I’ve been using Apple’s 20 1916 inch MacBook Pro, pretty much every day for the last six months. And in this article, I wanted to give you my long term review, I like, what I don’t like, and then ultimately giving you my opinion on you should buy Apple’s most powerful laptop ever. So I wanted to start by telling you what I use my MacBook for, and why I chose Mac options. First off, I’m someone who’s really entrenched in the Apple ecosystem.
So a Mac was always going to be my first choice. Plus, I’ve always owned Macs for years since my first powerbook, g4 appears design review of MacBooks 3d is coming soon to the channel. Prior to the 16 inch MacBook Pro, I was using a MacBook Air Believe it or not. But to be honest, that ran its course and just wasn’t powerful enough for what I needed. I had that laptop for over 10 years. So I got some pretty nice value up to that. I use my MacBook for a variety of different things, which is going to be useful part of this review, it will cover a large manhood of use cases that most people will want something like this for I use productivity tools a lot to manage my business, I use communication tools to stay in touch with clients do video conferencing. And then I spend most of my time on Creative tools making videos and doing my design work. So there’s a lot to cover here.
And that leads us nicely onto the specs for my machine. So I got this MacBook in mid-2020. But it’s still the 2019 model. I went for the 2.4 gigahertz eight core Intel I nine version with 64 gigabytes of RAM. They upgraded to the AMD Radeon pro 550 008 gigabytes, which comes with the Intel u HD graphics card is regular. I have a one terabyte hard drive. So at this Point, you are probably wondering what a 64 gigabyte ram laptop feels like to use. So you can see how much bigger the 16 inch laptop is compared to my older laptops. I wanted to cover why went for the 16 inch MacBook Pro, Versus the 13 inch pro or an iMac. So I needed portable, was going to be powerful.
The 16 inch was the best option for this because I could really max out the specs and create the ultimate Portable powerhouse. So whilst it’s big, it’s super thin, which makes a big difference even when I add my pro Case protector onto it. By the way, there’s a link to this hard Case below. No, they’re not sponsoring the video, I just love their cases. When it comes to the weight of the machine to one thing I would say is that this is really heavy. It’s not so heavy, you wouldn’t want to carry it around in the rucksack all day. But still it is heavy. And to be honest, that surprised me a bit. Still, I personally much rather have a heavy, thin powerful machine.
The reasons Apple is able to achieve this is because they limit the ports they use. So on each side of the MacBook, you get two Thunderbolt three ports, which USB C compatible, and Apple have added back in a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack, which is awesome. And I have to say, someone that’s in creative editing videos, this is such a nice touch. Apple have really listened to what people want and delivered on this. But in terms of ports, that’s literally it. So I personally not someone that uses lots of peripherals, I don’t even use a camera card, although that change in the future. So it’s really not a deal for me. But if you are someone that uses a lot of ports and peripherals that I don’t think this should stop you buying a MacBook.
There’s tons of different hubs you can buy for less than $20 or you can just buy and plug in whenever you need. consider that most people are probably going to use this laptop with a screen I plugged mine is my 5k LG Display which extends the amount of ports I have anyway, it means I can plug peripherals in permanently into the back of my screen if I wanted to. Go and check out my desk video for more details on this. Let’s talk about the keyboard next. This was a big problem with last Mac’s luckily I was able to avoid pretty much all of these bad keyboards, but I did have a go on some and they just didn’t work so I can understand people’s frustration. I pleased to say though, this new magic keyboard is awesome, is a favorite typing experience on keyboard and you can just type so smoothly.
I just find my fingers gliding over the keys which is a result of Apple switching back to the old scissor switch mechanism that people loved so much I get asked a lot. So definitely like to try one at some stage, I honestly just can’t see the Point when my main keyboard is this good. Plus on this keyboard, you get the touch bar. Now I know this will be a Point of discussion. And people have pretty strong views about the touch bar. But honestly, I love it. It can be a little bit glitchy from time to time. But to be honest, that’s a trade off, I’m willing to accept to have things so much more easily at your fingertips.
You add emojis easily, and honestly is a better experience for me. Plus, on this one, he has a physical Escape key, which is wanted. Unlike most people, I think the touch bar is great. And I think it’s here to stay. Let me know what you think in the comments below. The other thing to mention here is that the trackpad is big. Some people have asked it gets in the way when you’re typing, and I can happily say it doesn’t a tool. I’m not sure where I’m not touching it or it has sort of special palm rejection software. But either way, it works really and doesn’t get in the way. Also, because of its size, it means you can use it like an external trackpad in conjunction with an external mouse.
So I use the MX Master three separately, I switch back and forth between the two pretty fluidly depending on what I’m doing. Sometimes you want to swipe sometimes you want to scroll and using the two together is great. By the way, check out my review of the MX Master three mouse if you want more details on that. The final thing to mention about the design, it’s the new thinner bezels. If you look at some of the older MacBooks, and the 13 inch MacBook, the bezels are just too thick for my taste. the competition. Germany across all its machines, the chins and bezels are just way too thick. So I really hope it’s improved at some Point soon. I am happy to say the 16 inch Pro is an exception to this. And Apple have made the bezels really streamlined. So let’s talk about the performance next. Now this is going to be even more interesting. Now the new m one MacBooks have been released, I don’t have a new m 113 inch MacBook Pro.
