A reviews of the new 13-inch macbook phiên bản pro with Retina Display so closely following a reviews of the 15-inch model has many layers. In isolation, the 13-inch Pro is just a smaller version of its well-regarded bigger brother, and so it’s easy lớn set expectations. But more broadly, the new 13-inch Pro is much more than that: it’s a logical endpoint for a number of Apple and tech industry trend lines và the start of a new wave altogether. It’s a mainstream máy tính xách tay that uses all the space-saving tricks và techniques táo bị cắn learned building the laptop apple macbook Air khổng lồ be as thin and light as possible, but still offers up a powerful intel processor and a seven-hour battery life. The kiến thiết language follows right along with the recently-introduced 15-inch Retina laptop apple macbook Pro, which itself was a subtle iteration on the apple macbook phiên bản pro before it. And it has that Retina display — a công nghệ that remains unmatched in the PC market.
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None of this is surprising, but that’s not a bad thing: the 13-inch Pro is a predictable product in the same way that opening a present & receiving exactly the thing you’d wished for is a predictable experience. Apple has a playbook, & the new 13-inch Pro follows it closely. Và as Apple’s most popular Mac, the 13-inch Pro tells us a lot about what táo khuyết thinks mainstream computers should look like — which usually tells us a lot about what other PC manufacturers will think mainstream computers should look like.
But now that we’ve unwrapped this thing, does it live up khổng lồ all these expectations? Can its relatively midrange internals handle the burden of that beautiful display? Is the $1,699 13-inch Pro worth the tăng cấp over the $1,199 13-inch Air, until now the máy vi tính we’ve most often recommended? Most importantly, is this your next laptop? Read on to lớn find out.
Unlike the 15-inch Retina laptop macbook Pro, the kích thước and weight reduction of the 13-inch Pro isn’t nearly as shocking in person — the older 13-inch Pro already felt quite small, & the ubiquitous 13-inch Air is just slightly thinner at its thickest point. Và the Air is actually a little bigger in terms of height và width. Basically, you’re used to táo making laptops of about this size, and the Retina 13 is a nice midpoint between the old Pro & the Air.
MacBook Pro with Retina display (13-inch) | 12.35 x 8.62 | 0.75 | 3.57 |
MacBook Pro with Retina display (15-inch) | 14.13 x 9.73 | 0.71 | 4.46 |
MacBook Pro (2012, 13-inch) | 12.78 x 8.94 | 0.95 | 4.5 |
MacBook Air (2012, 13-inch) | 12.8 x 8.94 | 0.11-0.68 | 2.96 |
You"https://rongmotorbike.com/macbook-pro-retina-13-quot-mid-2015/imager_1_20746_700.jpgll notice an improvement in Apple’s already industry-leading fit and finish, though: the 13 uses the same new riff on unibody laptop apple macbook design as the 15-inch Retina, and it’s an extremely stiff, solid machine. It’s also extremely clean, with no branding on it apart from the táo khuyết logo on the lid and the regulatory stuff on the bottom — even the "https://rongmotorbike.com/macbook-pro-retina-13-quot-mid-2015/imager_1_20746_700.jpgMacBook Pro"https://rongmotorbike.com/macbook-pro-retina-13-quot-mid-2015/imager_1_20746_700.jpg insignia under the screen has been done away with. & the little indent in front of the trackpad has been slightly smoothed out and made less concave. Everything’s just a little tighter than before.
The backlit keyboard and glass multitouch trackpad are up khổng lồ Apple’s usual high standards, although if you’re coming khổng lồ the Pro from an Air you’ll notice the increased key travel táo employs on Pro machines. Around the left side you’ll find the new thinner MagSafe 2 power nguồn connector, two Thunderbolt ports, a USB 3.0 port, và a tai nghe jack. On the right, there’s another USB 3.0 port, an HDMI port, and an SD thẻ slot. It’s a nice improvement over the previous arrangement that had all the ports crammed up on one side, và the HDMI jack is particularly welcome — it’s the first industry-standard đoạn phim connector Apple’s built into a máy tính in years, and I’m hoping it supplants VGA... Sometime. Và you can obviously still use mini DisplayPort cables and adapters with the Thunderbolt ports if you have an existing display or projector.
Do keep in mind that the reduced kích thước means you’re losing Ethernet, FireWire, & an optical drive. The vast majority of people probably won’t miss them, but if you’re a traveler you’ll probably want khổng lồ spring for the $29.99 Thunderbolt-to-Ethernet adapter in case of emergencies.
There are no superlatives left for Apple’s Retina displays — the company is leading the industry in shipping ultra-high-resolution screens và building software to take advantage of them. & while others are starting lớn catch up on smartphones và tablets, there’s simply no match in the máy tính xách tay world. This is what computers should look like from now on.
Apple’s basic trick is a simple one: where a traditional display has a single pixel, a Retina display has four — but the extra pixels are used khổng lồ make everything sharper, not provide more screen real estate. Quadrupling px density in this way means the Retina 13 has a 226ppi 2560 x 1600 display where the previous Pro had a 113ppi 1280 x 800 display, but the effective screen area at the default "https://rongmotorbike.com/macbook-pro-retina-13-quot-mid-2015/imager_1_20746_700.jpgbest"https://rongmotorbike.com/macbook-pro-retina-13-quot-mid-2015/imager_1_20746_700.jpg setting is still 1280 x 800.
