Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch Review _ The Best Mac In Years

**A Powerhouse Video Editing Machine: Apple's New 16-Inch MacBook Pro Review**

The new 16-inch MacBook Pro is based on AMD's new 7 nanometre graphics architecture and clearly, it is designed to turn this macro Pro into a powerhouse video editing machine. While it may not suddenly transform the MacBook Pro into a gaming laptop overnight, it was never meant to be so. The extra thickness of Apple's latest device has been stuffed with a larger battery, which will surely excite many people. The proposed battery improvements are significant, as large laptops with high-resolution screens often struggle with battery life.

The slightly larger battery cells increase the juice from 83.6 Wh to 100 Wh-hour, which just happens to be the largest battery size you can put on a laptop that is legally allowed on a plane. However, this doesn't always result in more time away from the wall socket. In the case of the new 16-inch MacBook Pro, I wasn't seeing a huge improvement over the previous version, and I didn't expect it to be a full eight-hour workday. Under my standard workload, which involves dozens of tabs, streaming music, and Spotify, other applications like Slack, I managed to get around five and a half hours of battery life, which is on par with what you'd get in other laptops like the 4K XPS 15.

**The New 16-Inch Screen: A High-Resolution Display**

One thing that's been carried over from the previous version is the actual name of this device – it's a new 16-inch screen. While it may seem surprising, the new screen does have some notable upgrades. The bezels on these sides are finally thinner, making it feel like a more modern laptop to compete with others. Apple's put in some quality work here, as the display is undoubtedly one of the best you can get in a laptop, making it great for photographers, video editors, and those who need to trust that panel.

Color accuracy, brightness, contrast ratio – whatever metrics you use – this display is one of the best you can find. The new 16-inch screen may not have been the most exciting thing Apple could have done, but in this case, they delivered exactly what we wanted: a high-quality display. The MacBook Pro with the best speakers was already a great device, and the new speakers and microphones take it to the next level.

**A Powerhouse for Video Editing, But Is It Worth the Price?**

So who is the 16-inch MacBook Pro for? While it's not going to suddenly turn this laptop into a gaming powerhouse overnight, Apple has thrown in some upgrades that will make a difference for those who need the extra power. The extra thickness of Apple's latest device may seem counterintuitive, but it makes sense when you consider what's inside. However, for people whose day-to-day doesn't involve running heavy applications, this laptop is really not necessary.

The base configuration starts at $2,399, which is over a thousand dollars more than the 13-inch MacBook Pro and significantly more than some of the other laptops on the market that offer similar features without the same level of power. If you're considering an upgrade or looking for a new device, you might want to wait it out or look at some of the other options available, which are significantly cheaper and already include many of those features.

**Final Thoughts**

If, however, you really do need this kind of power, I can fully recommend with a sigh of relief this new 16-inch MacBook Pro. While it's not the most exciting thing Apple could have done, they delivered exactly what we wanted: a powerhouse video editing machine that has all the features and upgrades we needed.

