Apple MacBook Pro 14 Review

14-inch MacBook Professional (2023)

AppleInsider could earn an affiliate fee on purchases made by means of hyperlinks on our website.

A part of the shock January Mac updates, Apple launched a revised 14-inch MacBook Professional. As anticipated from close to the beginning of a product line, each for the 14-inch mannequin and Apple Silicon itself, a second-generation launch is extra of a refinement of a just-established format as a substitute of a radical overhaul.

The second-generation 14-inch MacBook Professional is the definition of a “spec-bump” launch, as anybody trying on the new mannequin and the predecessor will discover that the adjustments that matter are all inside, not exterior.

Mainly, we’re speaking a few change from M1 Professional to M2 Professional for the bottom mannequin, M1 Max to M2 Max within the higher tier.

That stated, an unchanged outer look is not essentially a foul factor. Particularly if what Apple began from was an amazing pocket book to start with.

Apple’s introduction of the 14-inch MacBook Professional in 2021 was main, offering a little bit of a dimension enhance over the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro and a design refreshed in many alternative methods.

For the 2023 mannequin, there isn’t any adjustments to report, however that is as a result of there’s nothing for Apple to essentially change so early within the life cycle.

The design is unchanged

It is nonetheless unmistakably a MacBook Professional with its aluminum enclosure and flat construction, full with rounded corners. You’ll know what it was even when the Apple emblem on the lid was coated up.

Utilizing the divot on the entrance to carry the lid, you are greeted by a keyboard, the enormous Power Contact trackpad, and grilles to both aspect of the typing floor. Wanting upward, it is a big show with skinny bezels.

The design itself hasn’t modified, with Apple showing to make use of an equivalent enclosure development. Which means it is nonetheless 0.61 inches thick, 12.31 inches broad, and eight.71 inches deep.

The load of three.5 kilos can be equivalent to its predecessor, although anybody who goes for the upper-end M2 Max will see the burden tick as much as 3.6 kilos.

As soon as once more, the display screen remains to be a 14.2-inch mini-LED-backlit Liquid Retina XDR show, with the backlighting offering incredible brightness, distinction, and colour illustration.

Which means you are getting as much as 1,000 nits of full-screen brightness and 1,600 nits of peak HDR brightness, together with a extra standard 500 nits for traditional utilization. That distinction ratio can be a still-impressive 1,000,000:1.

The decision of three,024 by 1,964 is a carry-over from final time, and with a pixel density of 254 pixels per inch, it is nothing to complain about right here.

What’s going to get some adverse feedback is the continued use of the notch within the high. Whereas it homes the FaceTime digital camera, it is nonetheless not utilizing a Face ID-like system, which is a missed alternative for including the safety characteristic to the pocket book line.

Notch on the 14-inch MacBook Professional

That notch does eat into the highest of the show, so that you lose a bit in the midst of the menu bar, however like final time, the additional pixels and 0.2 inches of display screen evens issues out.

In full-screen mode, the place the Menu bar disappears from view, the notch additionally vanishes with the inclusion of a black bar on the high of the show. You continue to have a beneficiant decision and a 14-inch show to play with right here, so there should not be an issue for many customers.

The display screen can be ProMotion-enabled, so it could possibly adapt its refresh fee at as much as 120Hz, together with mounted refresh charges going as much as 60Hz.

Large Coloration (P3) help can be included, in addition to Apple’s True Tone expertise, for when it’s important to transfer the MacBook Professional from one atmosphere to a different.

The show within the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro line all use a expertise known as pulse width modulation to manage refresh and show flicker. In principle, that is invisible to the bare eye, and well being condition-related sensitivity to the refresh fee seems extra frequent with OLED screens than mini LED like within the new transportable.

This sensitivity could be very uncommon, and never even near a big proportion of individuals with epilepsy or migraines can have a difficulty. However, preserve it in thoughts if you’re taking a look at any Apple Silicon MacBook Professional.

In brief, when you’re not having an issue taking a look at an iPhone launched for the reason that iPhone X, then you definately in all probability will not with the MacBook Professional.

As with all show expertise, and even fluorescent gentle bulbs for that matter, when you’re having complications, disrupted consciousness, or different medical signs whereas utilizing any machine, discuss to your physician.

For the reason that earlier 14-inch MacBook Professional supplied customers the selection of the M1 Professional and M1 Max, it is sensible for the brand new model to supply the identical, however on a brand new technology of chip.

