Apple MacBook Pro 13-Inch (2020) – Review 2020

A controversial keyboard once present on every Apple laptop is now a thing of the past. The new-for-2020 13-inch MacBook Pro was the last Mac notebook waiting to be updated with the new Magic Keyboard, following its introduction on the 16-inch MacBook Pro and the 2020 MacBook Air. The Magic Keyboard ditches the extremely shallow keys of the previous design, adding travel distance and stability in a bid to please people who use their laptops to type all day long. Also new on our $1,799 MacBook Pro review unit are an updated 10th Generation Intel processor, faster memory, and more storage. The upgrades are nice if you can afford them, but most people will be satisfied with the base $1,299 configuration instead, which retains our Editors’ Choice for best Mac laptop. 

Two Main Models, One New Keyboard

Apple sells two main configurations of the 13-inch MacBook Pro. Physically, they’re nearly identical. Both of them have the new Magic Keyboard and a thin touch-enabled mini-screen forward of the keyboard called the Touch Bar. They also share the same dimensions: 0.61 by 12 by 8.4 inches (HWD) and 3.1 pounds. The main way you can tell them apart from the outside is by the number of ports. The entry-level ($1,299) configuration has just two USB Type-C ports on the left side, while the upgraded $1,799 version reviewed here offers an additional two USB Type-C connectors on the right, for a total of four. 

On the inside, the differences are more significant. The entry-level configuration uses the same 8th Generation Intel Core i5 or Core i7 processors that powered the previous 2019 version of the 13-inch MacBook Pro. Meanwhile, our review unit features an improved 10th Generation “Ice Lake” processor, available in either Core i5 or Core i7 variants. In addition to a new CPU design, the 10th Generation chips also bring other benefits, like faster graphics processing and memory, which are unavailable on the entry-level MacBook Pro. 

While the $1,799 configuration does offer modestly better performance, most Apple shoppers who need significant computing muscle should select the 16-inch MacBook Pro instead, with its significantly more powerful Core i9 and discrete graphics processing. So the main reason to upgrade to the 13-inch MacBook Pro if your laptop is several years old is for the improved typing comfort. 

Indeed, I find the Magic Keyboard to be at least as comfortable as the pre-2016 Apple keyboards, and significantly more comfortable than the 2019 butterfly-style keyboard it replaces. The Magic Keyboard’s switches are made up of two parts: a compressible rubber dome sits beneath the key cap to provide the key’s springiness and bounceback, while a scissor mechanism guides the movement, locking into the keycap at the top of travel to help prevent wobbly keys. 

The process isn’t terribly innovative, but rather an iteration of the way laptop keyboards have been designed for decades. The butterfly design, by contrast, is very innovative, but not in a good way, since its keys barely move when you strike them, providing an experience more akin to tapping on a touch screen than typing on the keyboard. 

Perhaps the only benefit to the previous keyboard design is its ability to prevent light from spilling out around the key’s edges. You can definitely see this spillover in the Magic Keyboard. It’s a slightly messier look when you’re using it in the dark, but it’s hardly a deal-breaking annoyance. 

Typing ‘Magic’

Now that all Mac laptops have the Magic Keyboard, shoppers on a budget will also be considering the MacBook Air, which starts at $999. The Air is a fine choice for basic computing, but it lacks a few features that are exclusive to the MacBook Pro. Some are trivial, like the Touch Bar. This tiny touch screen replaces the row of function keys, but the functionality it offers depends greatly upon the app you’re using.

Some apps, like the Safari web browser and Adobe Photoshop, make extensive use of the Touch Bar, offering the ability to open bookmarked web pages or adjust the diameter of a paintbrush tool. Many other apps offer no Touch Bar support, however, in which case the Touch Bar just serves as a way to control basic functions like system volume and screen brightness. 

Frequent users of the Escape key will appreciate that the new Magic Keyboard has reclaimed this vital key from the Touch Bar. There’s now a physical Escape key located to the left of the Touch Bar, instead of a virtual one built into the Touch Bar like on previous versions of the MacBook Pro.