Thanks for checking out this review. Please leave a comment below letting us know what you think – what do you want to use your new 16-inch MacBook Pro for? What applications need this kind of power? Let's hear from you in the comments, and don't forget to subscribe for more videos from Digital Trends.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe past three years have been pretty rough for the MacBook Pro lawsuits emergency repair programs a never-ending barrage of online criticism but this right here the new 16 inch MacBook Pro wants to fix all of that and I think it actually does so let's get this out of the way first the new 16 inch MacBook Pro is not an exciting laptop it wasn't announced at a glitzy press event there's not really anything innovative or forward-thinking about its design it's really just a patch and that's why the basics of the MacBook Pro are still intact the unibody aluminum build quality is still one of the MacBook Pros biggest strengths and Apple hasn't dared touch that formula this time around along with a lot of the other things we already loved about the MacBook Pro like the oversized force touch trackpad or the Thunderbolt 3 heavy port selection but once you get past these spaced crave at all and actually dig into some of the changes that Apple has made you'll see the evidence for an eager desire to please its fans now obviously the keyboard is the piece of the puzzle that Apple could not afford to get wrong the controversial butterfly switches have been thrown out completely and it's said now we have this the magic keyboard which is named after the still really popular iMac accessory the physical Escape key and the inverted T arrow keys even make a glorious return here and I know a lot of people are gonna love that it's not a typing revolution but I do think this new keyboard is the best Mac keyboard Apple has ever put in a laptop it's a step up from the 2015 MacBook Pro with its a larger keycaps and its snappier mechanism and obviously its heads and Hills over the butterfly mechanism keyboard the touch bar is still not a favorite feature of mine it hasn't really changed this time around it's just a little bit taller to match the height of the keyboard and a little bit shorter on each side to fit in the Escape key and the touch ID in general I still find myself back tail and meeting my music all the time and wondering why it's not more useful but it is what it is until Apple makes any significant changes in the future but with the extra travel in this keyboard the chassis is a little bit thicker than the 15-inch MacBook Pro that this replaces only point zero three inches but it is noticeable however Apple hasn't let that space go on instead it's made some meaningful improvements to battery life and performance with that extra space the truth is the MacBook Pro design has always felt impossibly thin for the amount of power they were trying to deliver especially in the 15-inch MacBook Pro and all that might have been okay or adequate in 2016 but in the past couple years Intel has really pushed the envelope for the amount of power they're putting into laptop processors specifically I'm talking about these core i9 processors unfortunately Apple has had a pretty spotty record of putting these in the MacBook Pro 2018 Apple quickly through these processors into the 15-inch er and the results were severe throttling to the point where the Cori 9 was only a tiny bit faster than the core i7 despite being quite a bit more expensive in 2019 earlier this year the eight core core e9 did a bit better in the 15-inch MacBook Pro it was reasonably fast on a pretty big upgrade over the previous year but it was still always a step behind the Dell XPS 15 which was significantly faster in things like video editing and content creation which that's really important because that's what these laptops are made for but with this the 16 inch MacBook Pro Apple is actually taking the time to go in and redesign the thermal so that can actually handle these high-end laptop processors from Intel thinner fan blades larger heat sinks extra vents the whole deal and as it turns out these changes make a huge difference in performance despite using the same eight core Core M processor and 32 gigabytes of RAM although now you can go up to 64 this MacBook Pro really does leave its predecessor in the dust in pretty much every benchmark in real life test I could throw at it so I loaded up a fork a two-minute clip in Adobe Premiere and exported at pro res 422 and it completed it in just four minutes and 41 seconds now exporting that same clip on the 15-inch MacBook Pro earlier this year took me over twice as long that's crazy for using the same processor the sixth age bracket pro is now up to speed with something like the XPS 15 which is really where it should have been all along can only imagine how fast it would be in a Mac optimized software like Final Cut Pro now there's more to these great results than just increased airflow in the stone Adobe's software optimizations probably play into it a little bit from earlier this year as well as the new onboard graphics that Apple has included from AMD as with all recent MacBook Pros this guy uses a custom card from AMD this time is the Radeon Pro 5300 M or the 5500 M these graphics aren't your standard year-to-year upgrade though they are based on AMD's new 7 nanometre graphics architecture and clearly they are assisting here in to turning this macro pro into a powerhouse video editing machine they definitely don't turn the MacBook Pro into a gaming laptop overnight but really they were never meant to with the extra thickness Apple has also stuffed in a larger battery which I think a lot of people will be excited to hear about and these proposed battery improvements are really important because large laptops with big screens especially if they're high resolution like this one they often struggle with battery life just as the 15-inch MacBook Pro did the slightly larger battery cells increase the juice from 83 point 6 to 100 watt hours which just happens to be the largest battery you can put on a laptop that you can legally bring onto a plane but larger batteries don't always result in more time away from the wall socket and in the case of the 16 inch MacBook Pro I'm not seeing a huge improvement over the previous version the new model didn't get me through a full eight hour workday although I didn't really expect it to again because of