The Best Power Notebook
Every solid laptop reviewer is unanimously saying the best high end notebook is the 15-inch Next Generation Macbook Pro with its Retina display, so that’s what we’re going with. It’s just right if you do a lot of image and video editing on the run and ultrabooks are too wimpy for your needs. New chips? Yep! The MacBook Pro lineup has been bumped to the latest “mid-stream” Haswell CPUs as of July 29th. These are around 200MHz faster than the previous Haswell chips, but are otherwise the same. Both the brand-new models and the ones that came out last fall draw less power and come with better integrated graphics than the last-gen Ivy Bridge CPUs. And the integrated GPUs on even the entry-level 13-inch Pros are better than the ones on the 13-inch Airs, which means there’s more of a reason to get a 13-inch Pro over an Air.
The July updates are miniscule; the only other real difference is that the 15-inch base model now comes with 16GB of RAM instead of 8GB. OS X Yosemite Apple’s current version of their desktop software, OS X, is called Yosemite. You can read more about it here. Is now a safe time to buy this? Maybe. If you need a new power notebook right now, the current 15-inch MacBook Pro is still the best on the market. It recently (in May 2015) received an update that added Apple’s new Force Touch trackpad, longer battery life, and some other minor but welcome internal improvements.
It’s a great computer, and it will serve you well. However, it doesn’t have the latest Intel processors (it uses faster versions of the CPU and GPU found in the 2014 model), and it doesn’t yet have USB-C like its 12-inch MacBook sibling. If you can hold off for a few more months, we expect Apple to give the 15-inch MacBook Pro a bigger update this fall that includes Intel’s Broadwell CPUs, USB-C, and other possible improvements. Back to the Macbook Pro Retina Apple designed the Retina MacBook Pro to be a departure from the past, doing away with a lot of legacy ports, drives (the optical and hard drives) and even redesigned the fan with asymmetric blades to reduce noise a little bit. It had the highest-end laptop processors, graphics and solid state memory. Most importantly, they jacked the 15-inch screen resolution to an astounding level of 4x that of the previous generation, to 2880×1800 pixels.
It’s easy on the eyes, reviewers say, thanks to a screen that Apple says reflects 75% less glare. The 2013 model update keeps the basic design and screen resolution and is capable of going up to 8 hours on battery — according to Apple — is about as thin as a Macbook Air, weighing just a pound more than the 13-inch Retina Macbook Pro. Mark Spoonauer, editor of Laptop Magazine, said, “The new 15-inch Apple MacBook Pro with Retina Display is the ultimate notebook for power users, combining a best-in-class display with blazing performance and long battery life.” The Verge’s David Pierce found that its battery life is even better than advertised: “The 15-inch Pro lasted 9 hours, 35 minutes on the Verge Battery Test, which cycles through a series of popular websites and high-res images with brightness set to 65 percent. That’s a remarkable score, especially for a machine this powerful.” The first model of this Retina MacBook, released in 2012, was a “revolutionary leap,” according to Dan Ackerman at CNET.
And for 2013, “…the new model looks and feels a lot like the previous generation, so if you bought one last year, there’s no need to reach for your wallet,” he says. “However, if you don’t already own a Retina MacBook Pro, the promise of longer battery life, somewhat improved performance, faster Wi-Fi, and lower starting prices is enough to make this a significant overall update.” Also Great $1300 on Apple What about the 13-inch Retina MBP? 13-Inch MacBook Pro w/ Retina Display The 13-inch Pro with Retina is an impressive little machine, but if you need more power than the 13-inch MacBook Air, you're best off getting the 15-inch Retina Pro.
There’s a 13-inch Pro, and unlike last year, it could actually represent a decent jump in performance over the 13-inch MacBook Air. It uses Intel’s Iris 5100 graphics rather than the HD 5000 graphics in the Air (Notebookcheck says the 5100 is about 20 percent faster than the HD 5000 graphics, which are themselves up to 40 percent faster than last year’s integrated graphics). So there’s an actual difference between the integrated graphics in this year’s 13-inch Pros and Airs now. But if you need more performance than an ultrabook, you’re better off with the 15-inch Pro, which has a quad-core CPU, faster GPU (discrete or integrated) and a larger screen, the better to take advantage of all those pixels. Really, with the 13-inch Pro you’re trading 3 or 4 hours of the Air’s battery life and portability for the higher-res screen and slightly better graphics, but because you’re stuck with a dual-core CPU, it’s not as big a step up as the 15-inch. Ars Technica’s Casey Johnston says that the 13-inch Pro is a better value than the Air for a lot of people, especially given the Retina display on the Pro: “When the configurations match up in price, the MacBook Air is difficult to justify when the Pro is in the picture. That is, unless you happen to be the type of user for whom extreme portability and a few extra hours on top of an already-long battery life trump performance.
For my uses, the value proposition of the Pro makes it the better buy.” Ackerman from CNET, says, “I’d still call the 15-inch Retina Pro the best all-around MacBook in Apple’s current roster, and the 13-inch Air the most practical for on-the-go lifestyles. That puts this model just behind those in the complex calculation of value, practicality, and features, but still miles ahead of most other 13-inch laptops.” If you truly need more power than an ultrabook provides, stick with the 15-inch. It’s a monster. Flaws but not dealbreakers It’s not perfect, though: The screen is natively 2560 by 1600 pixels, but it won’t run at that display in OS X. You can run it at half resolution, which is below that of the higher resolution screen on the old 15-inch Macbook Pro–this is not acceptable. But it also has intermediate scaling modes at 1680 x 1050 and 1920 x 1200 resolutions. This is less than ideal because the programs not optimized for this type of imperfect scaling will appear a little fuzzy. Anandtech has the best description of this effect.
