Apple has introduced a revolutionary release with the latest MacBook Pro with touch bar. The 13 inches machine has made its appearance after four years and it has definitely showed us a complete new approach to these machines. It offers great variety of features that haven’t just been different compared to the previous releases but, also enhanced in every possible way.
They mostly say the touch bar with large range is the best thing that could’ve happened to this laptop. But, we’re sure that there are far more things that need to be mentioned such as a new design, butterfly keyboard, great combination of performance and crystal clear and dynamic display and audio.
We’ve written this review for every person who easily falls in love with attractive and premium gadgets. Such device is a Mac Book Pro. So, if you’re looking for an excellent performance and valuable upgrade to your old laptop, or should you seek an upgrade to your old MacBook that you’re ready to use for the next following years, you should proceed onto continuing to read this review and discover more of the great features this machine can offer and perhaps deciding to add one to your notebook collection.
Design
The new generation MacBook is coming with a revamped, innovative outside appearance. Instead of the white Apple sign that is proudly etched in the middle of the upper side of the case, you will be greeted with the elegantly, black colored apple sign that gives a more professional and refreshed look in the middle.
Although there have been several complaints about the new appearance, the vast majority of the proud Apple users have concluded that the latest release of MacBook pro, that comes in three editions: two 13-inchers and one 15-incher, is absolutely stunning and it quite a lot resembles of a powerful machine that has come from the distant future. Aside from that, there are not too significant differences that could make it look less identical to the entry-level edition of it.
This doesn’t necessarily have to mean that it results as a bad thing or a drawback to this lovely laptop. In fact, it’s far more featherweight and compact compared to its predecessor. The thing that people adored the most about this laptop is certainly the availability in a new color- space grey, which even more contributes to the contemporary design of this laptop. The ordinary looking silver is fine. However, that comes in conflict with other, premium laptops that haven’t been too creative about the color of the case.
We’ve mentioned before that the laptop comes in a compact design and measures very light. With the measures of 11.97 x 8.36 x 0.59 inches, and 1,36 kg you will find this laptop immensely simple to carry, and thanks to the tiny result, very easy to fit even in a larger kind of purse. It is great that Apple managed to find a perfect balance between the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air in terms of weight, given that they are nearly the same.
Even so, other decent desktop replacements have an ultrabook design that makes them stand out with the incredibly compact design and even more compact weight. The technology has advanced to the point where there are laptops that barely measure a kilo, while still performing outstandingly, compared to the raging competition, in either design and value.
When it comes to the design and choice of ports and connectors, Apple’s release of MacBook is a complete avant-garde. Even though there are four Thunderbolt 3 ports, accompanying the notebook by two by each side, included with the jack that goes with headphones, and great versatility provided by the Thunderbolt 3 ports, USB ports are limited to the USB-C connector that control either charging, connecting other devices and monitors.
With this step, Apple has dived into the future way too soon. The world is not ready to embrace the USB-C ports no matter how agilely is their popularity evoking. Unfortunately, that’s not going to be case anytime soon and, people don’t want to spend additional money on connectors after spending so much on the MacBook.
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Keyboard, Touchpad and an incredibly Revolutionary Touch Bar
There’s a lot to say about these components. If you’re not suffering from the keyboard quality, you will adapt to the frequent jarring sound without a problem. With only 0.5mm of travel, you will notice that the keyboard doesn’t offer the depth gaming laptops from our other reviews offer. The ideal idea is 1.5mm of travel but given that, not even that amount can suffice.
This being said, if you’re a good typist, you will not meet problems getting adapted to the keyboard, and you will easily achieve a regular 60 to 70 words per minute speed, and manage to accurately remain that pace. The tactile feedback quality has been improved by Apple, featuring the new generation butterfly mechanism. It is just sad that while thinking about the faster, more responsive keyboard, they forgot the fundamental importance of keyboards feeling cushy and soft on touch.
The 3D Touch touchpad has been immensely improved, compared to the keyboard allowing you to fall in a timeless love with it. The touchpad is far larger compared to the predecessor with given 5.3 x 3.2 inches dimension. With this, Apple manufacturers wanted to make navigating on display easier and allow more room for the multi touching and moving. It is friendly with great variety of gestures, with the included three-finger swipe up that supports easier access to the Mac applications.
Touch Bar
There has been a lot of talking about the Touch bar provided by Apple’s MacBook Pro. However, after spending couple of hours testing it, the vast majority of Apple enthusiasts started wondering whether is it worth buying with or without the touch bar.
Resembling a lot of a touch screen, this innovative utility has a multi-touch display, that can replace various macro buttons and functions inside the laptop. It has a resolution of 2170 x 60 pixels. All in all, despite being very revolutional, contemporary and much more, in my honest opinion, the touch bar appears to be limited and could have welcomed more of the features.
