- I want to tell you a little story
about the year 2019.
In June at WWDC, Apple announced iPadOS
which, feature for feature,
addressed a bunch of complaints that we had,
like USB drives and web browsing.
And Apple also announced the new Mac Pro,
which finally replaced the old trash can
and was designed for the way pros actually need
to use their computers - they just made it big again.
And then in September, Apple released the iPhone 11
and 11 Pro, and it fixed the things that people care
the most about - camera quality and battery life.
Apple also just made it a little bit thicker.
Finally, Apple put a smart keyboard connector
on the base of iPad, and then a little bit later,
released the AirPods Pro, which actually stay
in my ears, and they also happen to do noise canceling.
It has been a year of Apple doing obvious things.
Not the flashiest things, not the, "This changes everything"
things, just the things that we wanted Apple to do.
And so now we have this, the new 16" MacBook Pro.
In a parallel universe, we wouldn't review this
on a video at all, because it would just be
a minor spec bump.
Instead, it is a laptop full of Apple fixing the things
that is has done wrong on the MacBook for years.
It's a pretty good way to cap off 2019.
(relaxed synth music)
Let's just start by catching you up on the basics
of what's new with this laptop,
even though by now you're probably already familiar.
So, the screen is half an inch or so bigger than before,
so it's 16 inches now.
The keyboard has been switched to the new scissor switch,
a more traditional kind of switch,
along with a real escape key.
The laptop has also been made just a little bit thicker
and it's a little bit better at dissipating heat
than before.
The speakers are all new and they're amazing,
and the graphics cards are the most interesting part
of all the spec bumps here.
But if you want, you can get a ton of RAM
or storage, if you need to get those.
I asked a bunch of you what you wanted me to test
on this computer on YouTube, and on my email newsletter
and on Twitter, and I got a ton of responses
but they all break down into some
pretty predictable categories.
And at the tippy top of that list is the keyboard,
so let's do this.
(keys tapping)
The keyboard is absolutely good.
In some ways it's leap ahead of other modern keyboards,
it has good key travel, and the backlight doesn't
bleed out all over the place.
In terms of key feel, it's firm and not really that springy,
at least compared to the old 2015 MacBooks,
but I like it.
It has a satisfying and fairly quiet thunk.
(keys striking)
It really is a massive upgrade over those butterfly keys,
and iFixit says that the key caps
are easy to replace too.
And yes, there is now an escape key again,
and the arrow keys are way easier to hit
because they have this inverted T shape.
All the keys are spaced a little bit further apart
because the key caps are just a little bit smaller,
and it's much less likely that you're going to
accidentally tap on the touch bar.
Oh yeah, the touch bar.
I personally don't know anybody who really loves it.
You can use third party tools like BetterTouchTool
or Pock to change it up,
but it's not going anywhere and so you might as well
get used to it.
Got a bunch of questions about battery life,
especially since there's a 100-watt hour battery,
the FA limit, inside this thing,
and it seems good.
I am getting through a full day of work
up to the eight-hour range
just doing my basic web, Twitter, YouTube office stuff
that I do.
I mean it certainly should, it has that giant battery
inside this chonk.
It weighs 4.3lbs and it's just a little bit bigger
than the other 15" MacBooks,
but unless your 15" laptop was already tight in your bag,
this one should probably fit in there just fine.
Oh, by the way, I also had people ask
if the battery drains even when it's plugged in
and you've got it under heavy load,
and so far that hasn't happened to me at all.
Next up, a lot of people asked about performance
and specifically thermal throttling,
so we need to talk about that for a minute.
Basically Apple had a big problem on it's hands last year
with the last MacBook Pro, which was
all kinds of unpredictable when it came to
slowing down the processor because of heat.
Apple released some software updates which helped,
but the bottom line is that that laptop
couldn't run as hot as other laptops.
This year, Apple increased the size of the heatsink,
made the fans blow more air,
and even added a little bit of thickness
to help with airflow, and it worked.
There can be any number of things off with this benchmark
that you're looking at on your screen right now.
Unless you're really carefully testing it
in like lab conditions, all sorts of random variables
are going to change your result.
But what I see here is a processor that can hit it's turbo
and then settles into an entirely predictable,
stable, and respectable speed over time,
and that is not what we saw last year.