The July updates are miniscule; the only other real difference is that the 15-inch base model now comes with 16GB of RAM instead of 8GB. OS X Yosemite Apple’s current version of their desktop software, OS X, is called Yosemite. You can read more about it here. Is now a safe time to buy this? Maybe. If you need a new power notebook right now, the current 15-inch MacBook Pro is still the best on the market. It recently (in May 2015) received an update that added Apple’s new Force Touch trackpad, longer battery life, and some other minor but welcome internal improvements.
It’s a great computer, and it will serve you well. However, it doesn’t have the latest Intel processors (it uses faster versions of the CPU and GPU found in the 2014 model), and it doesn’t yet have USB-C like its 12-inch MacBook sibling. If you can hold off for a few more months, we expect Apple to give the 15-inch MacBook Pro a bigger update this fall that includes Intel’s Broadwell CPUs, USB-C, and other possible improvements. Back to the Macbook Pro Retina Apple designed the Retina MacBook Pro to be a departure from the past, doing away with a lot of legacy ports, drives (the optical and hard drives) and even redesigned the fan with asymmetric blades to reduce noise a little bit. It had the highest-end laptop processors, graphics and solid state memory. Most importantly, they jacked the 15-inch screen resolution to an astounding level of 4x that of the previous generation, to 2880×1800 pixels.
It’s easy on the eyes, reviewers say, thanks to a screen that Apple says reflects 75% less glare. The 2013 model update keeps the basic design and screen resolution and is capable of going up to 8 hours on battery — according to Apple — is about as thin as a Macbook Air, weighing just a pound more than the 13-inch Retina Macbook Pro. Mark Spoonauer, editor of Laptop Magazine, said, “The new 15-inch Apple MacBook Pro with Retina Display is the ultimate notebook for power users, combining a best-in-class display with blazing performance and long battery life.” The Verge’s David Pierce found that its battery life is even better than advertised: “The 15-inch Pro lasted 9 hours, 35 minutes on the Verge Battery Test, which cycles through a series of popular websites and high-res images with brightness set to 65 percent. That’s a remarkable score, especially for a machine this powerful.” The first model of this Retina MacBook, released in 2012, was a “revolutionary leap,” according to Dan Ackerman at CNET.
And for 2013, “…the new model looks and feels a lot like the previous generation, so if you bought one last year, there’s no need to reach for your wallet,” he says. “However, if you don’t already own a Retina MacBook Pro, the promise of longer battery life, somewhat improved performance, faster Wi-Fi, and lower starting prices is enough to make this a significant overall update.” Also Great $1300 on Apple What about the 13-inch Retina MBP? 13-Inch MacBook Pro w/ Retina Display The 13-inch Pro with Retina is an impressive little machine, but if you need more power than the 13-inch MacBook Air, you're best off getting the 15-inch Retina Pro.
There’s a 13-inch Pro, and unlike last year, it could actually represent a decent jump in performance over the 13-inch MacBook Air. It uses Intel’s Iris 5100 graphics rather than the HD 5000 graphics in the Air (Notebookcheck says the 5100 is about 20 percent faster than the HD 5000 graphics, which are themselves up to 40 percent faster than last year’s integrated graphics). So there’s an actual difference between the integrated graphics in this year’s 13-inch Pros and Airs now. But if you need more performance than an ultrabook, you’re better off with the 15-inch Pro, which has a quad-core CPU, faster GPU (discrete or integrated) and a larger screen, the better to take advantage of all those pixels. Really, with the 13-inch Pro you’re trading 3 or 4 hours of the Air’s battery life and portability for the higher-res screen and slightly better graphics, but because you’re stuck with a dual-core CPU, it’s not as big a step up as the 15-inch. Ars Technica’s Casey Johnston says that the 13-inch Pro is a better value than the Air for a lot of people, especially given the Retina display on the Pro: “When the configurations match up in price, the MacBook Air is difficult to justify when the Pro is in the picture. That is, unless you happen to be the type of user for whom extreme portability and a few extra hours on top of an already-long battery life trump performance.
For my uses, the value proposition of the Pro makes it the better buy.” Ackerman from CNET, says, “I’d still call the 15-inch Retina Pro the best all-around MacBook in Apple’s current roster, and the 13-inch Air the most practical for on-the-go lifestyles. That puts this model just behind those in the complex calculation of value, practicality, and features, but still miles ahead of most other 13-inch laptops.” If you truly need more power than an ultrabook provides, stick with the 15-inch. It’s a monster. Flaws but not dealbreakers It’s not perfect, though: The screen is natively 2560 by 1600 pixels, but it won’t run at that display in OS X. You can run it at half resolution, which is below that of the higher resolution screen on the old 15-inch Macbook Pro–this is not acceptable. But it also has intermediate scaling modes at 1680 x 1050 and 1920 x 1200 resolutions. This is less than ideal because the programs not optimized for this type of imperfect scaling will appear a little fuzzy. Anandtech has the best description of this effect.
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