So I’ve had to rely on online benchmarks for this. There’s a really great article from Apple insider on this which goes into much more detail. But in terms of the CPU from what I can see the M one MacBook Pro marginally beats the Intel Core i 9 the 16 inch on Geekbench. With the core i nine only beating the M one chip on the multi-core cinebench scores. Where the MacBook Pro 16 inch does still win by a meaningful margin though, is in the GPU benchmarks due to its dedicated AMD Radeon pro graphics card, which leads by far.
So if you’re doing lots of work with visual graphics, or wanting to use your laptop for gaming, and this is definitely something to think about. The other major Point of thought here is Ram, which to be honest, is less covered by articles I’ve read online, I went for the 64 gigabytes of RAM option because I’m someone that does a lot of app switching and multitasking. While the big reason I didn’t go for the 13 inch Pro is that I wanted a much better ram performance, which maxes out 32 gigabytes and the 13 inch version. If you’re like me, and you do a lot of video editing and graphics creation across multiple apps at the same time, then RAM is pretty important to you.
So whilst they didn’t feel like I wanted 6 4 gateways, right now, I wanted to future-proof Mac for a good number of years ram basically increases the speed on which your process can talk to other parts of your computer. So if you have less RAM, it can limit the speed of your processor. This little like having fiber broadband to your street the last few meters isn’t fiber optic, which just slows everything down. Anyway, overall, the performance has been awesome. And it churns through my video editing and 4k, which is probably the most intensive thing I do. So the CPU GPU and RAM combined. There’s nothing better from Apple at the moment from my perspective that you can get an A Portable format, even with the new m one chips.
In terms of other things to mention that start by talking about the battery life. Now the thickness of the new 16 inch MacBook Pro is in part due to a new battery, which is now the largest ever, is now the largest legally allowed battery by commercial flights in the US. And to be honest, it shows I’d say I’m getting an average of about 1.5 days of use out of it wanting to recharge unless I’m doing something really intensive like video editing. Let’s cover connectivity briefly because I’ve read some articles online where people have mentioned some Bluetooth connection issues. This isn’t something I found a tool and everything I’ve tried to connect my MacBook to has synced beautifully so far and this is coming from someone that connects a lot of things wirelessly .
Speaking of wireless, it’s good to Point out that these Mac’s have Wi Fi six compatibility, which most routers won’t be compatible with for a few years. But it’s great to know the area at the mind map is pretty future-proof. You probably already seen this in Some of the ads but the 16 inch MacBook Pro microphone is supposed to be studio level quality was I don’t use it for my YouTube videos, I do use it for video calls. And people have mentioned how clear the audio is. This leads us nicely on to some of the things I don’t like about this machine. And to be honest, it’s a short list. But these things are important. The first thing I don’t like about the MacBook, is the camera quality is just not good enough for a machine, I really think it’s a mess from Apple, especially with so many people now working from home.
If I want to have a high quality video conference, I have to connect an external camera, which is a real shame. Speaking of which would be nice of those face ID an option. Touch ID is okay, and I don’t mind it, but face ID would have been a really nice addition. Another thing to mention about the design of the laptop is the viewing angle. I’ve mentioned this before, but I think Apple needs to increase the viewing angle of their screens. I’m quite tall. And sometimes I find the viewing angle of the screen restricted I am working straight from the laptop. Ironically, there’s never used to be a problem on earlier MacBook designs. And I’m going to be doing a video about this soon. The biggest thing though, this MacBook is the fan throttling. Now to be fair, this only happens when I’m editing in 4k.
So I suppose it’s fair enough. And using normal applications, I get zero fan noise given I spend a lot of my time editing the fan is so often on and it can get really noisy. I think this is a result of last models having thermal performance issues. So Apple has introduced a new cooling system, which gives it 28% better cooling efficiency. But either way, I really hope this is something Apple can fix soon in a future software update they get things working a bit more efficient. So in summary, guys, should you get one of these? Well, if you need a really powerful Portable MacBook in the next year or two, and this is definitely the one to get if you don’t need so much power and definitely get the arm based MacBook Air or the 13 inch Pro, especially if you’re not a creator do less on the graphics and content creation.
While cm one MacBooks are definitely the future and seems super powerful original benchmarks. Right now, they’re still not optimized across a lot of apps, which means you could see some slower speeds Initially, I spent a lot of my time and Adobe Creative Suite. So for me, that’s a big thought. If though you think you can wait a year or two, then it be worth it to see what Apple has in store for a 16 inch on Base Mac. That could be impossible. And it will give developers a chance to optimize apps properly for the ARM architecture. So guys, that’s it for this review video. Let me know setup you guys have at the moment or what you’re thinking of upgrading to.