Apple's 13-inch MacBook Pro has now been refreshed for 2020 but it seems like all
the attention is on the higher end eighteen hundred dollar model since
that's the model that features Intel's latest tenth gen processors but I think
people are way over exaggerating how important those chips really are I've
even seen people recommending the 2020 MacBook Air over the base MacBook Pro
just because of the tension processors which is a massive mistake and I'll
explain why in just a minute now I'm not saying that the new $1,800 MacBook Pro
isn't a great choice in fact I think it's definitely worth the extra $500
over the 20/20 base model mainly because you get a 512 guess SD and 16 gigs of
ram included which those upgrades used to cost $400 alone and on top of that
you get other great features like much better speakers better cooling thanks to
an extra fan to extra ports and of course better performance but the
reality is that not everyone wants to spend almost $2,000 for a macbook and
for those who can afford the $1,300 pro they'll be making an excellent choice
despite the hñ processor and what reviewers are saying about it I
personally think the real mistake is thinking that the 20/20 MacBook Air with
a quad core i5 or even the i7 processor will have better performance than this
base macbook pro thanks to the all-powerful 10th gen ship but that's
simply not true the main reason for that is because
Apple decided not to connect the MacBook Airs fan to the CPUs heatsink so even
the dual core i3 model hits a hundred degrees Celsius relatively quickly let
alone the i7 and when we ran our CPU stress test the MacBook Air suffered
because of the lack of cooling with the base macbook pro pulley way ahead so
here's my take on the MacBook Air versus the MacBook Pro if you care about
performance whatsoever by the base MacBook Pro instead so that means if
you're considering the quad-core model of the MacBook Air you actually do
care about performance so by the base MacBook Pro instead trust me it will
perform much better despite the a gen chip and the fans will
stay quieter as well and yes the long-awaited fortune' inch MacBook Pro
is in the works but more and more rumors and leaks are appointing to at least a
spring 2021 release date and the reality is that a lot of people aren't going to
wait that long so let's get into why I think this 20/20 base 13-inch MacBook
Pro is still a great choice right now first off the main issue with the 2019
model was the butterfly keyboard and that is now fixed with the 2020 model
since it gets the new magic keyboard and there truly is a massive difference in
the quality of the keyboard and everything from key travel and typing
experience to reliability as well and another nice addition is that we now
get a physical Escape key so it's much more convenient to use than before but
other than with the keyboard you won't find any other physical difference
except for the tiny increase in weight and thickness compared to the 2019 model
well of course it'd be nice to have that 14 inch redesigned right now but we
can't blame Apple because the 14 inch model was never anything more than
rumours from the supply chain and then blogging sites took those rumours and
decided to get everybody hyped up making them think that it's coming this year so
we shouldn't blame Apple we should actually be thanking them because this
base 8 gen model has become a much better deal especially for those who
want 16 gigs of ram with a 2019 model if you wanted 256 gigs of storage and 16
gigabytes of RAM you'd have to spend $1,700 to get it but now the 256 gig SSD
is already included in the base price and upgrading to 16 gigs of ram is now
only a $100 upgrade so you're saving $300 compared to last year to get the
same specs and you're getting the reliable magic keyboard which is even
more important for some people so we definitely are getting a pretty good
value this you with the base MacBook Pro but there's
one question left that we need to answer does the old eighth generation chip make
this MacBook Pro a bad choice well if you've seen our recent $1300 versus
$1,800 20/20 MacBook Pro comparison video you'll know that the tangential
isn't massively faster than the base eight gen like everyone is making a
sound like we only saw around a 12% higher Geekbench five CPU score on the
Tenjin which translated to around 24% better performance in the Cinebench r20
stress test now that is a decent improvement but if you don't have 1,800
dollars to spend on a MacBook Pro you're still getting very impressive processing
performance with the base model that'll actually be enough for a wide variety of
people like programmers photo editors logic pro users and maybe even video
editors now the big difference between these two is graphics power where we saw
a 48 percent higher metal graphics score on the $1,800 model this is actually a
really big difference but keep in mind that this will only improve graphics
work like video editing and 3d rendering so photo editors programmers and logic
pro users won't see any significant performance gains from the extra
graphics power and even for video editing running the Bruce X test the
$1,800 model was surprisingly only 20% faster than the base model a much
smaller difference than we expected so the base model keeps up surprisingly
well but one thing that the better graphics and the higher-end model does
improve is gaming performance Greg from Greg's gadgets showed off how that
$1,800 model was able to play some games at decent frame rates like League of
Legends counter-strike go fortnight and more but keep in mind that he ran each
of these games at 1440 by 900 resolution which is only 31 percent of the MacBook
Pros native resolution of 2560 by 1600 so if you want decent FPS for gaming
while at higher resolutions then you're either gonna have to go for a 16 inch
MacBook Pro which has a dedicated graphics card or you'll have to set up
an a GPU instead and if you do go the a GPU route it actually makes much more
sense to buy the base $1,300 model with 16 gigabytes of RAM for $1400
since the e GPU takes the integrated graphics of the Intel chips out of the
equation completely so if you're interested to see how that will perform
then click the subscribe button and enable notifications because that video
is coming soon the point I'm trying to make is that the difference in
performance between this base model and the higher-end $1800 model isn't as big
as people are making it out to be the base model has more than enough
performance for those who can't afford to spend $1,800 on the higher-end
MacBook Pro however for some people spending the extra cash really does make
a lot of sense like for video editors or people who want more value thanks to the
other improvements like better speakers faster RAM and two more ports but if you
can't see yourself spending that much cash don't feel bad about choosing the
base model instead I would just strongly recommend upgrading to 16 gigabytes of
RAM for only $100 it's an excellent deal and it'll help for everything from video
editing programming photo editing Logic Pro 10 and also for people like me who
love having a lot of chrome tabs open at once so with the base macbook pro you're
getting a bright display with great p3 color gamut you'll get the new reliable
magic keyboard an excellent trackpad more stores than before and much better
real-world performance than any of the MacBook Airs
even the i7 model now if you're someone who already has a laptop that's working
just fine and you can easily wait a full year for the 14-inch redesigned then I
would recommend doing so but for everyone else who can't wait that long
the base macbook pro is an excellent laptop for the price if you enjoy this
review go ahead and tap the like button and click the circle above to subscribe
so you don't miss out on those GPU videos coming soon thanks for
watching and we'll see you in the next video
[Music]