Force Touch trackpad, Thunderbolt 2, Intel Broadwell processors and a faster SSD. The
2015 MacBook Pro has seen a pretty decent update but is it worth it? Take one look around
and you’ll see the design hasn’t changed much. That’s not really a complaint though,
the Retina MacBook Pro has been one of the best built laptops for a few years now and
the 2015 model is no exception. It’s a solid aluminum chassis with some of the tightest
tolerances out there and subtle touches like a nicely weighted hinge so you can open up
the lid without picking up the entire laptop. It’s got a pair of decent speakers hidden
on the edges by the ports that double as intakes for the fan. The MacBook vents above the keyboard
which can still breathe even with the lid closed. The keyboard is still about as good
as it gets for a laptop. They could add just a touch more key travel in my opinion but
it’s nicely spaced and keeps the adjustable backlighting which automatically kicks on
in darker environments. Something shared from the new MacBook is the Force Touch trackpad.
It looks the same however instead of being a normal clickpad there’s a Taptic Engine
which vibrates the trackpad when you click. It sounds bizarre but it actually works, you
can notice the lack of travel compared with a normal MacBook but it does feel like you’re
clicking. Turn off the laptop and it’s really trippy, it moves a tiny amount but nowhere
near as much as it feels like when it’s actually on.
It’s also pressure sensitive which lets you use the new Force Touch gesture in OS
X. For example the harder you press the more you fast forward in QuickTime with a slight
bit of feedback as you go through each of the speeds. The coolest way to use this is
in Safari where you can Force Click on a link to preview before actually opening it. It
took me a few days to get used to it but the new trackpad is a nice addition. For ports
you’ve got an SDXC card reader, HDMI and USB 3.0 on the right side along with MagSafe
2 for charging, a pair of Thunderbolt 2 ports along with one more USB and a combo headphone
microphone jack. The Thunderbolt ports are the most interesting, having that much bandwidth
is mostly useful for high end RAID arrays and docks that give you things like extra
USB ports, Ethernet and HDMI off a single cable. They also double as Mini DisplayPorts
with the ability to drive 4K monitors at 60 hertz. It won’t be buttery smooth but it
is totally possible. Speaking of that screen, the MacBook Pro is sporting a 13.3 inch IPS
display with a resolution of 2560 by 1600. While this has been passed by Windows laptops
pushing resolutions up to 4K in practice the MacBook is more than sharp enough. It’s
got solid viewing angles, a far cry from the MacBook Air which washes out almost immediately.
OS X scaling is quite a bit better than on Windows too, it scales the resolution by double
giving you the same screen real estate as a 1280 by 800 display by default. You can
adjust this up to 1680 by 1050 but for me the sweet spot was 1440 by 900, giving you
a decent amount of resolution without making things too tiny. There are also apps like
SetResX that will drop the Retina scaling altogether if you really need every single
pixel which I use for some apps like SpeedGrade. Things like the design and screen are important
but a laptop is basically a paperweight without some decent specs.
The base configuration comes with a Broadwell Core i5 with Iris 6100 graphics, eight gigabytes
of RAM and a 128 gigabyte SSD. Compare this with the New MacBook and for the same price
you get a 256 gigabyte drive but a much less powerful Core M processor. We’ll see how
they actually compare soon so be sure to subscribe to catch my video on the New MacBook but the
Pro is looking pretty solid right now. The 13 inch Pro I’ve got here is upgraded with
the Core i7, sixteen gigabytes of memory and a 512 gigabyte SSD. One of the big behind
the scenes upgrades on the new MacBook is a faster PCIe based SSD. It’s fast. Like
the fastest SSD I’ve ever tested with read and write speeds over 1300 megabytes per second.
Things get a little less exciting when you look at the CPU though. We’re still looking
at a dual core chip across the board on the 13 inch MacBook, if you want quad core you’ll
have to take the step up to the 15 inch. The new 14 nanometer Broadwell chips do keep the
clocks relatively high, even the base 13 inch starts at 2.7 gigahertz and goes up to 3.4
gigahertz with the Core i7. Still though we’ve only got two cores and the Geekbench numbers
top out at just about half of what the 15 inch MacBook can muster. On the graphics side
things are a bit better, the Iris graphics are able to keep OS X running nice and smooth
and it posts a solid improvement over the MacBook Air and last gen Pro in Cinebench.
No one should buy a Mac for gaming but that graphics performance does make some light
gaming possible. Minecraft runs no problem here with everything turned up and even a
heavier title like Tomb Raider is playable as long as you don’t mind turning down the
settings a bit. One of the biggest questions I’ve had was how the 13 inch Pro handles
video. I’ve edited my last three videos with Adobe Premiere CC on the MacBook and
I’ve been pleasantly surprised. It’s able to keep up with editing 1080p AVCHD clips
just fine, only slowing down when I'm working with complicated effects. Where I really miss
a quad core CPU is when exporting but for the actual edit the 13 inch MacBook Pro is
absolutely usable. Battery life isn’t too bad either. With lighter use like listening
to music and web browsing you should expect around nine hours of longevity where things
like gaming and video editing will bring that closer to three hours. The MacBook Pro is
an expensive laptop. You do get a solid build, excellent screen, impressive new trackpad
and a blisteringly fast SSD. The lack of dedicated graphics is a slight disappointment but not
having a quad core CPU option is a big problem for a laptop at this price. 95 percent of
the time you won’t notice but I would happily trade a couple hours of battery life to have
the extra power when I need it. If you’re looking at a MacBook the 13 inch Pro is the
best trade off between power and portability but you’re going to have to pay for it.
So what do you guys think about the new MacBook Pro? Let me know in the comments below and
if you enjoyed and want to see more videos like this definitely be sure to subscribe
to the channel! Anyway guys thank you so much for watching and I will catch you in the next
one!