The bottom M2 Professional features a 10-core CPUT, with 6 efficiency cores combined in with 4 effectivity cores. There’s an alternate model with the 12-core version together with two extra efficiency cores.

That is combined in with a 16-core Neural Engine that is additionally 40% sooner than the M1 counterpart.

On the GPU aspect, there is a 16-core GPU within the base chip, whereas the 12-core CPU has a 19-core GPU as a substitute.

Each M2 Professional variations even have 200GB/s of reminiscence bandwidth, together with the Media Engine. This latter component offers hardware-accelerated encoding and decoding of H.264, HEVC, ProRes, and ProRes RAW footage, full with devoted decode and encode engines, and ProRes encode and decode engines.

In fact, if the M2 Professional wasn’t sufficient, there’s at all times the M2 Max, chips, with increased reminiscence bandwidth, 30c-re and 38-core GPUs, and a extra spectacular Media Engine.

On to unified reminiscence, which is utilized by all components of the chip, together with the CPU and GPU, with a large pool of reminiscence minimizing information duplication. The M2 Professional fashions begin at 16GB, with an choice to go to 32GB.

There are different reminiscence capacities obtainable, consisting of 64GB and 96GB, however it’s important to transfer to the M2 Max chips for these.

Throughout our testing, we in contrast the brand new base mannequin M2 Professional 14-inch MacBook Professional in opposition to the step-up M1 Professional 14-inch MacBook Professional. Each machines have 10-core CPUs in addition to 16-core GPUs. Regardless of evaluating an upgraded older mannequin to the brand new base mannequin, the M2 Professional nonetheless outperforms.

Geekbench 5 CPU outcomes

This 12 months’s base mannequin beats the efficiency of the upgraded M1 Professional with the previous scoring 1966 on the single-core Geekbench 5 check and the latter notching a 1758. Regardless of these single-core positive factors, the multi-core is not fairly as steller.

We ran the check a number of instances and noticed the M2 Professional get a 12092 on the multi-core check and the M1 Professional rating 12397. The M1 Professional constantly scored increased on the multi-core check. Once more, although, it is a base machine versus the older step-up mannequin.

Plus, most each day duties shall be single-core duties yielding a barely snappier machine for frequent use circumstances.

Cinebench R23 echoed that with a 12292 multi-core rating for the M1 Professional and an 11811 for the M2 Professional.

Graphics benchmarks

Graphically, the brand new M2 Professional is a beast. When evaluating the 16-core M2 Professional GPU to the 16-core M1 Professional GPU, the brand new mannequin obtained 41796 on the Geekbench 5 Compute check working underneath Metallic, 10% greater than the M1 Professional’s 41796.

We additionally ran a chronic stress check, maxing out the CPU to see how efficiency held up over practically two hours of pushing it to the boundaries. The CPU ramped as much as 3.2GHz, above the 3GHz pace of the M1 Professional.

The temperature jumped to roughly 195F in the course of the check, staying barely cooler than the bigger 16-inch MacBook Professional that crossed the 200F threshold. After 10 consecutive runs of Cinebench R23, we did see some drop in rating however nothing drastic.

Our preliminary scores in the beginning have been round 11600 although they dipped to 11500 by the top. That is effectively inside the margin of error,

Blackmagic Disk Pace check outcomes (2023 left, 2021 proper)

Let’s discuss that SSD pace within the 14-inch MacBook Professional’s lowest-end configuration. Apple has gone with fewer flash chips on the decrease configuration, as a result of comparatively talking, 128GB modules are getting costly, and it is cheaper for Apple to make use of fewer, higher-density chips.

The place the 2021 mannequin 14-inch mannequin delivers over 5 gigabytes per second learn and write, the bottom configuration of the 2023 delivers a bit greater than half that.

We have spoken about this with the M2 Mac mini, MacBook Air, and 13-inch MacBook Professional, and we did not assume it was a giant deal there. We do assume it’s on the $2000 value level.

That is the machine the place people resolve that they wish to spend the cash on a 4K HDR video workflow, or one thing extra performant than the {hardware} meant for the mass-market. Plus, trendy macOS leans closely on digital reminiscence, even with upgrades, and whereas it is small, the slower SSD does make a distinction in that too.

Sure, you possibly can reclaim the pace for $200 by upgrading the storage to 1TB — however at $2000 to start out, you should not must.