Overall, though, the presence of the Touch Bar isn’t a key reason to choose the MacBook Pro over the MacBook Air.

The processor differences between the Air and the Pro are more significant. The entry-level MacBook Air has a 10th Generation quad-core Core i5 with a base clock speed of just 1.1GHz and a power consumption of 10 watts. (More power available to the CPU typically increases performance, all else being equal.) Even though the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro has an older 8th Generation Core i5 with the same number of cores, its 1.4GHz clock speed is higher, and so is its 15-watt power consumption. Stepping up to the Core i5 in our review unit gets you an even better 10th Generation Core i5 that’s more powerful than the one in the MacBook Air, with a 2GHz base clock speed. 

The $1,799 configuration of the MacBook Pro also offers more ports than the MacBook Air does, which could come in handy if you need to connect to multiple peripherals and external displays. You’ll still need adapters or special cables, since all of the ports use the same oval-shaped USB-C connector, but with four of them you might not need to buy an expensive docking station. 

The audio quality of the $1,799 MacBook Pro is generally better than that of the MacBook Air, as well. I find its stereo speakers to offer excellent bass and plenty of volume for such a small laptop, and certainly more dimensional sound than the MacBook Air’s speakers offer. Two tweeters fire upward through grilles that flank the keyboard, while frequencies from the woofers emanate from vents on the bottom of the laptop. 

The $1,299 entry-level MacBook Pro is different, though, in its audio arrangement. It lacks dedicated woofers and tweeters, instead featuring four full-range speakers that all fire through the keyboard-flanking grilles. The lack of dedicated woofers could have a slight negative impact on bass delivery, but I was not able to verify this with my own ears as I only had the $1,799 model on hand.

As Ever, Sharp: The Retina Display

Other key features are virtually the same between the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro, like the Retina Display. It’s a 13.3-inch panel with a very high native resolution, somewhere between full HD and 4K. (It measures 2,560 by 1,600 pixels.) Colors appear brilliant, and text is sharp, and I especially like the True Tone feature, which optimizes the white balance of the screen for the nature of the ambient light around the laptop. 

The MacBook Pro’s screen does have a few minor advantages over the MacBook Air’s display, including a higher 500-nit brightness level and support for the P3 color gamut, which offers more colors. But overall, I find both screens comparable for casual use like watching videos or editing documents.

Camera quality is also similar between the two laptops, both equipped with 720p webcams that offer only marginal video quality. Video chats are frequently grainy indoors, even in well-lit rooms, though this is a common problem among nearly all laptop cameras.   

The MacBook Pro and MacBook Air both have built-in fingerprint readers, which Apple calls Touch ID sensors. Located at the upper right corner of the keyboard, Touch ID doubles as the power button for the laptop, and can also be used to authenticate Apple Pay purchases and grant permissions to apps without typing your macOS account password. 

Both laptops also have similarly excellent touchpads. The oversized glass surface uses haptic feedback to simulate clicks instead of a physical switch. That means the clicking sensation is adjustable in the System Preferences app, and the clicks will feel the same no matter where your finger happens to be on the touchpad. 

Silver or Gray Color Options

The MacBook Pro is available in the dark Space Gray aluminum finish of our review unit, a classic color scheme that has been around for several years. It’s sleek and modern, though it’s far from a striking design. You can also order a MacBook Pro in a lighter Silver finish. The MacBook Air also offers both of these finishes, and it adds a third Rose Gold finish, as well, which will certainly turn heads. 

The MacBook Pro’s wireless connectivity is anchored by support for 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0. Support for the latest Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) standard is missing, unfortunately. Wi-Fi 6 doesn’t offer a huge benefit currently, since few wireless routers support it yet, but its absence means the MacBook Pro isn’t as future-proof as it could be. 

