M1 Macbook Pro
Price
Apple’s 13 inch MacBook Pro has always been appealing to users who want that extra bump in performance when compared to the Air, but don’t want a laptop that is as big and bulky as the more expensive 16 inch MacBook Pro. The latest model is more powerful than ever before. With the introduction of the new Apple-engineered M1 chip in place of the Intel chips previously found this new MacBook seems like a steal.
Battery Life
The M1 Chip allows the Macbook Pro to have up to 20 hours of battery life.
Performance
The M1 Chip it allows for incredible performance when running heavy and long tasks
Magic Keyboard
The Magic Keyboard provides key stability and faster key travel.
Design
The 2020 MacBook pro has had the same design since 2016
Ports
Still only has four Thunderbolt 3 ports. People will need to purchase many hubs and dongles to connect their existing accessories.
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Product Specs
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The biggest update to the MacBook Pro is the processor. The new M1 SoC combines the CPU, GPU, Neural Engine, Unified Memory, and more into one single chip. Previously, there used to be a single chip for each of these different components, and the combination of all of these into one chip is a leading reason as why the new Pro is so much faster and efficient than its Intel counterparts. Another reason is due to the unified memory architecture as the different components of the M1 chip no longer need different pools to access the same data.
The display remains completely unchanged from the last generation coming in at 2560 x 1600 pixels with a peak brightness of 500 nits. It also supports a P3 Wide Colour Gamut which is just now available on the more affordable MacBook Air.
Just like previous models, the new MacBook Pro also includes a Touch Bar in place of the function rows. This, as always, is seen as controversial as consumers always feel that the potential of the Touch Bar is never fully lived up to.
The new MacBook Pro comes in at a base 256GB of storage, which is upgradeable two 2TB, just like on the Air. It also comes with 8GB of RAM, upgradeable to 16. Each storage/RAM upgrade will cost you $200 with the base model costing $1299.
M1 Macbook Pro
Apple’s 13 inch MacBook Pro has always been appealing to users who want that extra bump in performance when compared to the Air, but don’t want a laptop that is as big and bulky as the more expensive 16 inch MacBook Pro. The latest model is more powerful than ever before.
With the introduction of the new Apple-engineered M1 chip in place of the Intel chips previously found this new MacBook seems like a steal. But concurrent updates to the MacBook Air giving it the same M1 chip found here to make you wonder whether the Pro is really worth the extra $300.
Pros and Cons
Battery Life
The M1 Chip allows the Macbook Pro to have up to 20 hours of battery life.
Performance
With the M1 Chip it allows for outstanding performance when running heavy tasks for prolonged periods of time.
Magic Keyboard
The Magic Keyboard is a perfect balance that provides the key stability of the butterfly keyboard and the key travel of the scissor mechanism.
Design
The 2020 MacBook pro has had the same design since 2016 and frankly needs and update to compete with current standards
Ports
It still only has four Thunderbolt 3 ports which is not enough as people will need to purchase many hubs and dongles to connect to their existing accessories
Design Build and Quality
The biggest update to the MacBook Pro is the processor. The new M1 SoC combines the CPU, GPU, Neural Engine, Unified Memory, and more into one single chip. Previously, there used to be a single chip for each of these different components, and the combination of all of these into one chip is a leading reason as why the new Pro is so much faster and efficient than its Intel counterparts. Another reason is due to the unified memory architecture as the different components of the M1 chip no longer need different pools to access the same data.
The display remains completely unchanged from the last generation coming in at 2560 x 1600 pixels with a peak brightness of 500 nits. It also supports a P3 Wide Colour Gamut which is just now available on the more affordable MacBook Air.
Just like previous models, the new MacBook Pro also includes a Touch Bar in place of the function rows. This, as always, is seen as controversial as consumers always feel that the potential of the Touch Bar is never fully lived up to.
The new MacBook Pro comes in at a base 256GB of storage, which is upgradeable two 2TB, just like on the Air. It also comes with 8GB of RAM, upgradeable to 16. Each storage/RAM upgrade will cost you $200 with the base model costing $1299.
Tom's Guide
Tom’s Guide’s review had a very similar response, stating that it “delivers a killer combo of blazing performance and epic battery life. They praised its comfortable Magic Keyboard, along with the battery and performance. In what is a beautiful analogy, they wrote that “barriers between you and getting stuff done to melt away.” This accurately describes the improvements in performance that came with the integration of the M1 chip. There have been advancements in the graphics and gameplay section as well, however it still lags behind its Windows counterparts.
Identical to TechRadar, the only pieces of criticism they had for the new Macbook Pro were its “dated design,” and lack of ports. Overall, they stated that the M1 Macbook Pro is one of the best laptops money can buy, and while the gap between the Air and Pro is smaller, the way that the Macbook Pro handles heavy tasks may be the reason for some to splurge.
TechRadar
TechRadar had a lot of praise for the new MacBook Pro, calling it “the most exciting laptop Apple has released in years.” Along with that, they commended the integration of the newly included M1 chip, allowing for amazing battery life and performance.
Normally, switching chipsets is an incredibly difficult and arduous task and is very hard to pull off successfully, a prime example of which is the Surface Pro X, but not only does the new Pro pull it off, it does so incredibly smoothly and well. They also found the new M1 Pro to be faster than previous-generation MacBook Pros along with the newest 11th Gen Intel processors. Additionally, they found the battery to last 5 hours longer than the previous generation when doing a standardized test.
The only two major criticisms that TechRadar wrote were about the lack of ports due to the new Pro only having 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports and the same design as they felt that a design change would have complemented the new M1 chip. Overall, they stated that it would be great for those who want a powerful and small laptop and excellent battery life, but not to buy it if you’re on a budget or don’t like Apple’s design.
Conclusion
Overall, the new M1 Macbook Pro is a powerhouse due to being supercharged by the M1 chip. It has amazing battery life and performance and shows that Apple has not made the mistakes Microsoft tried switching to ARM architecture. However, the Air and Pro are not so different, except for when running heavy tasks for a prolonged period of time. Is that really enough for a $300 increase?
It is a very good product, but we couldn’t recommend it as a budget product, and would instead tell you to go for the Macbook Air.
© TheYoungConsumer | 2023