Strictly from a noise standpoint, in a 37 dBa room, the 2018 i9 MacBook Professional underneath heavy load hits about 45 dBa at a few meter from the unit. The 14-inch Intel-based MacBook Professional hit a most of 44 dBa, with the fan not kicking in till the chips hit about 180F. This is kind of the identical because the 2021 mannequin.

The machine cools down very quick, although. Even underneath most load, the followers solely run at about 4000 RPM for just a few seconds, then drop again all the way down to about 3200 RPM. The followers sound just a little bit completely different than the 2021 mannequin, spinning up, down, and up once more if obligatory a bit sooner sooner than the 2021 mannequin, fairly than sustaining pace just like the earlier. This can be a hair extra noticeable, however you continue to should be taking note of it to listen to it.

At idle, the followers cannot be discerned when working at between 1800 and 2100 RPM.

The 14-inch MacBook Professional retains the identical hotspot location across the G, H, and J keys as its predecessors. The place the 2018 MacBook Professional peaked at about 107F in these areas, the 2023 14-inch mannequin peaks at about 86F — which is about the identical because the 2021 mannequin.

When Apple introduced out the 14-inch MacBook Professional, it determined to modify techniques. As an alternative of continuous to drive everybody to make use of solely Thunderbolt and spawning a whole dongle and dock trade, it relented and supplied extra ports.

14-inch MacBook Professional ports

The 14-inch MacBook Professional has three Thunderbolt 4 ports, with two on the left and one on the right-hand aspect. That is one fewer than the four-port fashions now we have seen up to now with Intel.

On the left aspect, there is a MagSafe 3 connection, the revival of Apple’s secure charging system, in addition to a 3.5mm headphone jack. On the correct is an SDXC reminiscence card slot and a HDMI port, which makes it simpler for videographers to load footage in, and to make use of the MacBook Professional with a TV for shows.

House Grey MagSafe 3 cable

We would nonetheless fairly have 4 Thunderbolt ports. That is controversial, and we’re not penalizing the machine for it as a result of we’re sensible sufficient to know that our workflow will not be the common one.

The SD card reader has its makes use of, however it’s solely sufficient for pace. Thunderbolt actually accommodates HDMI, and sure, we would fairly have a fourth 40 gigabit per second port that may do information and video, than a devoted port for video, no matter how ubiquitous it’s.

On the wi-fi aspect, the Wi-Fi 6 has been changed by Wi-Fi 6E help, which might provide extra wi-fi networking bandwidth if the community’s infrastructure helps it. With that, and a correctly outfitted community, wi-fi speeds are higher.

In a real-world atmosphere about 25 ft and a wall away from the wi-fi router, we about 1.2 gigabits per second switch on a Wi-Fi 6e community, about about 800 megabits per second with a Wi-Fi 6 router in the identical place.

HDMI output

This is not meant as a manifesto on Wi-Fi 6 versus Wi-Fi 6E. If you happen to’ve obtained the community infrastructure, it will be sooner. If you happen to do not, it will not. New community {hardware} is not free, and it is definitely not low-cost.

Bluetooth 5 has additionally been up to date to Bluetooth 5.3. In February 2023, that is principally for future-proofing.

Very like the enclosure hasn’t modified, neither has the keyboard of the 14-inch MacBook Professional. The Magic Keyboard continues to be a superb substitute of the troubled Butterfly mechanism.

The Touch Bar remains to be gone, so on the high of the 78-key keyboard is a set of 12 full-height operate keys, in addition to a Touch ID button within the top-right nook.

Beneath, the Power Contact trackpad presents nice cursor management, full with pressure-sensitive options like Power clicks, and Multi-Contact gestures.

We did not have any complaints about this keyboard when it launched, and we nonetheless do not now. It is nonetheless a superb keyboard, and simple to kind on, so we aren’t going to belabor keypress drive or journey once more.

The battery life within the 2021 mannequin was a incredible leap ahead for the MacBook Professional line, with as much as 11 hours of wi-fi net browsing or as much as 17 hours of Apple TV app film playback potential from a single cost. For 2023, issues have gotten even higher.

Now you can rise up to 18 hours of Apple TV app film playback, or as much as 12 hours of wi-fi net looking, including an hour to the utilization time.

Apple remains to be utilizing a 70-watt-hour lithium polymer battery. The adjustments are all in energy effectivity of the brand new chip.