Put more simply, you’re seeing the same amount of stuff out of the box as the previous 13-inch macbook Pro, but — assuming you’re looking at a Retina-enhanced app — you’re seeing it far more beautifully.
Living in a retina world
The good news is that lots of apps have been Retina-enhanced since the 15-inch Pro came out. All of Apple’s pro and consumer apps are enhanced, of course, & major apps lượt thích Office, Chrome, and Adobe Premiere have all been updated in the past few months. (Adobe’s also promised an update for many other apps, including Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom, in the fall.) and Apple maintains an entire section of Retina-enhanced apps in the Mac phầm mềm Store if you’re looking for more, with indie favorites lượt thích Evernote, Day One, Pixelmator, and Tweetbot all offering support.
The bad news is things can look lượt thích garbage if you’re not looking at Retina-enhanced content. The now-deprecated Twitter app is probably the most egregious example: it looks so blurry and out of place on this display that it’s just sad. Và while website browsers lượt thích Chrome và Safari have been updated for the Retina display, the website itself is still catching up: you’ll notice blurry low-res images everywhere, and sites like Facebook và YouTube that phối Retina-enhanced text và icons with standard assets look fairly messy. Things are improving rapidly, but for now potential Retina owners should take a chú ý from Victor Ward: the better you look, the more you see.
Lastly, it’s important to note that 1280 x 800 isn’t actually a huge amount of screen real estate. It’s about the same as the standard 13-inch Windows máy tính xách tay resolution of 1366 x 768, but it’s noticeably smaller than the 1440 x 900 on a laptop macbook Air. Everything is far more beautiful at the Retina setting on the 13-inch Pro, but you’ll have less working space than you might be used to.
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You can go into the display options and switch to lớn 1440 x 900, which still looks nice, but you thua kém a hair of Retina crispness since you’re scaling to a non-native resolution. Think about it this way: where the Retina "https://rongmotorbike.com/macbook-pro-retina-13-quot-mid-2015/imager_1_20746_700.jpgbest"https://rongmotorbike.com/macbook-pro-retina-13-quot-mid-2015/imager_1_20746_700.jpg setting fits each px of a 1280 x 800 image perfectly onto four pixels of a 2560 x 1600 screen, each px of a 1440 x 900 image fits imperfectly onto 3.6 pixels of the display, so it’s a little bit blurrier. You might not notice it, but it still isn’t what you’re paying for. Và running at higher resolutions imparts a performance penalty, which isn"https://rongmotorbike.com/macbook-pro-retina-13-quot-mid-2015/imager_1_20746_700.jpgt good news on this machine — more on that in a bit.
(You can also set the display to lớn a max of 1680 x 1050, which I was very excited about since that’s the same workspace as my older 15-inch Pro, but it’s just too tiny for my eyes.)
Overall, the 13-inch Retina display stands alongside the 15-inch as one of the best displays to lớn ever ship on a laptop, but the simple fact is that I never used the "https://rongmotorbike.com/macbook-pro-retina-13-quot-mid-2015/imager_1_20746_700.jpgbest"https://rongmotorbike.com/macbook-pro-retina-13-quot-mid-2015/imager_1_20746_700.jpg Retina setting and instead left it at 1440 x 900. The good news is that the công nghệ is improving quickly: Google & Samsung are already shipping a 300ppi 10-inch display on the Nexus 10 at the same resolution as this 13-inch Retina apple macbook Pro. Apple just has khổng lồ find a way to ship 255ppi displays: a 2880 x 1800 13.3-inch display on the 13-inch macbook phiên bản pro would run natively at 1440 x 900, và a 3360 x 2100 15.6-inch display on the 15-inch Pro would run natively at 1680 x 1050.
But for now, the 13-inch Pro offers a tiny beautiful window onto a tragically imperfect world. Unfortunately, that gorgeous face is often betrayed by a rather pedestrian mind.
The 2.5GHz bộ vi xử lý core i5 in the 13-inch Pro offers terrific raw CPU performance in benchmarks, running Geekbench at a solid 6700-6800 range, but the integrated intel HD 4000 graphics cpu can struggle driving such a high-resolution display. Oddly, it showed up for me more during day-to-day usage than under any crazy chạy thử situation I came up with: RAW files in Aperture scroll around just fine while QuickTime is playing back 1080p movie trailers, but Safari và Chrome both stutter a little while scrolling simple website pages. Và they stutter a lot with image-heavy sites like The Verge and Polygon.
You’ll also notice some general lag when you start multitasking heavily. Mở cửa more than a few tabs và apps và you’ll start to notice things slowing down around the system as a whole. My standard workday phối of 15-20 tabs mở cửa in Chrome, music playing in Spotify, e-mail and IRC open, và Skype, iPhoto, & Messages running in the background never pegged the CPU meter, but I could clearly feel the system running just a hair behind me. You might not notice it if you’re coming from an Air or a much older MacBook, but I’m used khổng lồ my 15-inch Pro with 2.3GHz core i7 and Radeon HD 6750M graphics, & and the 13-inch Retina is definitely a little slower. If you’re a pro looking to step down to lớn a smaller machine, you’ll almost certainly notice the performance dropoff as well.