Like it was expected, the touch bar sports some of the traditional buttons, this includes the screen brightness, panel for controlling the volume, but, also the backlight control on the keyboard. There are also several shortcuts including the Mission Control. Siri fans can enjoy her services through the button on the right side. You will notice that this feature gets more and more amusing once after you start testing great variety of applications and getting used to them.
The department for emojis has been greatly improved. You will be thankful that the touch bar has smart suggesting of the emojis that appear here and there. You will be enchanted with the great variety of suggestions you can get, depending on the message that you want to share. For instance, if you’d ask a lunch or dinner related question, the application would suggest the fork and knife on the touch bar. I find this pretty clever.
Display
If you’re seeking an intuitive, bright and pleasant to an eye display, rest assured that the 13-inch Retina Display on the MacBook Pro shines the pure perfection. Rich and vibrant with colors, bright and sharp enough, the display will provide you with an excellent canvas whether are you watching movies, editing or working. The 2560 x 1600 pixel panel will provide a wonderful picture no matter what you do. You will always be greeted with an explosion of color, especially when streaming the 4K level videos or pictures.
Even the people who’d perform some entry-level gaming would enjoy the screen brightness and accuracy. Also, it’s very responsive in an agile manner. It has the 119% of the sRGB color gamut, which is better than the vast majority of leading laptops. However, it was a bit disappointed that the accuracy score hit the 1.25 while the competitors scored under 1.
At the end of the day, the 13 inches Pro’s display is brighter compared to the Windows machines that held the throne in their competitions. No other laptops have scored as high as the 452 nits of brightness.
Audio
The enhanced quality stereo speakers have definitely stood out of the ground and gave a mean punch to the predecessor’s speakers. The sound was crisp, accurate and clear. We were listening some of the really demanding music, which included a lot of bas, and we could hear an accurate, high-quality sound that never ceased to amaze us.
Laptops don’t always come with the best of quality speakers, whereas the bad quality sound issue is solved with a couple of good-quality headphones. But you can rest assured that you will enjoy the high end audio even when you increase the volume abnormally high.
Battery Life
The life of the battery is great. However, it still provides less than the entry level laptop. That’s probably result of the extra components in the Touch Bar edition. The laptop lasted about 8 hours and 40 minutes, which is an hour and a half less compared to the entry level model. However, this result is still higher compared to other ultrabooks that barely pulled out 8 hours.
Performance
There’s been a large step up compared to the older generations of MacBook. The laptop is equipped with the 6th generation Core i5 processor. The improvements are mainly made in the clock speed, growing from 2 GHz to the amazing 2.9 GHz. The RAM is powered with 8 GB which is sufficient for either productivity, business and gaming endeavors. The storage is accompanied with the 256 GB flash storage.
While the laptop’s performance is very productive and agile, it still falls behind the premium Windows portable notebooks that contain newer Intel’s chips.
The largest enhancements were made in the MacBook’s SSD, which is highly innovative to see in the laptops. It’s fast, and bumps up a transfer rate of 636.16 megabytes per second. You will soon conclude that is faster compared to other laptops, and even the entry level 13 inch MacBook pro.
On the graphics side, the MacBook Pro is equipped with the Intel’s Iris 550 graphics, which is integrated but far more performing compared to the 540 card that the entry-level model has. However, there’s no significant difference. We’ve tested it in the OpenGL portion of the Cinebench, benchmark and the laptop performed sufficiently good, measuring 36 frames per second.
While it’s notable that the laptop won’t run some of the latest games, it is very important to remember that games enthusiast can enjoy some less demanding games at a respectful framerate.
Things that I liked: Attractive Refreshed Design, Touch Bar, SSD, Bright and vivid Display, Great Audio.
Things that I didn’t like: Overpriced, The lack of SD card slot and USB port.
Reason for Recommending
If you don’t want to cope with the ordinary definition, entry level MacBook Pro, and like the innovative appearance of touch bar, with great opportunities for tracking applications fast, and suggesting the best things you can do, the 13 inch MacBook Pro with touch bar is much more than an ordinary laptop and will suffice all the needs of ordinary but, also business users.
Aside from the touch bar, it has a great 13 inches display with bright, clear and vivid panel. Even though the keyboard feels crunchy it is still improved compared to the entry level MacBook Pro. I’d like to recommend this laptop for everyone who appreciates premium, followed with the sturdy, solid but futuristic Space-grey design.
Conclusion
The MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is a 13 inch laptop with great possibilities and amazing variety of features. It will outperform great variety of laptops in the competition and is provided with rich utilities that make it stand out. Whether are you a low-end gamer, business suite user and high end productivity, you will enjoy everything that this ultraportable notebook has to offer.
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