has encountered significant reliability problems. There's no way around it.

Should you buy it

No. The MacBook Pro 13-inch isn't a bad laptop, but you'll be disappointed with the outdated design, faulty keyboard, and high price tag.

Editor's recommendations