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I’m sitting here watching Final Cut Pro play back five layers of effect-laden 8K clips in real time, while her 2016 MacBook Pro grinds to a halt editing clips. And I get it. Before moving into the world of tech journalism, I was in video production myself. Younger me would definitely go full Looper and kill his future self for the 2021 MacBook Pro. It’s, quite frankly, a ludicrous machine. For the purposes of this review, I tested out a middle of the road configuration: the 16-inch model with 32GB of RAM, a M1 Pro with 10-core CPU and 16-coe GPU, and 1TB. If you were to buy this model, it would set you back $4,649. With that kind of price tag, it’s not surprising murder is on the menu. While the new MacBook Pros were never going to be cheap, it kinda feels like Apple has gone overboard with upgrade pricing. RAM and storage upgrades are especially painful. Going from 16GB to 32GB will add an extra $600 to your machine price, and upgrading from a 1TB SSD to 2TB is also a $600 premium. That’s well above market price for these kinds of components. You also can’t upgrade your storage or RAM down the line, so you’ll need to try and work out your needs. Here’s what you’ll pay the core models in the new MacBook Pro family: I edit a lot of photos for reviews, and I was genuinely surprised by how responsive Photoshop was. Content-Aware Fill - a feature that resamples a portion of an image based on what’s around it, to get rid of a person in the background, for example - was instant. When I did a batch resize of camera samples, it was done by the time I could pick up my phone. On the Surface Book 2 I typically use for work, I normally find myself waiting a minute or so. Notably, the new MacBook Pro still runs at full speed when you’re on battery. Many Windows laptops throttle performance when you unplug them to conserve energy, but this isn’t the case here. While Apple’s M1 Pro chipset is impressive, it doesn’t miraculously turn it into a gaming machine. Titles from Apple Arcade will naturally run well, but that’s also true of any Apple M1 computer. The games that actually natively run on Mac (such as Shadow of the Tomb Raider) run well, but the performance isn’t quite what you’d get from a Windows laptop with a gaming-grade GPU. From a real-world perspective, I fully charged the MacBook Pro on Thursday night and unplugged it before going to bed. I used it for a few hours of work on Friday and didn’t touch it over the weekend. I then managed to make it through a full day of work on Monday (including Zoom calls, which tend to just destroy battery) and then played around with 4K footage in Final Cut in the evening. I still had about 15% of charge left to spare. You simply don’t need to worry about the new MacBook Pro running out of juice. It’s worth noting that the 14-inch MacBook Pro has a shorter battery (that we haven’t been able to test) as do M1 Max models due to additional graphics cores (which we also haven’t been able to test). If you’re after the best battery out of the new MacBook Pro family, the 16-inch M1 Pro model is your best bet. The thicker form factor has however heralded the return of ports. Praise Tim. While for five or so years, MacBooks were bereft of anything but USB-C ports, the 2021 models have a few extras. Firstly, MagSafe is back. You can still charge over USB-C if you’d like, but the out of the box charger has Apple’s OG clicky connector that will pop out if someone trips over it, rather than sending your laptop tumbling down to the ground. There’s also a HDMI port, which is a treat when it comes to external monitors. On a related note, the M1 Pro MacBook Pro can support up to two external displays in addition to its own, while M1 Max models support up to four. Past M1 MacBooks have only been able to drive one external display. For me, that was one of their biggest downsides, so I’m glad this has been addressed. Lastly, the SD card reader is back, which is a boon for photographers everywhere. Apple has also killed off the Touch Bar, returning to a standard row of function keys. While the Touch Bar was kinda cool in theory, the function keys are just so much more practical. The keyboard itself is lovey, and the trackpad is best in class. There have been reports of some apps not playing nicely with the notch, but I haven’t come across this in my testing. There is a compatibility mode for problem apps, but this effectively reduces your screen-size on all four sides of the screen. Notch aside, the MacBook Pro display is simply stunning. It’s one of the nicest displays I’ve seen on a computer. It also supports refresh rates of up to 120Hz (a standard display runs at 60Hz), making all motion silky smooth. Lastly, its speakers are insane. They genuinely offer a fantastic listening experience. Laptop speakers should not be this good. At the same time, if you are a creative professional or enthusiast looking for a beefy machine for video work, music production, photography, or development, the new MacBook Pro ticks all the right boxes. Please just don’t murder anyone for one. Especially me.
