Review on the Apple MacBook Pro with M1 Pro and M1 Max
I am so excited about these new MacBook Pros. It feels like Apple finally listened to everyone and made the laptops we've all been asking for. We've had three of them for a little less than a week. So we're just gonna do a quick preview today. We want to really take our time on this review and make sure we get it right. And I also really wanna know what questions that you have, So feel free to leave them in the comments. Okay, let's take a look at these things.
We have three of the new MacBook Pros here. A silver 16-inch model loaded with a 10-core M1 Max with a 32-core GPU and 64 gigs of RAM. A silver 16-inch with a 10-core M1 Pro, that has a 16-core GPU and 32 gigs of RAM. And the same configuration in a Space Gray, 14-inch, Air M1 pro, with a 16 core GPU and 32 gigs of Ram. And of course the most important spec is that these computers are not cheap.
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| Apple MacBook Pro with M1 Pro and Max |
I think I liked the way the space gray looks the best, but of course, that's just me. Design-wise, they're all a slight new direction for apple laptops. The concepts are all familiar, but the execution is a little more squared off, a little thicker, a little more aggressive. They almost remind me of the original Titanium PowerBooks from back in the day. There is a lot of talk about the raised feet on the bottom here, but in person they're barely a thing, except they make room for more air to enter these vents on the side.
Speaking of the side, look at this SD card slot and this glorious HDMI ports. It's the little things that bring a tear to your eye. Okay, this is a little complicated, you can charge the machine from any of these ports using USB-C and you can fast charge the 14 inch using USB-C, but apple tells us you can only fast charge the 16 inch with the MagSafe port. And we need to test how fast charging works on the 16 with other USB-C PD adapters, because USB-C is so complicated.
Specifications of the MacBook Pro with M1 Pro and M1 Max
I kind of get the feeling of the MagSafe cable is back partly to hedge against how weird USB-C power is. And to just give you a connector that you know, will work. Apple finally got rid of the touch bar, which is a delight and a personal victory for me. But on top of that, the function keys are now full height. Yes, if you're going to put buttons there, you know, go big. They're great and I very much missed having dedicated volume and brightness keys.
This touch ID button looked a lot uglier in the photos, I'm not going to lie, but it looks totally fine in person. And it seems very fast and the keyboard feels great. Although Apple's claim on the website, that it feels like a mechanical keyboard is like an idea from another dimension. Here in reality, it feels like a very nice laptop keyboard.
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| Apple MacBook Pro with M1 Pro and Max |
The most controversial thing about this keyboard in our office has been this all-black keyboard deck. Which some people think will just get dirty. so far it hasn't been an issue. I really liked the way it looks, but we'll see. There's a new mini LED display with promotion that supports 120 Hertz refresh rates. I'm not going to go into too much depth here because we're going to spend a lot of time testing it, but it looks great.
It has up to 1600 nits of peak brightness and a 1000 nits of sustained brightness. I will say that you can just open up an HDR video on YouTube in Chrome, and it just works and looks incredible. Which is a huge leap forward for apple, which has been real weird about video codec in the past. It's also a big step about the Windows, which has all kinds of HDR support and strangeness. And yes, the display has a notch, which yes, it's going to be polarizing. I'm sure you have an opinion about it, but I very quickly stopped noticing it. Just like I quickly stopped noticing the iPhone notch. We'll see how I feel after another week or so, with this thing, but for now not a problem.
About the MacBook Pro with M1 Pro and M1 Max
Inside that notch, there's a new 10 ADP camera that takes advantage of Apple's image processing system on its chips. It's definitely clearer and crispier than the miserable quality of previous apple Webcams. That was a low floor and this is still a webcam. It's not close to an iPhone front camera or anything like that. And there's no center stage, so it doesn't follow you around the room like a video call on the iPad can do now.
I will say the sound quality on these machines is just incredible. There are six speakers and they sound great and they can get very loud. I promise it's green. when it catches the light just right, It looks really green. But most of the time it looks like this, like a graphite gray. - Inside, You've got Apple's new M1 pro and M1 max processors, and we are doing lots of performance tests to see what's what.
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| Apple MacBook Pro with M1 Pro and Max |
One thing apple is very proud of, is that its chips draw so much less power than their competition. So it's able to deliver the same performance plugged in, as on battery power. We're doing our best to really put that to the test. We loved the battery life, we got on the M1 machines last year.
But these have much beefier chips, bigger, brighter displays, and get used for more intense tasks. So I want to be as sure as we can. And the main thing I want to know is what do you want to know about these new MacBook pros? A lot of people have waited a long time for these machines, myself included. And we want to make sure we make this review as useful as we can.
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