The New 13-Inch MacBook Pro: A Powerhouse Upgrade

The new 13-inch MacBook Pro is a significant upgrade from its predecessor, featuring a quad-core CPU and a redesigned internal speaker system. The computer's processing power has been greatly increased, with the single core score jumping modestly but the multi-core score going from two core to quad cores being a huge difference. Geekbench scores are impressive, with over 15,000 points for the multi-core test, a significant increase from the previous dual-core processor.

The graphics performance is up only slightly, due to the lack of a dedicated GPU on the 13-inch model. Instead, the Intel Iris Plus 655 chip provides integrated graphics performance that's only separated by a few frames per second in comparison to the standard 650 chip from last generation. The integrated GPU is still capable of delivering impressive graphics performance, making this a great option for content creators and professionals who need reliable and efficient processing.

One of the notable features of the new MacBook Pro is its redesigned internal speaker system. Apple has improved the speakers by increasing their size and optimizing them to work in conjunction with the new quad-core CPU. The effect is a noticeable improvement in sound quality, with less of that tinny or muffled sound and more of a fuller, wider sound.

The bottom panel of the MacBook Pro is still removable, but it's not as user-friendly as some might hope. The single removable panel is fastened with Pentalobe screws and is protected by four black plastic feet. However, this computer really is not user upgradable, everything being glued, soldered, and otherwise permanently fixed to the motherboard of this computer. This means that users need to get the configuration they want from the store, as it cannot be changed later.

Despite the improvements in processing power and graphics performance, one of the biggest controversies with this MacBook Pro was thermal throttling, which has now been fixed with a patch. The laptop gets quite hot under load, causing the fans to spool up more than they did with the dual-core processors. However, it's not always running at high temperatures, just when it's under heavy load.

The battery life of the MacBook Pro remains at 10 hours, but the size of the battery pack has been increased from 5 cells to 6 cells, resulting in a larger capacity of up to 58 watt-hours from 54.5 watt-hours before. This change is offset by shaving the chassis down just slightly, keeping the weight the same.

The redesign of the MacBook Pro also includes a new external GPU option, designed in collaboration with Blackmagic. The external GPU is capable of providing high-speed storage and graphics performance, making it an attractive option for professionals who need to work with large files and complex projects.

