and the 2019 MacBook Pro deserves all
the hate it gets it skimps on cooling the keyboard is fundamentally flawed the
bezels are chunky by today's standards and the touch bar means there's simply
no escape from it Apple needs to start
listening to the feedback their customers have been giving them since
2016 and this
different keyboard slimmer bezels it's
even got an escape key all this thing needs is decent cooling and that this
could change everything SSDs are great but RGB SSDs are even
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I've never actually daily driven a butterfly keyswitch MacBook Pro so I
never really developed that intense hatred for it that some people seem to
have I mean mine have gone so lightly used that none of them have failed and
as far as laptop keyboards go I mean I'm not a huge fan of it but I've definitely
had worse but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't excited when I saw the
news about the move back to more traditional scissor switches as found on
Apple's magic keyboards I mean they never were they're still not the best
switches on the market I can see why Apple wanted to re-engineer them but
they've got decent tactile feedback a much longer travel that makes it easier
to get up to speed and they even sound better to I mean like just listen
or no this can't be right either Apple
reversed course based on user feedback or off crap I must be dreaming again
okay someone just someone pinch me I
said pinch not slip
well I'm awake I am still finding this whole situation a little hard to believe
though I mean a 16 inch is even bigger than the 15 inch so that they could Jam
a bigger battery in it next I'm expecting someone to tell you they went
and they put an SD card reader in it and stop soldering down all the motherboard
components no no such luck with that in
fact Apple got a score of 1:4 repairability for my fix it as a result
of the glue and rivets that they use to hold the keyboard battery speakers and
touch bar assemblies together but like come on guys baby steps right baby steps
I mean they are making some changes to facilitate the repair process maybe such
as this new hinge magnet that iFixit found during their teardown which could
be used to determine during service if the display ribbon should be checked
based on data that it provides though the frequency and speed at which it's
been opened and closed I mean that's not terribly useful for end-users who want
to repair their own devices but guys if you want macOS you'll basically take
what Apple gives you unless you build your own Mac like we're doing make sure
you're subscribed for the epic conclusion of our hack Pro build by the
way the good news is that Apple giveth a lot this timer the arrow keys are now
arranged in a more traditional inverted T shape just like the old MacBooks this
is my personal favorite layout improvement the touch ID equipped power
button is now separated and has been given a matte finish to match the rest
of the keys and a physical Escape key is
now beside the touch bar and the good
news keeps on coming on top of being thicker the chassis is now slightly
wider to accommodate a more comprehensive speaker arrangement and it
sounds astonishingly good next to its 15-inch predecessor base is fuller mids
are clearer and highs are no longer a tinny shrill mess at max volume I mean
the audio quality I think it's safe to say is among the best that we have seen
in a finish style device like this to the point where it almost feels like
carrying around a portable speaker with you now it does get a bit confused at
max volume with busy tracks like this one by the green that Alex uses for
testing but overall it's in the league of its own and apples done good here and
then there's the bezels these are starting to look a lot more competitive
with Dells infinity edge equipped lineup Albia a smidge taller to accommodate the
larger FaceTime HD camera that Apple uses the webcam itself and therefore the
image quality by the way is unchanged from previous generations which is to
say that it's decent but not great so that was a little disappointing but as
for audio recording the new 3 microphone array is able to capture voice with much
greater clarity and less reverb than the old set up high I - this is Dennis do
you like my boys it sounds more like it was recorded on a decent headset mic
than a good dedicated mic but that's still an impressive feat for an onboard
microphone array I mean it really just feels like Apple's Mac team has started
taking the pro name seriously again I mean some might say it still short some
professional io like an SD card reader but come on guys we've we've moved on I
mean given the plethora of portable media formats that exist now you can't
support them all and Thunderbolt 3 has matured to the point where you can use
the 4 included ports to connect basically anything you'd want the most
Pro thing about it though for me it's just how much more comfortable the 16
inches to use for anything remotely productive I mean aside from macOS
