Apple’s 16” MacBook Pro has been out for over 6 months now, and it’s proven itself
as an excellent high-end laptop with it’s premium features and great performance.
But since then, the 13” MacBook Pro has been refreshed with the same great Magic keyboard
and a new 10th-Gen chip which really impressed us with its hidden benefits that we talk about
in our review of that machine.
So in this video, we’re going to answer a few questions like, Which features have
we enjoyed the most over the past 6 months? Is the 16” MacBook Pro worth it over the
new 13”? And should you wait for the 2020 refresh of the 16” Pro?
So let’s start off with what we enjoyed. The biggest difference we noticed compared
to the previous 15” MacBook Pro is the new Magic Keyboard.
This difference alone made the switch worth it. Typing feels a lot better thanks to noticeably
more key travel than before, along with a nice amount of feedback that you don’t usua
lly get on a lot of Windows laptops.
And most importantly, we haven’t noticed a single reliability issue with this new keyboard
over the past 6 months, nor have we heard of any online, compared to the previous butterfly
keyboard which experienced faulty key issues that led to consumers losing trust in Apple’s
MacBooks.
So we’re very glad that Apple not only fixed that issue, but they gave us a top of the
line keyboard as well.
After getting used to the newly updated 6 speaker system on the 16” Pro, we were surp
rised to hear how much worse the speakers on the previous 15” MacBook sound. There
is such a big difference in overall sound quality and clarity.. And there’s no doubt
that these speakers are better than any Windows laptop available today.
In terms of the new studio quality microphone, it didn’t really matter that much to us
until the lockdown happened, and at that point, the better mic quality was great for online
zoom meetings.
However, getting the same crappy 720p webcam as the MacBook Air is just sad when you’re
spending $2,400 on this premium MacBook. And even at the current Amazon sale price of just
$2200 using the link in the description, it’s still so expensive for getting a webcam this
bad.
So I’m not sure how Apple is going to fix this in the future, since the top lid is so
incredibly thin, but I’m sure they’ll be paying more attention to it now that we’ve
gone through the whole lockdown situation.
But what I do like is the new slimmer display bezels, and while this is a pretty subtle
change, it feels pretty bad going back to the 15” Pro which has the larger bezels,
so I’m happy Apple went with this change.
Now let’s talk about performance. When I reviewed the 2019 15” MacBook Pro, I was
really impressed to see that Apple finally fixed the cooling issues, so the processors
performed great compared to the 2018 models.
The only downside was that the graphics options went unchanged, so video editing performed
didn’t really improve at all.
But that all changed with the 16” MacBook Pro, which finally got updated Navi graphics,
and we were surprised to see that the base 5300M GPU outperformed the best Vega 20 option
in the 15” MacBook Pro, which you had to pay at least $3,150 for compared to $2200
for that base model right now on Amazon.
So thanks to the new graphics and the new 8-core processor option, which by the way,
doesn’t overheat like we thought it would, video editing performance has been outstanding
on the 16” MacBook Pro.
And not only that, but you can now buy the base 16” Pro and actually get decent FPS
in games like Call of Duty Modern Warfare.
So everything about the performance of the 16” MacBook Pro is great, the only difference
6 months later is that we now have the $1800 13” MacBook Pro with the new 10th-Gen chips.
If we compare raw processing power, the 16” MacBook Pro is definitely ahead thanks to
it’s 6 core processor, and since the cooling system is better, there is an even bigger
difference in the Cinebench R20 stress test, so the 16” is definitely worth the extra
$400, and you have the option of paying even more for an 8-core CPU if you really need
it.
Now where the 16” really shines is graphics performance, since it’s the only MacBook
with a dedicated graphics chip.
Even though the 13” Pro’s new 10th-Gen chip has much better integrated graphics compared
to before, it’s still about 2 and a half times weaker than the base graphics in the
16” model in terms of raw graphics performance.
And that difference was even bigger in Unigine heaven, with the 16” getting over 3x the
FPS, and then where it really matters is for things like video editing, where the 16”
finished our 5 minute 4K export almost 3x as fast.
So it’s very clear that if you want the most performance for graphics-related work,
you should definitely buy the 16” MacBook Pro, but for common tasks like basic 4K editing,
the 13” is actually fast enough for most people.
And we were surprised to see not that big of a difference in our Lightroom export test
since it mostly relies on the processor and RAM.
And that’s what’s really great about the new 13” is that it come s standard with
16GB of RAM, just like the 16” does, and it also comes with 512GB of storage as well,
so for common processor-related tasks, the new $1800 13” model is currently a better
value especially since it’s much more portable as well.
But for anything graphics-related, the 16” MacBook Pro is still by far the king.
So now let’s finish off with our final question, should you wait for the next refresh of the
16” MacBook Pro or just buy that excellent $2200 Amazon deal right now?
Well, we first need to discuss the realistic changes that we should expect on the new model.
Since the current 16” model just got redesigned with new bezels, we shouldn’t expect any
design differences at all. That means the speakers, the microphones, the keyboard, the
trackpad, the size, the display bezels, and basically everything else should stay the
same.
Now there is a chance that the webcam will get updated, but maybe it won’t.
And we know Apple is working on their Mini-LED displays, but that most likely won’t come
until at least some time next year.
What we should expect is brand new 10th-Gen processors, which actually might still be
using Intel’s 14nm technology, probably faster RAM, and the possibility of some new
graphics chip options.
There’s also the chance that we’ll get 1TB of SSD at the base price, but it’ll
most likely stick to 16GB of RAM as standard.
So it seems like if there will be a 2020 refresh to the 16” MacBook Pro, which we should
expect some time this summer, it’ll mostly be a spec update without any real changes
to the actual design, unless Apple decides to totally surprise us.
I expect there to be a decent improvement in performance, but nowhere near the difference
between we saw coming from the 15” MacBook Pro.
So the question you have to ask yourself is this, is the boost in specs and performance
gonna be worth waiting a couple of months and then paying $2400 for, or should I just
buy the current 16” pro for only $2200 on Amazon right now and enjoy those luxury features
like the Magic keyboard, the speakers and the thinner display bezels? Which by the way,
probably won’t change on the 2020 model.
In my personal opinion, the wisest move would be to hold off for a couple of months and
wait for the new 2020 model to get announced, just in case Apple surprises us with more
than just spec updates like we’re currently expecting.
But in terms of how good the 16” MacBook Pro has been for the last 6 months, we’re
extremely impressed with basically everything about it, except for that h orrible 720p webcam
that we really hope Apple will change.
So hopefully you guys enjoyed this review, and if you did, you can click that circle
above to subscribe for more videos like this one, and you can check out our review of the
10th gen 13” macBook Pro right over there. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you in
the next video!