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There's a clear leap forward in resolution, sharpness and detail compared to my 2017 MacBook Pro. And judging from the dozens of video calls I've been on over the past week, it's a huge upgrade. I'll happily give up a bit of screen real estate, though, if it means Apple can finally squeeze in a decent camera. You could also use a black wallpaper which effectively hides the notch. The menu bar also gets blacked out entirely whenever you put an app or video in fullscreen. But, honestly, the notch isn't a big deal.Īpple wisely pushed the MacOS menu bar around the camera, so it's really just taking up space that would go unused anyway. Upon first glance, it's almost laughable that Apple is leaning even more into a design element that everyone hates. Much like the last batch of iPhones, Apple carved out a portion of the display to fit in a camera. Now let's talk about the elephant in the room: that notch in the middle of the screen. These aren't OLED screens, but mini-LEDs get Apple pretty close to that level of contrast. Just know that they look incredible, with eye-watering brightness in sunny HDR scenes and inky black darkness in night shots. Really though, you don't have to think about all of the technology going into Apple's Liquid Retina XDR displays. ProMotion is also intelligent enough to lower the refresh rate when it makes sense, which goes a long way towards saving battery life. Microsoft already beat Apple to the punch by putting a 120Hz screen in the Surface Laptop Studio. This is becoming more common in the laptop world. And after spending hours writing up this review, I definitely noticed that my eyes were less fatigued thanks to the speedy refresh rate. With that flipped on, scrolling through web pages and documents just felt silky smooth. Neither are true 4K (the 16-inch comes close), but you'll still be able to work on 4K and 8K video, just at a reduced scale.īest of all is that the MacBook Pros support ProMotion, Apple's technology that enables refresh rates up to 120Hz. The screens are a sharp 254 pixels per inch, with a 3,024 by 1,964 resolution on the 14-inch and 3,456 by 2,234 on the 16-inch. Mini-LED backlighting lets them reach up to 1,600 nits of peak brightness, which is great for HDR content. They feature 14.2-inch and 16.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR displays, respectively. Looking at the MacBook Pro's screens makes it clear they're anything but retro, though. You can still charge the notebooks over USB-C - always useful in a pinch - but the MagSafe connection is less likely to cause accidental falls and you won't have to use a precious USB-C port just to stay powered up. Sure, you’ll still need adapters to connect older USB Type-A devices, but at least you can offload photos and video without extra gear. Joining three Thunderbolt 4 USB-C connections are a full-sized HDMI port, a MagSafe power connection, a high-impedance headphone jack and an SD card reader (cue triumphant horns). In part it allowed Apple to cram in a lot more ports. That's about half a pound heavier than the last 16-inch MacBook Pro.Īll of that heft isn’t for naught, though. They're also heavier than you'd expect: the 14-inch model comes in at 3.5 pounds, while the 16-inch varies between 4.7 and 4.8 pounds, depending on the chip you choose.
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They're slightly thicker, with more bulbous edges that hearken back to Apple's notebooks from the 2000's. But lean in a bit closer and you'll notice some retro flourishes. The bigger model now starts at $2,499, $100 more than the Intel version.īoth notebooks still look like MacBook Pros, with sleek unibody aluminum cases. (The only exception is "High Power Mode," which gives the 16-inch M1 Max version a temporary speed boost.) That's one way I've come to terms with the high $1,999 starting price. It can do almost everything the 16-inch model can, it’s just smaller. It’s more an expansion of the highest-end model. Apple isn’t currently planning to replace the 13-inch model with the MacBook Pro 14.