Overall, the new 13-inch MacBook Pro is a significant upgrade from its predecessor, offering improved processing power, graphics performance, and sound quality. However, the lack of user upgradability and the high cost make it more of an extravagance for some users. Nevertheless, this computer remains a great option for professionals who need reliable and efficient processing, and those who are willing to invest in a powerful machine.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up guys this is mike the detroit borg and it's great to be back with some new hardware from apple so apple has updated the 13-inch and 15-inch macbook pro with touch bar so in terms of the 13-inch the big new bullet points here include the new 8th generation quad-core cpus replacing the dual core we also get a true tone display hands-free siri command and the more important design change here is a redesigned third generation butterfly keyboard which is designed to be quieter and more reliable some other minor tweaks include bluetooth 5.0 a redesigned option key symbol and we also get symmetrical thunderbolt 3 ports both the left and right side have the exact same speed this time the standard configuration starts off at 17.99 and that gets you a 2.3 gigahertz core i5 you can upgrade to 2.7 gigahertz core i7 8 gigs of ram is standard but you can upgrade to 16 gigs for 200 i think that might be worth the upgrade price in terms of the ram specs it's lpddr3 which is the same as last year which is clocked at 21.33 megahertz in terms of stores 256 is standard but you can upgrade all the way up to 2 terabytes for a mere 1400 and of course it's available in silver or space gray first up we have some paperwork and the paperwork is pretty familiar of course we have a quick start guide in this case it's highlighting high sierra we also get a set of apple stickers and some warranty info in terms of our power adapter again this is 61 watts with a usb type-c connector now this adapter is a pretty familiar design by now we have folding prongs which can be pulled off to add an extension cable or swap out for international wall adapters but this is actually a redesigned power adapter at least internally inside it has been cushioned for better shock protection but they've also replaced the metal usbc connector for a plastic design not sure why they did this but it might be more durable now the setup in this case is slightly different to take advantage of some of the new features with this macbook pro now this is the first mac to use the siri wake up command so just like an ios device or your homepod you can now use your voice for hands-free siri interaction and of course you have to train your voice in order for this feature to work now this works thanks to the t2 chip and the three microphone array similar to ios the t2 chip allows the computer to monitor for your voice using very little power so as long as the computer is open you can command siri even when it's locked or sleeping the weather's looking good on sunday up to 77 degrees also new to the mac but not new to ios is true tone so again we get a demonstration of how the true tone display works so in addition to brightness the adaptive sensors will also measure for color temperature so this will reflect the ambient lighting conditions of the room the computer is in and what's great is true tone extends to attach displays like the lg 5k display or the thunderbolt display and even the touch bar is using true tone to match the display on the macbook so that's pretty impressive now because true tone needs to use the ambient light sensors and the t2 chip in the macbook pro to adapt the display color temperature this will not work if the lid of the macbook pro is closed so for attached displays if you want to take advantage of true tone you'll need to make sure your macbook pro is open the display is covered edge to edge with a glass panel with a nice anti-reflective coating so although we have a glossy display it does one of the best jobs in terms of mitigating glare that i've seen on any other laptop the ips display once again is 13.3 inches with a resolution of 2560 by 1600 that's good for 227 pixels per inch we get 500 nits of maximum brightness along with the wide color spectrum of the dc ip3 spec we still have a 720p facetime hd camera in the same location as before with an led indicator along with our ambient light sensors in terms of the touch bar once again this replaces the traditional function key row for a contextually where an interactive oled display it's still a really nice looking design and i discover new uses for it every time but it's still something you have to consciously look at to use face id didn't make it to the macbooks just yet but touch id is still here at the right edge of the touch bar so again this is the same touch id 2 sensor so it's pretty quick and accurate you can use it for unlocking your macbook or for authenticating for passwords or payment the glass force touch trackpad is still here as well so once again instead of a mechanical trackpad we have a taptic motor that replicates physical clicks again it's pressure sensitive which gives you a new layer to the user interface and is still one of the best track pads on any laptop there is one visual tweak that's unique to the 2018 model and that's a slightly redesigned symbol on the option key which is a bit taller than it was from the 2017 redesign so i'm not sure why they keep changing this but hopefully they've settled on this and they can roll this out to other keyboards later this year once again we get a backlit keyboard with individual led lights for each key so it's a very clean looking backlight but by far the most important news here is that apple has added a silicone layer underneath each cap which is designed to mitigate dust intrusion so it won't interfere with the operation of the keys but this also changes the clicking tone of the keys it's not necessarily quieter but it's less annoying so let's go ahead and take a listen to them side by side now personally i've been a big fan of this keyboard design since it came out because it's so fast there's less mechanical action and the keys are extremely solid and wide so you can hit the keys really quickly and accurately and this third generation for the most part feels exactly the same but it's a little softer sounding and initially it doesn't feel quite as crisp as the second generation but if i wasn't comparing them side by side i wouldn't know the difference now ventilation is going to be very important for this computer because of those quad-core chips and if you go for the i7 you want to make sure this computer can breathe very well now there's lots of ventilation here but it's pretty well hidden so you'll find ventilation inside the hinge as before but you also find ventilation along the bottom side edge which is also part of the speaker design apple also redesigned the internal speaker system so although the speaker grilles on the top are still fake outlets the speakers actually come from the vents on the side the speakers and the chambers have been redesigned for the new larger battery and the effect here is definitely an improvement to my ears it's not louder but the quality of the sound has improved slightly so there's less of that tinny or muffled sound and more of a fuller wider sound captain christopher pike requests