The simple fact is that Retina display is a lot of pixels to push around for that graphics cpu — just consider that táo bị cắn dở uses the same GPU in the laptop apple macbook Air, which has a third of the pixels và can still be made to lớn drop frames under heavy multitasking loads. Plug in an external monitor & you’ll feel the hit come even quicker in day-to-day use — I tried both my 1080p TV over HDMI & my 24-inch 1920 x 1080 display over mini DisplayPort, và I could make YouTube videos stutter on one display simply by loading The Verge in the other.
In terms of gaming performance, there isn’t much. A newer, heavier game like The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings was absolutely unplayable: I couldn’t even watch the opening cutscene, & there was so much đầu vào lag it took me a few tries to get the mouse arrow onto the quit menu to stop the pain. Things are passable if you stick to lớn older games, but nothing to lớn write home about. I generally saw 60fps and under running Half-Life 2: Episode 2 at 1280 x 800 và default settings, & rarely saw it go past 90fps. Setting it to 1680 x 1050 meant I never saw anything more than 45fps. Portal 2 comes capped at 60fps at the default settings but I spent most of my time at around 50fps, & turning off the cap didn’t vị much.
The base $1,699 configuration gives you 8GB of RAM & a 128GB SSD. That’s it, forever: neither is easily upgradeable, & you can’t order a 13-inch with 16GB of RAM as you can with the 15-inch Pro. & a 128GB hard drive is not a lot of storage, especially for a primary machine; the 128GB SSD in my work máy vi tính is always running close khổng lồ full, & I barely keep any music or photos on it at all. Upgrading lớn a 256GB drive will run you another $300 for a total of $1,999 — at which point you should bite the bullet và spend $2,199 on a 15-inch Retina apple macbook pro that offers the same storage space, a higher screen resolution, a faster chip core i7 processor, và a discrete GPU that does a far better job of moving all those pixels around. It is an absolutely huge increase in performance for an extra 10 percent in cost. No one should buy the $1,999 13-inch Pro with the 15-inch model sitting right there.
Ultimately it feels like the 13-inch Pro is already pushing up against the edge of its performance envelope — it’ll probably be fine if you’re a pro who absolutely needs the beautiful display & you nâng cấp frequently, but if you’re expecting your $1,699 investment to lớn last a few years, you should look elsewhere. And if you’re thinking about spending $1,999 on the model with more storage, you should find a way to lớn buy the 15-inch Retina Pro instead.
Battery Life
Battery life was surprisingly decent on the 13-inch Pro, clocking in at 6 hours và 18 minutes on the Verge battery test, which cycles through a series of websites over Wi-Fi at 65 percent brightness. In more general use, I routinely got around 5.5 hours just going about my daily routine without regard for battery life. That compares favorably khổng lồ the Air, which gets close to 7 hours on our test & usually runs for about 5.5 to lớn 6 hours in daily use, và it’s much better than the 15-inch Retina Pro, which only ran for 5 hours in our test. You’re essentially sacrificing a little of the Air’s battery life to run the display and slightly beefier processor. It’s not a terrible tradeoff, but you should be aware of it.
Our review of táo apple MacBook Pro with Retina display (13-inch)
Verge Score 7.8 out of 10
Good Stuff
Stunning displaySolid battery lifeImpressive size and weightBad Stuff
Strained performanceSmaller usable screen area than macbook Air at Retina settingOnly 128GB of storageI spent the entire time I was reviewing the 13-inch apple macbook pro with Retina Display thinking about the laptop apple macbook Air. Not the current Air, which has become the best overall máy tính on the market, but the very first Air — the one from 2008 that was ridiculously underpowered, featured terrible integrated hãng intel graphics, had just 2GB of RAM & an 80GB hard drive, và cost an absurd $1,799. I know people who bought that computer and felt an immediate combination of intense love and deep regret — while it was blindingly clear that all laptops would be that thin and beautiful in the future, it was equally clear that hãng apple was too far ahead of the performance curve in the present. Four years later, the Air has become Apple’s mainstream product and the PC industry is still working to lớn catch up. The curve has flattened out.It’s the same thing with the 13-inch Pro — it’s hard not lớn love this thing when you first see it. Just look at that screen. But you’re paying a lot of money for a computer that once again offers a single tantalizing glimpse of the future only lớn be limited by the realities of the present in almost every other way. One day all computer displays will look this good. One day we’ll sit around campfires, drinking moonshine và telling our children nightmare tales of visible pixels and display resolutions under 200ppi. That day will be wonderful. It will also have a reasonable graphics chip, more than 128GB of storage, and cost less than $1,699.Until that day comes, you should either trade up khổng lồ the 15-inch apple macbook phiên bản pro with Retina Display or buy a laptop apple macbook Air & save your wistful Retina dreams for a $499 máy tính bảng ipad on the side.