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Inside, there are some small tweaks -- but on the surface, the MacBook Pro looks exactly like the version. Update, July 24 : Apple has confirmed the widespread reports of throttled CPU performance on its MacBook Pro models, which have emerged since the laptops were released earlier this month. CPU clock speeds were slowed down as internal temperature spiked during high-load computing sessions. The company says the issue was due to a previously undiscovered software problem , and that it has issued a patch in the form of the MacOS High Sierra Check out our forthcoming review to see test results before and after the patch is applied.
The first take originally published July 12 follows. Apple delivers a bit more for your money with this year's version of the inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. Otherwise, this machine is virtually identical to the version it replaces. Same design, same color schemes, same Touch Bar. The rumors suggest that Apple may update the rest of the lineup -- the inch MacBooks, the iMacs and the aging MacBook Air -- before the end of Of course, that's completely unofficial; the company hasn't announced anything yet.
Does this power boost make the MacBook worth its not inconsiderable asking price? The MacBook Pro has so much going for it. With this laptop your bag, you feel you can do anything that's required. The lack of full-size USB ports feels less relevant now as all laptops are moving that way, although it's still a pain needing to remember dongles to use legacy devices. The Touch Bar still feels like a luxury, though, and if you aren't that concerned about having the very best performance then do look at the model without it.
The performance increase on offer for the model is nothing short of excellent, too, although it won't be enough alone to upgrade from last year's model. But as a brand new purchase for someone needing a new laptop, the MacBook Pro delivers on its pro promise in style. The chassis of the MacBook Pro is unchanged from Available in grey or the traditional silver, the latest generation design consists of a That sees the MacBook Pro following in the footsteps of the MacBook , which also did away with its conventional ports in favour of a single USB-C port we've long wished it had at least one more.
The incher weighs 1. And yes, it's USB-C that rules the roost here. The inch models without the Touch Bar only have two ports — and by the time you're using one for power, just one additional port is not really enough at this 'Pro' end of the market. Naturally, you have to end up relying on dongles — usually some kind of USB hub — for connecting your various devices.
The lack of standard USB connections only becomes a problem when you need to connect something — which for the most part, so goes Apple's reasoning, is that you won't. But if you're used to plugging in no end of different devices to your laptop then you'll need to invest in a bevy of dongles to solve your connection problems. While you can buy these from Apple at great expense, they are available from various third-parties too.
We remember when Apple went to USB with the iMac and when it removed the optical drive: we whinged, but we adapted, as did everyone else. The trackpad in the MacBook Pro is the familiar Force Touch unit, while as we mentioned the keyboard is new. It is quite a bit less clicky than the version — which will be a relief for train travellers.
The older model had problems including keys not responding, which has led to a recall for some older models. We have two models on the Pocket-lint team — one has had its keyboard replaced and the other has had several keys re-seated. While the display remains a This essentially means it will adjust the display depending on your ambient lighting conditions.
Unlike True Tone on the iPhone X — which we've found to be patchy — we find the MacBook Pro's screen looks great in everything but very bright sunlight. As we mentioned Apple hasn't upgraded much externally but internally it's a very different story. The performance improvements across the board.
The model on review here housed the 2. We ran a Geekbench benchmark just to see how much beefier this new Mac is. Sure, we'd certainly expected a bit of an uplift over the Core iU model, but the performance increase clocked was an incredible 83 percent rise in overall multi-core performance. In our real-world battery tests, we got around eight practical hours out of our review model using predominantly Photoshop, Chrome and Microsoft Office.
The XPS is best of the trio for battery life. But the MacBook is in and around what we'd expect. If you need more power for your work then the larger model may make more sense. The inch doesn't have discrete graphics options, which we do feel is a shame, but the inch has more space to handle the heat from the Radeon Pro X. Aside from graphics, the inch model is a step-up in power since six-core Intel Core i7 and i9 processors are offered.
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Recorded colour temperature was K, not far off of the K ideal. The XPS 15 covered a more impressive Note that the screen was tested with True Tone turned off. True Tone is a new feature for MacBooks that Apple introduced with the 9. Related: Best laptops for students. Performance will depend on the version of MacBook Pro you opt for.
Our review model was a inch laptop with the quad-core Intel iU processor. Note that the baseline for Geekbench 4 single-core results is , and double that for multi-core tests, taken from tests of devices running on an Intel Core iU, which powered some of the late MacBook Pros.