permission to come aboard oh commander this is awkward but the best way to get into a cold stream is to jump right in i'm here to take command of the discovery under regulation 19 section c the bottom of the macbook has a single removable panel which is fastened with pentalobe screws and is protected by four black plastic feet however this computer really is not user upgradable everything is glued soldered and otherwise permanently fixed to the motherboard of this computer so make sure you get the configuration you want from the store because you can't change it later we still get four thunderbolt 3 ports two on the left two on the right and a headphone jack but this time the ports on the right side have the same 40 gigs per second throughput as the ports on the left side previously only the 15 inch macbook pro offer this capability but we finally get it in the 13-inch so two years later this four-port design is still kind of a headache for a lot of people because you'll need some adapters to use legacy peripherals but these high-speed ports can drive a 5k display high speed storage and most recently an external gpu apple even worked with black magic on an external gpu design which i'll feature in a separate video apple did redesign the battery pack here from 5 cell to 6 cell and it's larger up to 58 watt hours from 54 and a half watt hours now that doesn't mean we have more battery life it's still 10 hours but this offsets the power demands of the new quad-core cpus also interesting is that although they've increased the size of the battery they've kept the weight the same by shaving the chassis down just slightly now taking a look at our synthetic benchmarks comparing this to the same spec version from the last generation we can see this is one of the biggest spec bumps we've seen for a macbook pro since 2011. so when it comes to geekbench the single core score is up modestly but the multi-core score going from two core to quad cores is a huge difference we go from about 8 800 to over 15 000 or closer to 16 000 graphics performance is up only slightly so again we have an integrated gpu there is no dedicated gpu on the 13-inch model and this time is the intel iris plus 655 chip this replaces the standard 650 chip from last generation so with cinebench despite the massive cpu gains almost twice the performance of the previous design the opengl score is only separated by a few frames per second ssd speeds are unchanged from the last generation which is to say they're extremely fast there is one side effect of these powerful chips that i noticed during my benchmarking and that's the fact that these get quite hot under load so the fans tend to spool up more so than they did with the dual core processors of course that's the trade-off of more power you get better performance but you also get more heat that isn't to say that this computer runs hot all the time just when it's under load speaking of which one of the biggest controversies with this macbook pro when it first launched was thermal throttling which was just recently fixed with the patch so now we get consistently superior performance to the previous laptop so ultimately this really is a significant update it fixes one of the biggest uncertainties about the previous design which was the keyboard and makes a significant upgrade to the cpu but this remains a very expensive computer this really is for people who know they need the tools that this machine offers otherwise it's kind of an extravagance that really goes unused which makes it unfortunate that they did not at least add the revised keyboard to the baseline macbook pro with a function key row now if you want even more pro features i will be covering the new 15-inch macbook pro with the core i9 cpu and 32 gigs of ram so make sure you stay tuned for that video hope you guys enjoyed this one and if you did please let me know with a like and i'll see you again in the next videowhat's up guys this is mike the detroit borg and it's great to be back with some new hardware from apple so apple has updated the 13-inch and 15-inch macbook pro with touch bar so in terms of the 13-inch the big new bullet points here include the new 8th generation quad-core cpus replacing the dual core we also get a true tone display hands-free siri command and the more important design change here is a redesigned third generation butterfly keyboard which is designed to be quieter and more reliable some other minor tweaks include bluetooth 5.0 a redesigned option key symbol and we also get symmetrical thunderbolt 3 ports both the left and right side have the exact same speed this time the standard configuration starts off at 17.99 and that gets you a 2.3 gigahertz core i5 you can upgrade to 2.7 gigahertz core i7 8 gigs of ram is standard but you can upgrade to 16 gigs for 200 i think that might be worth the upgrade price in terms of the ram specs it's lpddr3 which is the same as last year which is clocked at 21.33 megahertz in terms of stores 256 is standard but you can upgrade all the way up to 2 terabytes for a mere 1400 and of course it's available in silver or space gray first up we have some paperwork and the paperwork is pretty familiar of course we have a quick start guide in this case it's highlighting high sierra we also get a set of apple stickers and some warranty info in terms of our power adapter again this is 61 watts with a usb type-c connector now this adapter is a pretty familiar design by now we have folding prongs which can be pulled off to add an extension cable or swap out for international wall adapters but this is actually a redesigned power adapter at least internally inside it has been cushioned for better shock protection but they've also replaced the metal usbc connector for a plastic design not sure why they did this but it might be more durable now the setup in this case is slightly different to take advantage of some of the new features with this macbook pro now this is the first mac to use the siri wake up command so just like an ios device or your homepod you can now use your voice for hands-free siri interaction and of course you have to train your voice in order for this feature to work now this works thanks to the t2 chip and the three microphone array similar to ios the t2 chip allows the computer to monitor for your voice using very little power so as long as the computer is open you can command siri even when it's locked or sleeping the weather's looking good on sunday up to 77 degrees also new to the mac but not new to ios is true tone so again we get a demonstration of how the true tone display works so in addition to brightness the adaptive sensors will also measure for color temperature so this will reflect the ambient lighting conditions of the room the computer is in and what's great is true tone extends to attach displays like the lg 5k display or the thunderbolt display and even the touch bar is using true tone to match the display on the macbook so that's pretty impressive now because true tone needs to use the ambient light sensors and the t2 chip in the macbook pro to adapt the display color temperature this will not work if the lid of the macbook pro is closed so for attached displays if you want to take advantage of true tone you'll need to make sure your macbook pro is open the display is covered edge to edge with a glass panel with a nice anti-reflective