Much in the same way that our best of Dry January intentions amounted to little more than a four-pack of Heineken Zero, Apple has started 2023 with a similar sense of abstinence and restraint. Just over a fortnight into the year, it announced its latest slate of products, including the newly resurrected HomePod and two updated MacBook Pros. While Tim Cook and co still have plenty to prove when it comes to getting their smart home strategy on track, the 14-inch and 16-inch laptops seemingly exist as some kind of high-concept troll to their Windows-powered rivals.
Not yet caught up on Apple’s recent computing exploits? Basically, the company has spent the last two years or so completely reimagining its laptop and desktop range from scratch. There’s been a cheeky new iMac and a ludicrously svelte MacBook Air, but the highlight of the process was undoubtedly the all-new 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pro models that debuted in late 2021. When even the notoriously pernickety tech bible The Verge declares these machines to be simply “incredible”, there’s really no questioning their pedigree. So it’s perhaps no great surprise that the laptop of choice for creatives really hasn’t changed all that much come its 2023 incarnation.
Both Pros still feature a stunning Liquid Retina XDR display, a sleek but robust aluminium unibody construction and a surprisingly banging pair of speakers, but it’s really the chipset inside them that sets them apart. So to maintain its hallowed status at computing’s cutting edge, Apple has engineered new M2 Pro and M2 Max chips to power this year’s MacBook Pro. We’ve given the 14-inch model a spin to see what all the fuss is about.
A quick intro to M2 Pro and M2 Max
Using the MacBook Pro in most nine-to-five scenarios is like commuting through central London in a Porsche 911 – you’re simply not going to see this thing in beast mode. While we wouldn’t go so far as to say the M2 Pro or M2 Max represent overkill for most would-be users, you’re certainly getting a lot of headroom for future performance. As of right now, these laptops have a simply silly amount of oomph that means you can do things like edit multiple 8K video streams at once, render bombastic special effects in minutes and play games while you’re working on them in a dev environment. Or to put things another way, power-intensive tasks that used to take a lot of time now are completed faster and concepts that were simply impractical before are considerably more feasible. And you don’t even need your MacBook Pro to be plugged into a charger to rev up to its utmost performance.
The trade-off for all of this processing and graphical heft is that these laptops are expensive. The 14-inch MacBook Pro starts off at £2,149, while its 16-inch brethren is available from £2,699 – both can be bought with either the M2 Pro or M2 Max chip. It’s probably worth mentioning that there is still an entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro in Apple’s laptop line-up but – a bit like James Milner’s presence in the Liverpool FC starting line-up – it makes less sense the longer it sticks around. So long as you can make peace with their price tags, these are the only Pros worth investing in. With over 15,000 apps and counting now offering native support for Apple silicon, there’s a good chance your faves will be able to make the most out all this added muscle.