Related: Best Intel processor. Our MacBook Pro clocked average write and read speeds of Write speeds were a little lower than what similarly specced Windows laptops gave us, but the read speeds are significantly higher. Those Blackmagic scores are pretty breathtaking either way.
The Make no mistake, for creative work, the MacBook Pro is a beast. On paper, Apple claims 10 hours of web browsing and music streaming time with both versions of the MacBook Pro. In my experience, it was closer to six hours. Charging the MacBook Pro up from empty using the Thunderbolt mains adapter was fast.
To charge up the device to full takes roughly 1hr 45mins. Be warned though, the MacBook Pros are expensive. All-in-all it the Macbook Pro inch is a solid, portable and capable work laptop which will delight buyers despite these small flaws.
Unlike other sites, we test every laptop we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use industry standard tests to compare features properly. We never, ever, accept money to review a product. Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy. Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. Founded in , Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy. Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1, products a year. In this article… 1. Verdict 2. Pros and Cons 3. Key Specifications 4. How we tested 5.
What is the MacBook Pro inch? MacBook Pro inch 7. MacBook Pro inch 8. MacBook Pro inch 9. MacBook inch MacBook Pro inch Why buy the MacBook Pro inch? Verdict FAQs Specifications Trusted Score Share:.
Pros Best-in-class Retina display High quality build and design Thunderbolt 3 ports. Cons Cramped and uncomfortable keyboard Touchpad depresses awkwardly Port options are Thunderbolt, buy an adapter, or go home Expensive. Do MacBook Pros have Bluetooth? Yes, the latest MacBook Pro laptops feature Bluetooth 5. UK RRP. EU RRP.
CA RRP. Screen Size. Storage Capacity. Front Camera. Size Dimensions. Operating System. Release Date. First Reviewed Date. It shows basic controls like brightness or volume by default, but you can also display the standard function keys F1-F Whether the Touch Bar improves the productivity mainly depends on the software support.
The basic specs of the The TrueTone support is the only new feature and we already know it from the iPhone or iPad, respectively. The white balance automatically adjusts according to the color temperature of the ambient light, which is supposed to create a more natural picture. The manual Night Shift mode, which reduces blue color contents, is still available. The latter can also be adjusted in the settings automatic activation depending on the time, warmer or cooler picture.
True Tone is subjectively very pleasant and you get used to it very quickly. We do not know if it is just a panel revision or if a new panel was required for the True Tone functionality. Our test model of the MacBook Pro manages an average luminance of little more than nits.
This means it meets the advertised value, but our two test devices especially the non-Touch Bar MBP 13 were even brighter. However, we also see improvements for the brightness distribution as well as the black value 0. The factory calibration is also a bit worse compared to last year, at least compared to the Touch Bar model. However, we are criticizing on a very high level here, because all the deviations compared to the P3 reference are already below the important mark of 3.
These values are similar to last year's model. There should be no flickering or PWM above this brightness setting. The frequency of Hz is quite high, so most users sensitive to PWM should not notice any flickering. Flickering occurs even at high brightness setting and may have an effect on the user during everyday use. If PWM was detected, an average of minimum: 5 - maximum: Hz was measured. The integrated eDRAM cache is another advantage for the processor, but primarily for the integrated graphics adapter.
This year we get much more performance in multi-thread scenarios thanks to the new quad-core processors. Apple's devices are usually pretty good in terms of performance utilization, so we are eager to see the results of the new quad-cores. We will have a closer look at this topic in the section GPU Performance below.
They offer four instead of two CPU cores, which improves the multi-core performance dramatically. Our entry-level spec is equipped with the Core i5 with a base frequency of 2. The price is an interesting detail. There are obviously differences for every manufacturer, but the additional charge of Euros for the Core i7 is extremely high. Apple usually removed the TDP limit for Intel processors, so the temperature was the only limiting factor.
This is the case here as well, and we can see consumption values of almost 50 Watts. The Cinebench R15 Single score is in the expected range, but we were surprised when we saw the Multi score. So how is this possible? We observed the clocks and the power consumption of the processor with the tool Intel Power Gadget macOS. The processor starts with the full 3. The consumption fluctuates heavily between after that between W , which obviously impacts the clocks.
