Apple’s latest MacBook Pros offer a plethora of features that fans have been asking for, including a 1080p camera, the return of the SD card slot and MagSafe power connector — and the removal of the notorious OLED Touch Bar.
On Monday, the company debuted new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros that arrive in stores next week. And according to Apple, both products have undergone major overhauls inside and out that promise to make them the most powerful laptops on the market.
The MacBook Pros retain the iconic aluminum shell. However, Apple has thinned out the bezels around the screen. Instead, they sport a notch around the web camera, which has finally been updated to 1080p, an improvement from the dreadfully out-of-date 720p resolution. The same screen also supports up to a 120Hz refresh rate.
Another focus is connectivity. The company adds an HDMI port to the laptops, so you can easily hook up the Macs to an external display or TV. The MagSafe connector also returns, but with an updated design that supports more power into the system, the company says.
In addition, Apple does away with the Touch Bar, and replaces the OLED strip with physical keys “to bring the familiar tactile feel of mechanical keys that Pro users love,” says Apple Mac Product Line Manager Shruti Haldea.
“Additionally, fast charge comes to the Mac for the first time, charging up to 50% in just 30 minutes,” the company adds.
M1 Pro and M1 Max
But the technology getting most of the attention is the silicon inside. Last year, Apple introduced M1, the company’s first attempt to use ARM-based processors in the MacBook line. The processor proved to be impressive; in our tests, the M1 bested Intel-based laptops in certain benchmarks and offered exceptionally long battery life.
During Monday’s event, the company introduced the next iteration with the M1 Pro and M1 Max, which arrive on the new MacBooks. Both chips represent beefed-up versions of the original chip and contain more CPU and GPU cores, all the while maintaining low power consumption.
Apple is still using a 5nm manufacturing process to build the chips. However, the M1 Pro contains twice as many transistors for a larger processor. The M1 Pro features a heterogeneous 10-core CPU containing eight high-performance cores and two efficiency cores. This can result in a 70% CPU performance increase over a regular M1 chip.
The M1 Max, on the other hand, is even larger. Although it still features a 10-core CPU, the company has boosted the GPU core count to 32, up from 16 in the M1 Pro and eight in the regular M1. This gives the chip up to four times the GPU performance compared to a standard M1 chip, making it ideal to handle video rendering and 3D modeling tasks.
The other enhancement to the M1 Pro and M1 Max is the “unified memory,” according to Apple. The company seems to have combined the Mac’s RAM and video memory into one system, so that both the CPU and GPU can pull from a larger pool of memory for higher bandwidth.
As a result, the upgraded M1 silicon can handily outperform a laptop running an Intel Core i7-11800H CPU in both processing speeds and power efficiency, according to Apple’s benchmarks.
“At their peak, they deliver 1.7 times the performance than the PC chip at the same power level,” claims Johny Srouji, Apple SVP for Hardware Technologies. “At the peak performance of the PC chip, they deliver the same performance at 70% less power.”
On graphics, the company also compared the M1 Pro against a laptop running an Nvidia RTX 3050 mobile GPU. Meanwhile, the M1 Max was benchmarked against a laptop outfitted with an Nvidia RTX 3080 mobile GPU.
In both cases, the chip delivered more or comparable performance while using less power, Srouji claims. The M1 Max chip was only bested when pitted against an MSI laptop running a more power-hungry RTX 3080 discrete GPU. However, Srouji notes that the M1 Max chip still delivered similar performance while using less than 100 watts of power. “This is unheard of,” he adds. “This remarkable efficiency means M1 Max performance is outstanding.”
However, it’s important to note Apple didn’t disclose how exactly it performed the benchmarks. So stay tuned for our review, when we can really put the chips to the test.
In terms of battery life, Apple says the 14-inch MacBook Pro can last up to 17 hours on a single charge, while the 16-inch version can run for up to 21 hours —or 10 hours more than the previous model.
Apple is kicking off pre-orders for the both MacBook Pro models today through Apple.com. The 14-inch model starts at $1,999 while the 16-inch version will go for $2,499 and up. However, only the 16-inch model can be outfitted with the M1 Max chip, starting at $3,499.
