Review of the Apple 16″ MacBook Pro laptop with a new keyboard

It's no secret that Apple's iconic brand has a perennial commitment to excellence and expanding its customer base. Unfortunately, even leading manufacturers have solutions that do not bring the desired success. This is what happened to the Macbook. The poor keyboard design has been criticized by laptop owners, and the manufacturer has made every effort to demonstrate its willingness to take into account the opinion of its consumer by releasing a 16-inch MacBook Pro with a new keyboard. The presentation of the device took place without too much hype online. Why a potential user might fall in love with a new model will be discussed in the article below.

Features of appearance and keyboard

The use of a 16″ display led to a slight increase in overall dimensions.So, the dimensions of the considered MacBook Pro correspond to the parameters of 357.9 * 246 * 16.2 mm with a weight of 2 kg. Considering the size of the diagonal, the overall dimensions and weight of the laptop could be more, but the savings in these indicators became possible due to the rather thin screen frames. There are two color schemes of the body part of the product to choose from: silver and metallic.

Particular attention in the 16-inch Mac should be given to the keyboard, which has undergone a slight counter-revolution. The old key travel mechanism, known as the “butterfly” (the brand has been promoting it since 2016) turned out to be a failure and did not justify the hopes placed on it: consumers noted the short travel of the buttons, their noise when typing, and most importantly, the low level of reliability (keys jammed when crumbs and dust got in).

The new MacBook Pro keyboard with scissor mechanism features longer life and improved maintainability. In essence, the new keyboard is a well-forgotten old Magic Keyboard, made according to the positively proven scissor design. The key travel of this design is 0.1 cm. Otherwise, this is a classic 65-key keyboard for Macs.

The developers returned the “escape” button, which was replaced on the predecessor models by the touch bar panel, they also retained the touch panel located above the keyboard, exactly like the fingerprint sensor.

Specifications and features

Display

The Retina screen with a resolution of 1.920*3.072 pixels and a density of 226 dpi is characterized by a diagonal parameter of 16 inches. This is one of the main features of the new mobile device: this diagonal parameter is used in the lineup for the first time. In other respects, the display is similar to its predecessor: the IPS-matrix implements a decent level of color reproduction – the manufacturer promises 500 nits of brightness and support for True Tone technology, designed to more realistically reproduce shades and cover the entire breadth of the color space spectrum.

Platform

The base of the device is the ninth generation Intel Core processor device. All markets (including Russian) will have access to 2 configurations:

• basic - characterized by the presence of a 6-core Intel Core i7 processor, its clock frequency reaches 4.5 GHz in Turbo mode;
• the top one is equipped with an 8-core Intel Core i9 with the highest possible frequency up to 4.8 GHz.

It should be noted that the eight-core processor is twice as fast as the fastest quad-core chip in the MacBook Pro 15″.

The CPU works in conjunction with an integrated Intel UHD Graphics graphics card and a discrete AMD Radeon Pro video system. The reviewed laptop model was the first to include in its equipment the specified graphics processor based on 7 nanometer technology.
The AMD Radeon Pro 5300M comes with 4GB of RAM by default and can be upgraded to 8GB.

The advanced version offers an AMD Radeon Pro 5500M graphics card with 4 GB GDDR6.
The upper limit of the GPU, compared with previous versions, is characterized by a high performance indicator when editing video with a DaVinci resolution by 80%, and by 60% when implementing gaming processes. The manufacturer focuses on the fact that this video accelerator is able to provide greater smoothness of games and accelerate rendering in applications related to graphics.

In addition, Apple specialists have worked to improve the flow of air masses (according to their assurances, the parameter is optimized by 28%), while there was also an increase in the radiator (by 35%). The upgraded fan has a complex design, including, among other things, elongated blades and wide ventilation openings. The new ventilation will help regulate a higher TDP of 12 W, which in turn will help new CPUs and GPUs adapt. According to the manufacturer, he managed to eliminate the shortcomings of the previous Mac Pro, in which the cooling system could not cope with the load of processor devices of considerable power.

Memory Options

The base memory configuration starts with 16 GB DDR4 RAM and 512 GB SSD storage, while the top configuration with the same RAM parameter starts with one terabyte SSD.

With increased requests from a potential owner (professional activities of video editors, scientific research and other demanding tasks), it is possible to increase storage resources to the highest capacity possible in such electronic devices: the value of RAM is up to 64 GB, and the SSD-drive parameter is up to 8 TB. Of course, for such luxury you will have to fork out extra.

Battery

The device is equipped with the largest 100 Wh battery in MacBooks. The manufacturer claims that such a device will be able to provide continuous surfing on the Internet for 11 hours, and when turned off, the charge will be stored for a month. The brand packed the laptop with a 96W adapter and a 2M usb-c-c cable.

Connections

The increase in the overall dimensions of the unit in no way affected the addition of interfaces on the side faces of the device. There is the same set of four Thunderbolt 3 connectors, each of the ports can be used to establish contact with both an external video card and a charger.

The manufacturer did not abandon the usual 3.5 mm audio jack for connecting a wired headset, which took into account the interests of not only those who like to listen to musical compositions in their free time, but also the needs of professional musicians and video makers (after all, in the presentation video, the mobile unit is positioned as their working tool).

Of the wireless connections, there is 2-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth version 5.
The sound has undergone serious elaboration: an upgraded hi-fi system of 6 speakers is used, among which there are 2 low-frequency speakers that suppress resonance. There is also a studio-grade 3-mic array with noise cancellation effect.

Price

The base model Apple MacBook Pro 16″ is priced at around $2,400. The predecessor 15″pro is also characterized by such a price on the eve of the announcement of the 16-inch newcomer. Taking into account the wishes of the consumer regarding the parameters of the CPU, RAM, SSD storage, the final price of the unit can almost triple (approximately up to $610). For example, the maximum possible SSD upgrade will cost no less than two thousand dollars.

The basic version will cost the Russian consumer approximately 200,000 rubles, the extended version will cost 233,000 rubles. However, this price is also not the limit due to the presence of memory configuration variations.

Summarizing

A laptop with an optimized keyboard is characterized by a good performance and autonomy. The buyer will be able to choose those CPU and GPU options, as well as data storage options that are more interesting to him in view of the tasks facing him. An important point is the cost, which has not changed upward compared to its closest 15-inch counterpart.

• improved ergonomic keyboard with quiet key travel;
• high performance;
• the ability to select the version of the processor, graphics system, RAM and ROM, depending on the individual requests of a potential consumer;
• improved ventilation system;
• decent quality of the picture displayed by the 16-inch display;
• excellent sound quality from upgraded speakers.

• At the stage of preliminary consideration of critical shortcomings, it was not possible to identify.