This video is sponsored by Squarespace, the best way to make an amazing website.
Apple has recently released their brand new 16” MacBook Pro, so we’ve now got Apple’s
complete lineup of MacBooks that shouldn’t change at all until at least the end of Spring,
starting with the MacBook Air for $1100, the base 13” MacBook Pro for $1300, the higher-end
13” Pro for $1800 and the new 16” MacBook Pro for $2400.
To make it even better, each one of these MacBook Pros is now around $100 from Amazon
with free Prime shipping if you use the links down in the description, so definitely use
those if you want to help support the channel.
Now let’s get started with comparing literally everything we can between all of these MacBooks,
starting with portability.
In terms of weight, the 16” Pro is now 4.3 pounds, and it’s very noticeable compared
to the rest of the lineup.
From above, the Air is basically just as large as the 13” Pro, so portability should be
pretty similar, and the 16” Pro is even less portable than the old 15”.
The MacBook Pros also have more of a flat slate shape compared to the MacBook Air, which
has a wedge design that gets thinner near the front end.
Each of these MacBooks has a high-quality Retina resolution display, but the Air’s
display isn’t as nice.
It’s quite a bit dimmer than the Pros, that each have an incredible 500 nits of brightness,
and it’s definitely not as color accurate, since every MacBook Pro has P3 wide-color
gamut, which has about 25% more colors than 100% sRGB, which is a must-have for photo
editors.
As far as display sharpness, they all have around the same Retina-quality 227 pixels
per inch, and every MacBook in the lineup comes with True Tone technology, which adjusts
the white balance of the display to match the environment around you.
The big change this year is that the new 16” Pro now gets smaller bezels that actually
look quite a bit nicer and more modern compared to the rest of the lineup.
Speaker quality and volume is a huge deal for some people, especially to me, so here’s
a sound comparison so you can hear the difference for yourself.
We noticed that the Air has slightly worse speakers than the base 13” Pro, and the
higher-end $1800 13” Pro gets even better speakers, but the standout model is the 16”
with a new 6-speaker design with incredibly good sound quality and bass, so definitely
buy the 16” if you love great speakers.
It also features new studio-quality microphones, so here’s a FaceTime comparison of all of
them.
Now onto the keyboards, the 16” Pro finally packs Apple’s latest Magic keyboard compared
to 4th-gen butterfly keys on the rest of the MacBooks.
There is seriously a light and day difference between the two. You get so much more key
travel and it’s a much better typing experience on the new 16”.
There are rumors that the rest of the MacBook lineup should be upgraded to the new Magic
switches next year, but it most likely won’t happen until at least Spring-time.
Apart from that, the MacBook Air’s keyboard slopes downward towards the front edge so
it’s actually a bit more comfortable to type on compared to the Pros.
Every single MacBook in the lineup comes with a Touch ID sensor built into the power button
which makes it really convenient to log in, use Apple Pay online and install apps off
the web without having to enter your password.
However, every MacBook Pro comes with the Touch Bar, an OLED display that replaces the
top row of keys and is fully customizable, but not many people like it because it’s
more difficult to do things like adjust display brightness and volume.
And a benefit of the 16” Pro is that it actually gets a physical escape key, so if
you’re a programmer or someone who uses that key a lot, definitely go for the 16”
Pro.
Now let’s talk about the ports. Every port on every MacBook this year supports Thunderbolt
3, but both the 13” MacBook Air and lower-end MacBook Pro come with only two of these ports,
compared to four ports on the more expensive Pros.
If you’re a basic user that doesn’t connect to external displays or connect external devices
very often, you’ll probably be fine with one of the two-port models,
and you also have the choice of buying a Thunderbolt 3 hub just in case you do need more ports,
but having four ports from the get-go is definitely more convenient, especially for those who
use their ports often.
Now if you love large trackpads, the 16” Pro has the biggest one of them all, followed
by the 13” Pro and then the Air has a slightly smaller trackpad.
For battery life, the new MacBook Air is rated at 12 hours compared to 10 hours on the 13”
MacBook Pros, and 11 hours on the 16” MacBook Pro, so while the Air is the best option for
battery life, the 16” Pro is still a great choice.
********** Now before we get into comparing performance,
let me tell you about our sponsor, Squarespace. If you've been thinking about making your
own website, Squarespace is seriously the best way to go.
I built an engaging website for my wife's cleaning business with literally no web-making
experience. You just choose a template, customize blocks of text and images and easily move
them around.
It's incredibly simple, affordable, and it's been running flawlessly for almost two years,
bringing in new clients thanks to its built-in SEO tools.
