Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The 2020 13″ MacBook Pro Impressions: Wait a Minute!”.
Yo, what’s up guys mkbhd here and welcome to episode 5 of very, very minor updates by apple, so we got ipad pro earlier this year for a minor update. We had macbook air earlier. Also, a minor update. We got iphone. Se literally shares a bunch of parts from a previous three-year-old phone. So next up is this guy. This is the newly announced 2020 13-inch macbook pro refresh, so for a little context. This laptop 13-inch macbook pro has been my go-to for a couple years now you know the macbook air, it’s nice, but it’s a little too lightweight. It doesn’t offer all the performance that i want for bigger things like photo editing and then the bigger 16-inch macbook pro it’s more powerful.
Yes, but it’s also a little bigger than i want to carry around. So it’s been like my go-to, but for the past five months i’ve been telling people do not buy a 13-inch macbook pro. That’S because once we saw the refresh of the bigger one, the 16-inch macbook pro, we knew that it was coming to the smaller one. In fact, that was the whole theme.
The whole title of my review of the bigger laptop was now do it to the smaller one. So now they have well, mostly, this is a truly very minor revision. It’S like a a spec bump that in most years, wouldn’t make news, but it does this year.
So, let’s get into it. Let’S show what’s exactly new and why i care about this laptop. That’S been my go-to for so long so number one.
Most importantly, the butterfly keyboard from the 16-inch macbook pro is now in this refresh as well goodbye butterfly switches, you won’t be missed. Welcome back dedicated escape button, welcome back, inverted t, arrow keys and welcome back real key travel. You get that millimeter of key travel and you’ve heard me say before this is already so much of a better typing experience, a better keyboard in the long run and then internally, it’s a spec bump.
So it’s up to the newest 10th gen intel chips, quad-core across the board, all the way up to a quad-core i7. If you want one – and that also comes with iris graphics improvements, still not a dedicated gpu option in this 13-inch laptop, but at least these new ios graphics are more powerful, they’re good enough now to drive a pro display xdr, if you wanted to so they are Improved and then there’s also double the starting storage. It now starts at 512 gigs and goes all the way up to 4 terabytes, which is sick.
So it’s it’s always nice to have a lot of fast internal storage and that’s exactly what this is and then baseline. 16 gigs of faster lpddr4x ram. Now you can go up to 32 gigs. It’S all a pretty nice spec bump here, but wait a minute wait a minute! There’S actually kind of two versions of this new 13-inch macbook pro there’s the high-end one and there’s the baseline ones. So all these new specs that i’ve been giving you the new intel chips, the new higher end base storage, the new faster ram. All this stuff only applies to the higher end new 13-inch macbook pros the lower end doesn’t get any of them. So if you look at apple’s site, you can see the breakdown. The baseline ones still have the 8th gen intel chips. They still start at 8. Gigs of slower, lpddr3 ram, there’s just 256 gigs of storage, and they also only have two thunderbolt 3 ports instead of all four. So basically, these baseline configs that they’re selling are essentially the last year, 13-inch macbook pro just with the new keyboard. And that’s why i said at the beginning: the the keyboard is the number one new thing, because across the board they all get the new keyboard, which is great um, but for people who care about performance, that’s going to cost more now, as dave 2d. So eloquently mentions in his video the likely reason apple went with these 8th gen intel chips for the baseline configs is cost, meaning the difference in performance between a low end, 8th gen chip and a low end 10th. Gen chip is pretty small, but the cost difference is 100 bucks, plus so basically, for people who are buying these baseline versions, who presumably don’t care as much about performance as cost.
This will be an okay trade-off for them to save that money. I’Ll leave the full link to dave’s video below, of course, this review unit that i’ve been using from apple is a high-end one, it’s one of the highest ones. Actually, it’s a quad core, i7 32 gigs of ram and two terabytes of storage, and it’s about as ideal for me as possible. Like i said, the 13-inch macbook pro is my go-to, and this is the highest and 13-inch, but it’s also 3 000, and so for that price. I think a lot of people will start to care more about performance, which then brings in the much bigger, much more powerful, 16-inch macbook pro into the mix, and that gets you a much better thermal design, a dedicated gpu, which is important and an 8 core core. I9 for roughly the same price, that’s a huge difference, so it leaves this 13-inch macbook pro the way it’s priced and just the way it sits in the lineup in a sort of an awkward middle child spot again, you know if people care more about performance and They’Re willing to spend more on that.
Well, the 16-inch macbook pro sits right on the other side of that. Just spend a little more and get that way more performance, or if people are going for the baseline because they want to save a little money, they don’t care as much about performance. They want a lower price. Well, then, the macbook air sits right.
On the other side, where you can save even more money and not have that macbook pro performance so either way, you heard all the new specs and the internals and how much you’re able to take advantage of them really depends on things like your workflow and the Apps you’re already using you already know they have to be well optimized, but the rest of this laptop is the same as we’ve known for so long same design. Although technically it is about one millimeter thicker to accommodate this new keyboard so worth it. But yeah touch bar is still here. The huge trackpad is still here same battery life and yep same quality, 720p webcam as the past couple years of apple laptops.
Now the the speakers and microphone have also improved to the same level as a 16-inch macbook pro uh. The microphone you’re hearing right now sounds pretty good in this empty room still a bit of echo. But that’s that’s my fault and the speakers. You know it’s not as big of a laptop but for a laptop of this size, best-in-class speakers again, which is awesome but yeah.
The company that makes the best smartphone cameras in the world still makes this and this 13-inch screen with uh reasonable, but still kind of thick looking bezels is still here. You know a lot of people were expecting, including me, a 14 inch macbook pro the same way. They bumped up by one inch the size of the larger macbook pro, so is it reasonable to still expect that they might do that in the future? I don’t really know anymore. I want to hope for it, but i don’t necessarily think so.
So this is a small update, i think, is what we’re getting at here, but don’t get me wrong. Small updates are still a good thing. We need small updates, i’m with renee ritchie when he mentions that frequent minor updates and spec bumps to just keep things running up to date are a good thing. I would love to see an imac update right now.
I would love to see a mac mini update. I’D love to see more frequent, minor updates just to keep things up to date. I would rather not have to tell people don’t buy a macbook pro for five months, because we know the new keyboard is going to get updated eventually. But since we clearly don’t get those regular, smaller updates from apple, the updates that we do get are a bigger deal and we pay more attention to them.
So this laptop this is the perfect laptop for, like my use case, where i know exactly what i want. I don’t want to carry a bigger 16-inch macbook pro, but i still want more performance for things like photo, editing and occasional work that the macbook air can’t quite keep up with like this is ideal. But of course it’s always worth noting, and i have reviewed the bigger more powerful 16-inch macbook pro and the sort of default apple laptop for starting out the macbook air i’ll leave them both below the like button. And now it’s just sort of a question of.
Are we still expecting a 14-inch macbook pro or a or maybe an arm, macbook, or something like that in the next year? So the rumors point to yes, wwdc is coming up in a couple months. Maybe it won’t be that early, but that’s something to think about. So, for me you know this is apple’s unit. It’S gone back to them, i’m going to continue using my 13-inch macbook air.
It works fine, but i’m just glad they finally did this update. That was long overdue, and i kind of wish apple was more on time, with more frequent updates in general. That’S about it either way in case you’re wondering the merch is also now on sale permanently in stock. If you want to grab it link below that’s about it, let me know what you think if you get this or the macbook air in the comment section below we’ll, hang out thanks for watching catch, you guys in the next one peace .