Charging the battery on the 14-inch MacBook Professional

To get energy into the 14-inch MacBook Professional, you need to use the included 67W USB-C Energy Adapter with the bottom 10-core CPU, however going for the 12-core CPU model upgrades you to the 96W USB-C Energy Adapter as a substitute.

You even have the selection of recharging through any USB-C port on the MacBook Professional, or utilizing MagSafe 3. The MagSafe choice is greatest for security, to guard in opposition to a yanked pocket book from folks passing by.

Our favourite charger for the machine on a desktop stays a Thunderbolt dock. In observe, docks that present as little as 40W nonetheless present sufficient energy to maintain the battery as much as 100% whereas performing regular workflows.

And, as earlier than, the docks that present 15W will assist and are higher than no energy in any respect. They will not preserve the battery topped off underneath any utilization in any respect, although.

Hidden within the notch is a 1080p FaceTime HD digital camera, unchanged from the final launch. It is assisted by a picture sign processor, which improves the image past the digital camera’s commonplace feed with due to Apple’s computational images smarts.

That is nonetheless good, and successfully unchanged from the 2021 inclusion of the identical expertise.

On the audio aspect, there is a six-speaker sound system, combining high-fidelity audio system with force-cancelling woofers. Able to a large stereo sound, the audio system additionally help Spatial Audio when taking part in music or video utilizing Dolby Atmos.

And as earlier than, they sound nice on the 14-inch MacBook Professional, and a bit higher on the 16-inch MacBook Professional. A lot so, that we have seen critiques from 2021 from Home windows-centric publications that decision them one of the best audio system that they’ve ever heard on a laptop computer.

If you happen to personal AirPods that help Spatial Audio with dynamic head monitoring, it’s also possible to use them with the MacBook Professional too.

Audiophiles will be capable to benefit from the three.5mm headphone jack, which incorporates help for high-impedance headphones.

For capturing audio, there is a trio of studio high quality microphones in an array, full with a excessive signal-to-noise ratio and directional beamforming.

The M2 Professional 14-inch MacBook Professional begins from $1,999, geared up with the 10-core CPU and 16-core GPU, 16GB of unified reminiscence, 512GB of SSD storage, and the 67W USB-C Energy Adapter.

Upgrading to the 12-core CPU model of the M2 Professional, which features a 19-core GPU, is $300 on high of the bottom value. The M2 Max with the 30-core GPU is $500 extra from the bottom, and the 38-core GPU choice is $700 extra from the bottom price.

M2 Professional 14-inch MacBook Professional

Rising the reminiscence to 32GB prices $400. If you’d like 64GB, which is one other $400 once more, it’s important to go for an M2 Max improve, whereas 96GB is $400 pricier nonetheless and requiring the top-end chip.

If you’d like extra storage than 512GB, you possibly can go to 1TB for an additional $200. From 1TB to 2TB is one other $400, with 4TB $600 extra expensive, and from 4TB to 89TB is a wallet-choking $1,200 extra.

For the lowest-spec M2 Professional, you possibly can improve the charger to the 96W model for $20. It is included by default with all different chip decisions. It is a worthwhile improve.

The 2023 14-inch MacBook Professional is as pure a spec-bump replace to an current mannequin as you’ll get from Apple. It began with an amazing base within the 2021 14-inch MacBook Professional, switched a number of the insides, and known as it a day.

The 14-inch MacBook Professional is a strong machine, and the extra pace versus the M1 mannequin is good. The “tragedy” of the road is the notably slower SSD on the lowest-end configuration, which in any other case, this mannequin would have gotten a 4.5 out of 5.

• Design nonetheless feels new and appears nice
• Good CPU and GPU positive factors over M1 fashions
• Connectivity future-proofing
• Reminiscence most has elevated for larger workflows

• FaceTime digital camera is barely sufficient
• A $2000 machine ought to have higher SSD speeds than this

Score: 4 out of 5 as reviewed.

Each 2023 14-inch MacBook Professional configuration is eligible for triple-digit financial savings with promo code APINSIDER at Apple Licensed Reseller Adorama.

At press time, the MacBook Pro deals vary from $100 to $250 off MSRP, so whether or not you are on the lookout for the bottom value on a configuration on this 14-inch MacBook Professional assessment or want a mannequin with 96GB reminiscence, the most affordable costs are at your fingertips in our 2023 MacBook Pro 14-inch Price Guide.