And we are talking about one single run of the Multi test. Even this performance level cannot be maintained due to the high temperatures. Update: Apple released a software update, which improves the CPU performance significantly. The graph below shows the new results yellow line and you can see that the performance is steady during our Cinebench loop. We are extremely surprised by the supposedly bad efficiency of the Coffee Lake-U processor. We tested the Kaby Lake-R quad-cores extensively over the last couple of months, because they are shipped in almost every subnotebook.
It runs at a steady clock of 3. This is obviously not just Apple's problem, but Intel is to blame as well. This begs the question why the new 28W models are not based on Kaby Lake-R. All in all, the new MacBook Pro 13 is faster than the old previous model, but some Windows devices are faster with supposedly slower CPUs. The advantage of the optional Core i7 should be very small, and it might even be slower than the i5 due to higher temperatures especially under sustained workloads.
The comparatively low Cinebench scores baffled us, so we investigated a bit more. One possibility is the fluctuating clock. As soon as there is some headroom, the clock jumps back up, which leads to high temperatures and the chip has to cool down. We wanted to see how the chip performs with a fixed power consumption. We use the tool Volta, even though the settings are much more limited and it is also not free 7-day trial. It is also limited to a TDP of up to 28W.
More information including the bigger MacBook Pro 15 is summarized in this article. We started with a fixed consumption of 31W since this value is also reached with the default settings. The result is surprisingly good, because the CPU cores are about MHz faster and the Cinebench scores are stable, which is also shown by the yellow line in the chart below.
The performance in macOS blue line is slightly lower due to the 28W limitation, but still better compared to the default settings. The software update improved the CPU performance and it is stable, which is shown by the green line. The system is very responsive and there are no major loading times thanks to the fast processor, sufficient memory, and a very fast PCIe-SSD. Windows also runs well, but the results in the synthetic benchmarks are not great and our test unit only beats its predecessor in the PCMark 8 Work test, but both old models perform better in the other two scenarios.
The mission optimizations of the BootCamp drivers might be the explanation. It is a fast drive, but the exact determination of the performance is a bit tricky since our usual tools either do not work properly or depend on the optimization of the BootCamp drivers. More technical information about the Iris Plus Graphics is available here. Thunderbolt solutions, which are natively supported by the current macOS, are interesting if you need more GPU performance.
There should not be any significant CPU limitations thanks to the new quad-core processors. The integrated Iris Graphics can only handle very simple games, but the performance is steady even after longer gaming sessions see diagram Witcher 3 Ultra. However, there is no performance advantage over the previous model. We did not experience any driver issues with Windows. The cooling solution of the MacBook Pro 13 did not change this year. Two fans dissipate the heat from the processors with seamless adjustments of the fan speed.
This changes under load, and the fan speed quickly adjusts to the load scenario and it often fluctuates within a certain range. However, we did not reach this value during our testing, but up to The fans throttled after a while Less demanding scenarios like the first 3DMark 06 scene will increase the fan speed over time It will be noticeably louder when you play games, which we tried with the title Fortnite. The fans are clearly audible and fluctuate between and up to rpm during the game dB A.
The fan characteristics are at least not unnecessary high-pitched. Apple updates the MacBook Pro 13 with a new quad-core processor and a True Tone display for , but only the more expensive model with the Touch Bar. We have a closer look at the performance of the new MacBook Pro in the following review.
What can you expect for the price of 1, Euros i5? Apple Laptop Ultrabook. Intel Core iU 4 x 2. Note: The manufacturer may use components from different suppliers including display panels, drives or memory sticks with similar specifications. Input Devices - Butterfly with silicone buffers. New silicone membrane source: iFixit. Performance - 4 Cores in the MacBook Pro Processor — Coffee Lake-U disappoints. Cinebench R15 Multi macOS. Processor Tuning. Cinebench loop default settings Win
MacBook Pro (inch, , Four Thunderbolt 3 ports) - Technical Specifications ; Touch Bar · Finish ; Display · Processor ; Storage · Memory. Apple MacBook Pro Mid (13" Retina, Touch Bar, GHz Quad-Core Intel Core iU, 8GB RAM, GB SSD) - Space Gray (Renewed) Available at a lower price. Simply chat to buy "macbook pro 13 inch" in Computers & Tech on Carousell Singapore. Choose from a variety of listings from trusted sellers!