So, you know, bravo.
But more important than benchmarks is results,
and a lot of you asked me to run your particular software
and tools and y'all, I just gotta tell you,
I'm not going to be able to test everybody's workflow.
I just can't afford to buy that much software too.
But what I can tell is that for our video team,
the improvements here in Adobe Premiere Pro
over last year's model are pretty modest.
Compared to a fairly comparable machine from a year ago,
this 16" was like 3-5% faster
on a half-hour export.
That's not much, but then again Adobe isn't great
at utilizing the GPU.
Now, Jonathan Morrison runs Final Cut Pro 10
and I'll link to the video where he tested this below,
and he saw much more improvement.
I also saw some GPU improvements myself.
Here is "Rise of the Tomb Raider"
it's running with all the default graphics settings
on a 2018 6-core i9 with a Radeon Pro Vega 20
and then this new 2019 16" with an 8-core i9
and the Radeon Pro 5500M.
The old MacBook got 29.99 frames per second,
and this 16" was around 52.
Here's where I land on performance.
It is better year over year, just like you'd expect,
especially on graphics,
but it's not a huge change unless your software
really uses the GPU.
It's also pretty great that you can get as much storage
or RAM as you want, so long as you're willing to pay for it.
The base model starts at $2,399 but there are
a ton of options,
and so you can get it all the way up to $6,099
if you need to.
Now, I only got a couple of questions
about the new speakers and the new studio microphones
which is kind of a bummer,
because these are actually my favorite parts
of this computer, especially the speakers
which do this really clever thing
where the two woofers on each side
cancel out each other's vibrations
which allows for more bass.
We set up a bunch of laptops and audio gear
back in our New York studio last week,
and we just tried it all out.
All right, so we're here in the studio
and Andrew has set up a bunch of cool audio gear.
We've got binaural audio recording microphones
with ears on them and a Blue microphone,
but what you're listening to right now
is the studio three-mic array from the MacBook Pro itself,
and we're going to compare this microphone
to a few other things,
and I'm going to read the same thing across all of them
because then we'll have an equal test.
So, four-score and seven years ago,
our fathers brought forth onto this continent
a new nation conceived in liberty
and dedicated to the proposition that all men
are created equal.
All right, we're back on the 2019 16" MacBook Pro
and since these are studio-quality microphones
we should probably listen to some actual music on them,
so let's do that.
(cheerful acoustic strumming)
The really impressive thing with this laptop though
is the speakers.
Apple has a six-speaker array, three on each side,
and two of them on each side are these woofers
that are designed to cancel out each other's vibrations.
And you really have to hear it in person to hear it,
but what you're listening to right now
is me talking into the ear-shaped microphones
on this binaural audio set-up,
and so we'll do our best so that you can try and hear
a little bit of it,
but you really need to wear headphones
to catch the differences here, if it works.
(high-intensity synth music)
So the microphone, it's pretty good
but it's maybe not quite studio quality.
The speakers though, they are the best that I've ever heard
on a laptop.
Here is what I think of the 16" MacBook Pro.
The speakers and the microphone are huge upgrades,
the screen is a small upgrade,
and the performance is a decent upgrade
depending on whether or not your software needs a good GPU.
And then there's the keyboard,
which is a massive upgrade
if you compare it to the butterfly keys,
and a medium upgrade if you compare it to
literally any other keyboard.
The 16" MacBook Pro is the first MacBook Pro in years
that doesn't come with any major caveats.
If you've been holding out on buying one,
this is the one that you've been waiting for.
All of which leads me to the other question,
maybe the most-asked question that I got.
What about the 13" MacBook Pro?
What about the MacBook Air?
Are they going to get the new or the old, the keyboard?
Are they going to get the keyboard?
Well, I wish I knew.
But if 2020 is anything like 2019
and Apple just keeps doing the obvious things,
I'm optimistic.
Hey everybody, thank you so much for watching.
Let me know down in the comments,
is this the laptop that you've been waiting for?
Also it's LA Auto week, and there is a ton of stuff.
We saw the Mustang Mach-E SUV electric thing from Ford,
and Elon Musk has tweeted that the Cybertruck
is coming tonight,
so keep it locked to the Verge.