Reviews have gone live for Apple’s newest MacBook Pro with updated M2 silicon. As expected, the new machines are ravaging benchmarks across the board compared with their M1 predecessors. What’s even more impressive is Apple has seemingly made huge gains in efficiency as well. Our colleagues at PCMag took the 16-inch Pro with the M1 Max SoC for a spin on the test bench, and it delivered an astonishing amount of battery life at almost 27 hours. PCMag was so impressed it not only granted it an Editor’s Choice award, but a perfect five-star rating as well.
The machine it was testing was unfortunately quite expensive. Apple is no dummy, so it sent our colleagues the fully-loaded version with every possible upgrade aside from storage capacity. That includes the top-shelf M1 Max SoC with 12 CPU cores and 38 GPU cores. It’s also available with the M1 Pro, which has the same CPU but only half the GPU cores at 19. It also has a 4TB SSD, though Apple also lets you upgrade to 8TB for a mere $2,200. It has 96GB of memory, which is the maximum amount. This is a workstation-level machine, pretty much. It weighs 4.8 pounds and costs $5,299.
(Image: Brian Westover)
In its testing, PCMag compared it to previous M1-based Macs as well as several Windows PCs. The Windows PCs were running high-end mobile CPUs for both Intel and AMD. That includes the Ryen 9 5900HX, the Core i9-12700H, and the 11th Gen Core i9-11950H. Neither Intel nor AMD have released the mobile versions of its their current architectures, but both will likely give Apple a run for its money on sheer horsepower.
In productivity benchmarks, the M2-based MacBook Pro walked all over the Windows machines, which isn’t a huge surprise given what we saw with the M1 before it. As one example, in Handbrake 1.4 its conversion time was half that of the Dell XPS 17, which has the 12th gen Intel CPU inside. However, despite offering that level of performance it was in the battery life test that it truly surprised the benchmarking team.
Its battery life tests consists of playing a 720p video with display brightness set to 50% and maximum volume. Despite Apple’s pledge to offer 22 hours of battery life, its test machine went far beyond that. It finally called it quits after 26 hours and 51 minutes. That allowed it to outlast every other machine in the lab by a wide margin, including the older M1-based Macs. The Windows machines put up decent, all-day performances, but nothing even close to 26 hours. That score is almost seven hours longer than its predecessor, the 16-inch Pro with the M1 Max SoC.
What Apple has done with the M2 is rather impressive. However, we still have to wait for Intel and AMD to drop their latest mobile processors to see what the market truly looks like. So far, we’ve only seen leaks, but both companies are bringing a lot of firepower to the mobile market in 2023. Intel has its 13th gen HX, HK, and H CPUs. while AMD has been teasing its fire-breathing Dragon Range CPUs for months. We don’t doubt both companies will give Apple a run for its money on terms of sheer muscle and core counts, but whether they can do it while offering similar battery life remains to be seen. Consider the new MacBook Pro to be the first shot across the bow.
Now Read:
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- Apple’s $50,000 Mac Pro Is Worth Less than $1,000 If You Sell It to Apple
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