Catalina's Vista esque chattiness every time you want to do something virtually
every aspect of the experience is more refined and marks a return for Apple to
the feel of a laptop that was made for
actually busy people who need to get real work done which is why we now need
to discuss how well it gets real work done our 16 inch macbook pro is equipped
with the core I $9.99 a thk option just
like our 15-inch from earlier this year which should make for a very interesting
apples to apples comparison in the PC
corner we've grabbed the new Dell XPS 15 equipped with that same processor and
then we also grabbed a test bench with a core I nine ninety-nine hundred K to see
just how close our mobile cooling solutions can get to desktop class
performance and the answer is well not
that close but check this out guys in
our Mozilla Firefox compile test we saved over two minutes compared to the
last gen 15-inch and that's a pattern
that we actually see repeated across most of our test feed I mean let that
sink in for a moment guys we are seeing faster performance than the 15-inch with
the same OS and same CPU which suggests
that we are looking at not just the slightly faster memory on the new model
but even a higher sustained boost clock as well and we haven't even touched on
the new navi based Radeon RX 5500 in
productivity that relies on GPU guys this thing completely smokes the earlier
polaris part like it's not even close it regularly beats its predecessor by well
in excess of 50% it should be noted that
AMD's best does still trail both our desktop and mobile gtx 1650 is going to
remain PC exclusive until Apple an NVIDIA can bury the hatchet which
doesn't look like it's gonna happen ever but improvement is still improvement now
games aren't something that most people buy Macs for but a couple of games that
we did try ended up performing quite well while the 15-inch delivered
cinematic frame rates and shot the Tomb Raider the 16-inch is at least playable
quick shout-out by the way to feral interactive for the Tomb Raider port
performance of macOS is nearly as good as it is on Windows performance
elsewhere though notably in boot camp is decidedly poor once again Apple is
applying its custom CPU and fan adjustments only within macOS and not
within the device's firmware so anyone who needs to use Windows on their
MacBook Pro is going to end up with a machine that is stuck with poor
performance even compared to our Dell XPS which got creamed in many of these
same tests while the Mac was still on macOS this is a result of Intel's
default TDP voltage curve and boost profiles adding insult to injury thermal
performance sucks in Windows to back to macOS thermals get interesting not only
does the 16 inch remain above base clock during blender renders like the most
recent 15-inch did but it does so at a 10 percent higher frequency thanks to
the more aggressive power budgets afforded by the new 100 watt power
adapter so you can see that previously Apple limited their CPU to drawing
roughly 50 watts of sustained power in order to satisfy their thermal and power
constraints while the 16 inch is allowed to draw upwards of 80 watts and
impressively despite this increase in
power consumption the new pro cooler I don't think Apple is calling it that but
I'm gonna manage us to be more effective at maintaining a consistent thermal
profile than the 15-inch model was all I
want to see now is the option to configure this behavior so that I could
choose to drop a few megahertz in favor of keeping my sustain temperatures under
90 degrees I mean come on Apple you're
already doing it all the software anyway just cuz it's me suggesting it doesn't
mean it's a bad idea because taking user
feedback is a good thing and by taking it Apple has got an impressive machine
on their hands here beside her down components unnecessary potential for
data loss from the t2 security chip and the you two rivets and glue to keep
nosey end-users out is less than ideal but the reality is that this is a laptop
that is both more powerful and more usable than any macbook pro that has
come before and even our chunkier XPS 15
couldn't keep up in CPU-bound benchmarks there is an Apple tax associated with
this though an aspect our MacBook Pro costs roughly eight hundred dollars more
than our otherwise very similar dell but
here's the thing while our dell has a DCI p3 OLED display that is amazing for
content consumption it's actually not as bright as apples similarly DCI p3 IPS
display and of course that taller aspect
ratios that cannot come back fast enough
for me so I've seen a lot of people call this the best MacBook that Apple has
produced since the last retina model in 2015 and this is one time where I am
perfectly content to go with the flow good job Apple you used your massive R&D
budget to work on things that make both your industrial design artists happy and
your customers please keep going in this
direction if you're looking for something else to watch maybe check out our recent review of the razor blade Pro
17 where I give Razer some advice - I'll
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