So whether you're making a website for a small business or for LITERALLY anything else, go
to squarespace.com for a free trial, and use our custom link below when you're ready to
launch to save 10% on your first purchase of a website or domain!
**********
Getting into performance, the base $1300 MacBook Pro finally gets a quad-core processor, so
the MacBook Air is now the only one in the lineup with a dual-core CPU.
The $1800 Pro has a faster quad-core and the 16” Pro has a six-core that can actually
be upgraded to an 8-core if you’re willing to spend another $300.
Looking at raw processing power using Geekbench 5’s multi-core test, we can see that the
MacBook Air with its dual-core CPU is way behind the MacBook Pros, and surprisingly,
the $1300 Pro performs almost the same as the $1800 model, and the 16” gives you a
pretty good jump in performance as well.
So we decided to look at performance per dollar using the full retail price of each MacBook,
and the new $1300 base MacBook Pro comes out way ahead, with incredible amounts of raw
power for the cash, with the Air being a very bad value, performance-wise.
One thing that you won’t find on the spec sheet is that the $1300 base MacBook Pro has
only one fan, just like on the MacBook Air, while the more expensive $1800 and $2400 Pros
have dual fans, and the 16” Pro also has upgraded cooling this year, so it should be
perform better for longer workloads.
To test that, we ran Cinebench R20, a more realistic benchmark which is long enough to
heat the systems up and see how well the cooling systems work.
And surprisingly, the single fan on the $1300 Pro didn’t really limit performance like
we thought it would, so we’re really impressed with it, and the 16” was the clear winner
in terms of performance.
We then tested graphics performance using Geekbench 5’s Metal test, and the 16”
Pro completely destroyed the rest of the MacBooks because of its new AMD Navi dedicated graphics
chip. It almost triples the graphics performance of the $1800 Pro, which is insane!
And you can see this when looking at graphics performance per dollar, the 16” Pro now
destroys the rest of the lineup in terms of value for graphics power.
And since the 16” Pro has such a good graphics chip, we decided to test gaming performance
using Unigine Heaven’s Extreme preset, and it completely obliterated the rest of the
lineup, with more than 4x the gaming performance of the $1800 Pro, so if you want to do some
gaming on the side, buy the 16” Pro!
We also tested SSD speeds, and here, we see a pretty big difference when going to the
more expensive MacBook Pros, especially the 16” Pro because it comes standard with a
512GB SSD, but even the less expensive models are still fast enough for most people.
So if you’re still confused on which MacBook you should buy, let me break it down for you.
The $1300 base 13” MacBook Pro is by far the best choice if you want to spend less
than $2400 on a new MacBook, thanks to it’s excellent performance per dollar and overall
MacBook experience.
Now if you don’t really need a great display or high performance, and you’d rather save
a couple hundred bucks, you can go for the MacBook Air instead.
The Air is great if you’re a writer, a student, or someone who just wants a premium reliable
laptop for doing basic computer tasks like web browsing, working with documents and sometimes
watching some netflix, as well as getting some extra battery life out of it.
But to be honest, I’d personally cough up the extra $200 and just get the Pro anyway
since you get a better display, better speakers and awesome bang for your buck in terms of
performance.
Now the $1800 13” Pro is in a really tough spot because it honestly isn’t that much
more powerful than the $1300 Pro, it just has a few luxury improvements, like an extra
two thunderbolt 3 ports, faster SSD speeds and extra cooling fan and better speakers.
The only downside of the $1300 Pro is that it only comes with a 128GB SSD, and even then,
I still think it’s a better value to upgrade to 256GB for an extra $200 instead of getting
the higher-end 13” Pro.
I would honestly recommend everyone to completely ignore the $1800 Pro and buy the new 16”
Pro instead, because you’re getting so much more with the thinner bezels, the much better
Magic keyboard, the better microphones, better cooling and MUCH more performance with the
6-core processor, brand new dedicated graphics, and you actually get a 512GB SSD at the base
$2400 price instead of spending an extra $200 to get it on the high-end 13” model.
The only reason you should buy the $1800 13” Pro is if you absolutely must have a 13”
Pro for portability and you don’t think the $1300 model is enough for you, and even
then, I would still recommend just buying the $1300 Pro or going straight for the $2400
16” Pro which gives you incredible value for the price.
It’s got the best speakers, the best microphones, and most importantly, much more performance,
with options of an 8-core CPU, up to 64GB of RAM and a massive 8TB of storage.
So there you have it! If you’re still confused on which one to buy, comment down below and
we’ll help you out! And if this video helped you make a decision, use those links below
to buy!
And If you wanna see more videos on the 16” MacBook Pro, check out one of those two right
over there, and click the circle above to subscribe, thanks for watching, and we’ll
see you in the next one!