Hey everyone, welcome back The new M2 MacBook Pros have finally arrived
And on the face of it, they look a solid improvement in every way over the 2021 models
They've got better graphics, longer battery life, and faster connectivity
In this video, I’m going to take you through the unboxing, the design, and the key features
But I also want to talk about a couple of things that might make you think twice about
getting one of these, so make sure you stick around until the end for that
Starting off with the options, the new MacBook Pro comes in the same 2 colours, space grey
and silver As well as the same 2 sizes, 14 and 16 inches
The base model 14 inch still costs $2,000 and the base model 16 inch starts at $2,500
which again is the same as Apple’s M1 models Both those base models feature Apple’s new
M2 Pro processor, which Apple claims is anywhere from 20-40% faster depending on which task
you’re doing (20% CPU, 30% GPU) But then of course you’ve also got the M2
Max chips for even more power which again mirrors the update we had last time
And these are configurable in either 30-core GPU or a 38-core GPU in both sizes
Aside from the processor you’ll also have the option to customise your memory up to
96 GB if you go for the M2 Max, as well SSD storage options ranging from 1TB to 8TB.
In terms of design there’s really no visible differences this year apart from the MagSafe
connector Aside from that all of the ports have stayed
pretty much the same with a minor upgrade to the speed of the card reader
As well as the HDMI port which now supports HDMI 2.1
Allowing for resolutions up to 8k or faster frame rates of 120 fps.
For the M2 Max this means you can now connect up to 4 external monitors
Needless to say if you didn’t know what did then you probably didn’t need it anyway
These new 2023 models now support Bluetooth 5.3
And more importantly, we now finally have Wi-Fi 6E which is great to see
For those that don’t know, the main difference between Wifi 6 and Wifi 6E is speed
Wifi 6E allows for 7 added channels that essentially double throughput
I don’t have a wifi 6E router unfortunately so I couldn’t test this directly, but some
reports online are saying that the transfer rates are more than twice as fast as the M1
If you’re the kind of person that is really into AR/VR or 8K streaming then you’ll be
psyched to hear this.
If not, then not a lot has changed for you!
The other final thing to say is overall the battery seems to have had a minor improvement
as well, with Apple touting a 1hr improvement on battery
So with those minor updates in mind, that represents a bit of a problem for Apple
Because, is it really worth spending that amount of money on an M2 laptop when they
are only marginally better than the M1s?
To put that into perspective, take a look at last week’s earning report for Apple,
where they announced their largest revenue decline since 2016!
What’s most interesting though is that the decline in Mac revenue was huge, it dropped
by 28% since last year alone And if you compare that to iPhone revenue
which only declined by 8% and services revenue which increased 6.4%, that’s a big deal.
In short, people just aren’t upgrading as often as they used to
And nowadays you need a pretty compelling reason to part with your cash
Just have a look at how much the M1s are now discounted on 3rd party retailers and within
Apple’s own refurbished store.
In some instances you can save $500 or more on a comparable product that for most people
just simply wont notice the performance gains On top of that, there are some initial tear-downs
being done by people claiming that the heat sync on the M2 MacBook Pros is smaller this
year due to supply chain issues, which could mean it runs slightly hotter than the M1s
when firing at full pelt And based on some initial tests that people
have been running, the smaller SSDs in M2 MacBooks might be running slower than certain
M1s To what extent these things are true or not
is something we’ll have to get more detail on over time, but it definitely doesn’t
help.
And, it’s going to be a really hard ask for people to spend more to get these over
M1 MacBooks.
So yeah.. in summery, it’s not looking good for sales of the M2...
While I love these new MacBook Pros, and think they're incredible machines, there’s really
no massive upgrades apart from wifi, hdmi or bluetooth
And for most people, these really aren’t worth spending hundreds of dollars more on
All in all, I guess my advice would be to save yourself a couple of bucks and go and
find yourself some huge savings on an M1 Because, well, they are still insanely fast
machines and you probably wont notice the difference.
And with that, I’ll say goodbye Hope you enjoyed it
Let me know your thoughts as usual in the comments below and remember to subscribe if
you haven’t already Thanks again for watching, see you in the
next one.