In addition to the 10th Generation Core i5, the $1,799 version of the 13-inch MacBook Pro also includes 16GB of 3,733MHz memory, an integrated Intel Iris Plus graphics processor (it’s part of the Core i5 CPU), and a 512GB SSD. While the memory and storage amounts are adequate for a laptop of this price, the Core i5 is not. Most current-model Windows ultraportable laptops in this price range include a 10th Generation Core i7, among them the Dell XPS 13, the Microsoft Surface Laptop 3, and the Razer Blade Stealth. 

Upgrading the MacBook Pro to a 10th Generation Core i7 costs an additional $200. You can also upgrade the memory and storage amounts, all the way up to 32GB of memory and a 4TB SSD. The upgrades reduce the value proposition even further, with a maxed-out configuration ringing up at $3,600.

‘Ice Lake’ on Par: Decent Computing Performance

Even though it lacks a Core i7, our MacBook Pro review unit benchmarks well compared with the MacBook Air, the 2019 entry-level MacBook Pro with the 8th Generation Core i5, the Razer Blade Stealth, and the Dell XPS 13. (See how we test laptops.)

Here’s a brief look at the key specifications for the comparison systems we’ll get down into below…

With the exception of the MacBook Air, all of these laptops perform roughly equally on our video encoding test, in which we put a stopwatch on test systems as they transcode a standard 12-minute clip of 4K video (the open source Blender demo movie Tears of Steel) to a 1080p MP4 file using the open-source Handbrake app. It’s a timed test, and lower results are better. That is interesting considering the mix of Core i5s and Core i7s.

Scores varied a bit more on our Cinebench test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. The MacBook Pro eked out a win here, and it’s especially impressive that it does better than the Core i7-powered Dell and Razer, although the margins are small. 

For a real-world look at image editing performance, we use Adobe Photoshop to apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image. We time each operation and, at the end, add up the total execution time. As with Handbrake, lower times are better here. The Razer and the Dell both performed better than the MacBook Pro on this test, though again, at least against the Razer, the margins are small. 

The Photoshop test stresses CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters, so systems with powerful graphics chips or cards may see a boost.

Gaming performance from the Iris Plus Graphics in the MacBook Pro is very good for an ultraportable laptop not intended to play demanding AAA titles. On the Unigine Heaven game simulation, which renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene and measures how the system copes, the MacBook Pro managed 40 frames per second (fps) on the Medium quality setting at a 720p resolution, and 18fps on the Ultra setting at 1080p. 

Storage performance and battery life are also excellent. The MacBook Pro’s 512GB SSD achieved write speeds of 2,318MBps and read speeds of 1,867MBps on the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test. While the MacBook Pro didn’t last as long as the MacBook Air or the XPS 13 on our battery rundown test, it should nevertheless last through a day of light work or an intercontinental flight’s worth of video viewing.  

MacBook Pro or iPad Pro?

Many prospective buyers will also want to consider an iPad Pro instead of a Mac laptop. The Geekbench 5 CPU test suggests the Apple A12-powered 2020 iPad Pro and our MacBook Pro review unit are roughly equal when it comes to raw CPU performance. Geekbench measures a processor’s aptitude for everything from checking email to taking a picture to playing music. The iPad Pro scored 1,118 on the Geekbench single-core test and 4,687 on the multi-core test, while the MacBook Pro scored 1,146 on single-core test and 4,487 on the multi-core test.

The Geekbench results suggest that Apple’s own A-series processors are well-positioned to replace Intel silicon in Mac notebooks, a switchover that is rumored to begin in the next year or so. 

For now, though, the main decision facing most Mac laptop shoppers is whether to go with the MacBook Air or the MacBook Pro. The price of our 13-inch MacBook Pro review unit is a bit hard to stomach if you need a laptop just for basic computing tasks, but the $1,299 entry-level version is easier to recommend. In fact, that configuration is now an even better value, since it too gets Apple’s more comfortable Magic Keyboard. It’s also better equipped than the $999 entry-level configuration of the MacBook Air. 

The MacBook Pro has long been a status symbol and an inspiration that has given rise to legions of similar Windows ultraportable laptops. It can get pricey as you add options, but now that Apple has fixed the keyboard, it gets the basics right and is our new top pick among Mac laptops.

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