coating so although we have a glossy display it does one of the best jobs in terms of mitigating glare that i've seen on any other laptop the ips display once again is 13.3 inches with a resolution of 2560 by 1600 that's good for 227 pixels per inch we get 500 nits of maximum brightness along with the wide color spectrum of the dc ip3 spec we still have a 720p facetime hd camera in the same location as before with an led indicator along with our ambient light sensors in terms of the touch bar once again this replaces the traditional function key row for a contextually where an interactive oled display it's still a really nice looking design and i discover new uses for it every time but it's still something you have to consciously look at to use face id didn't make it to the macbooks just yet but touch id is still here at the right edge of the touch bar so again this is the same touch id 2 sensor so it's pretty quick and accurate you can use it for unlocking your macbook or for authenticating for passwords or payment the glass force touch trackpad is still here as well so once again instead of a mechanical trackpad we have a taptic motor that replicates physical clicks again it's pressure sensitive which gives you a new layer to the user interface and is still one of the best track pads on any laptop there is one visual tweak that's unique to the 2018 model and that's a slightly redesigned symbol on the option key which is a bit taller than it was from the 2017 redesign so i'm not sure why they keep changing this but hopefully they've settled on this and they can roll this out to other keyboards later this year once again we get a backlit keyboard with individual led lights for each key so it's a very clean looking backlight but by far the most important news here is that apple has added a silicone layer underneath each cap which is designed to mitigate dust intrusion so it won't interfere with the operation of the keys but this also changes the clicking tone of the keys it's not necessarily quieter but it's less annoying so let's go ahead and take a listen to them side by side now personally i've been a big fan of this keyboard design since it came out because it's so fast there's less mechanical action and the keys are extremely solid and wide so you can hit the keys really quickly and accurately and this third generation for the most part feels exactly the same but it's a little softer sounding and initially it doesn't feel quite as crisp as the second generation but if i wasn't comparing them side by side i wouldn't know the difference now ventilation is going to be very important for this computer because of those quad-core chips and if you go for the i7 you want to make sure this computer can breathe very well now there's lots of ventilation here but it's pretty well hidden so you'll find ventilation inside the hinge as before but you also find ventilation along the bottom side edge which is also part of the speaker design apple also redesigned the internal speaker system so although the speaker grilles on the top are still fake outlets the speakers actually come from the vents on the side the speakers and the chambers have been redesigned for the new larger battery and the effect here is definitely an improvement to my ears it's not louder but the quality of the sound has improved slightly so there's less of that tinny or muffled sound and more of a fuller wider sound captain christopher pike requests permission to come aboard oh commander this is awkward but the best way to get into a cold stream is to jump right in i'm here to take command of the discovery under regulation 19 section c the bottom of the macbook has a single removable panel which is fastened with pentalobe screws and is protected by four black plastic feet however this computer really is not user upgradable everything is glued soldered and otherwise permanently fixed to the motherboard of this computer so make sure you get the configuration you want from the store because you can't change it later we still get four thunderbolt 3 ports two on the left two on the right and a headphone jack but this time the ports on the right side have the same 40 gigs per second throughput as the ports on the left side previously only the 15 inch macbook pro offer this capability but we finally get it in the 13-inch so two years later this four-port design is still kind of a headache for a lot of people because you'll need some adapters to use legacy peripherals but these high-speed ports can drive a 5k display high speed storage and most recently an external gpu apple even worked with black magic on an external gpu design which i'll feature in a separate video apple did redesign the battery pack here from 5 cell to 6 cell and it's larger up to 58 watt hours from 54 and a half watt hours now that doesn't mean we have more battery life it's still 10 hours but this offsets the power demands of the new quad-core cpus also interesting is that although they've increased the size of the battery they've kept the weight the same by shaving the chassis down just slightly now taking a look at our synthetic benchmarks comparing this to the same spec version from the last generation we can see this is one of the biggest spec bumps we've seen for a macbook pro since 2011. so when it comes to geekbench the single core score is up modestly but the multi-core score going from two core to quad cores is a huge difference we go from about 8 800 to over 15 000 or closer to 16 000 graphics performance is up only slightly so again we have an integrated gpu there is no dedicated gpu on the 13-inch model and this time is the intel iris plus 655 chip this replaces the standard 650 chip from last generation so with cinebench despite the massive cpu gains almost twice the performance of the previous design the opengl score is only separated by a few frames per second ssd speeds are unchanged from the last generation which is to say they're extremely fast there is one side effect of these powerful chips that i noticed during my benchmarking and that's the fact that these get quite hot under load so the fans tend to spool up more so than they did with the dual core processors of course that's the trade-off of more power you get better performance but you also get more heat that isn't to say that this computer runs hot all the time just when it's under load speaking of which one of the biggest controversies with this macbook pro when it first launched was thermal throttling which was just recently fixed with the patch so now we get consistently superior performance to the previous laptop so ultimately this really is a significant update it fixes one of the biggest uncertainties about the previous design which was the keyboard and makes a significant upgrade to the cpu but this remains a very expensive computer this really is for people who know they need the tools that this machine offers otherwise it's kind of an extravagance that really goes unused which makes it unfortunate that they did not at least add the revised keyboard to the baseline macbook pro with a function key row now if you want even more pro features i will be covering the new 15-inch macbook pro with the core i9 cpu and 32 gigs of ram so make sure you stay tuned for that video hope you guys enjoyed this one and if you did please let me know with a like and i'll see you again in the next video\n"