laptops with this many pixels it's powering under my standard workload which involves dozens of tabs streaming music and Spotify slack other applications like that I got around five and a half hours of battery life which you know isn't get you through a full day but it's on par with what you get in other laptops like the 4k XPS 15 now you might be wondering I've gone this far in the review and not mentioned the actual namesake of the device this new 16 inch screen that Apple's put here now obviously it's bigger than before but also has a higher resolution which is great the thing I like about it best probably is that you've got some thinner bezels on these sides finally so it feels like a more modern laptop to actually compete with the others but no one's gonna be surprised that Apple's put a really high quality display in its new flagship MacBook Pro I mean color accuracy brightness contrast ratio doesn't matter what you measure this is one of the best displays you can get in a laptop which makes it great for photographers video editors and people who really need to trust that panel now Apple's also thrown in some new microphones and some new speakers which like they didn't need to do this because they already have the laptop with the best speakers a 15-inch MacBook Pro but these really take it a step further Apple says that you can even hear a half octave more of bass when you listen to this thing when you're watching movies listening to music they really do sound amazing and I really appreciate the extra effort that Apple took to you actually deliver meaningful improvements to them now let's talk a little bit about who this laptop is for because the sparkle of a new MacBook Pro that fixes all the problems of the previous versions it sounds really tempting even for people who this laptop really is not for if your day to day doesn't involve running heavy applications you're really not gonna have much use for a 6 chord let alone an 8 core processor like the ones featured here and you know that might be ok with you but that's a thousand bucks of unused power and more than that unused money because remember Apple doesn't sell these larger macro probes without at least 16 gigabytes of RAM a 6 core processor and discrete graphics and really not everybody needs those things the base configuration starts at 23 99 which is over a thousand bucks more than the 13-inch MacBook Pro and I get it that smaller version doesn't have all these new upgrades doesn't have the thin bezels and the fixed keyboard and the new thermals doesn't have any of that but I think it will eventually just Apple hasn't gotten to bringing those upgrades to it yet in the meantime you're stuck with a pretty hard decision because again you might want the benefits of this new 16 inch MacBook Pro but you don't really want to spend that much money or even really have a need for that much power but I'd recommend either just waiting it out or looking at some of the other options in the window space that are significantly cheaper and have a lot of those features already included but if you really do need this kind of power for the first time in a few years I can fully recommend with a sigh of relief this new 16 inch MacBook Pro it's not the most exciting thing it's not the most forward-thinking thing but in this case I really think Apple was smart to deliver the goods exactly how we wanted them hey thanks for checking out this review please leave a comment below letting us know what you think the 16 inch MacBook Pro and specifically I want to know what you wouldn't do with this new laptop what are the applications that you run that actually need this much power please leave a comment and then of course subscribe for more videos from Digital Trendsthe past three years have been pretty rough for the MacBook Pro lawsuits emergency repair programs a never-ending barrage of online criticism but this right here the new 16 inch MacBook Pro wants to fix all of that and I think it actually does so let's get this out of the way first the new 16 inch MacBook Pro is not an exciting laptop it wasn't announced at a glitzy press event there's not really anything innovative or forward-thinking about its design it's really just a patch and that's why the basics of the MacBook Pro are still intact the unibody aluminum build quality is still one of the MacBook Pros biggest strengths and Apple hasn't dared touch that formula this time around along with a lot of the other things we already loved about the MacBook Pro like the oversized force touch trackpad or the Thunderbolt 3 heavy port selection but once you get past these spaced crave at all and actually dig into some of the changes that Apple has made you'll see the evidence for an eager desire to please its fans now obviously the keyboard is the piece of the puzzle that Apple could not afford to get wrong the controversial butterfly switches have been thrown out completely and it's said now we have this the magic keyboard which is named after the still really popular iMac accessory the physical Escape key and the inverted T arrow keys even make a glorious return here and I know a lot of people are gonna love that it's not a typing revolution but I do think this new keyboard is the best Mac keyboard Apple has ever put in a laptop it's a step up from the 2015 MacBook Pro with its a larger keycaps and its snappier mechanism and obviously its heads and Hills over the butterfly mechanism keyboard the touch bar is still not a favorite feature of mine it hasn't really changed this time around it's just a little bit taller to match the height of the keyboard and a little bit shorter on each side to fit in the Escape key and the touch ID in general I still find myself back tail and meeting my music all the time and wondering why it's not more useful but it is what it is until Apple makes any significant changes in the future but with the extra travel in this keyboard the chassis is a little bit thicker than the 15-inch MacBook Pro that this replaces only point zero three inches but it is noticeable however Apple hasn't let that space go on instead it's made some meaningful improvements to battery life and performance with that extra space the truth is the MacBook Pro design has always felt impossibly thin for the amount of power they were trying to deliver especially in the 15-inch MacBook Pro and all that might have been okay or adequate in 2016 but in the past couple years Intel has really pushed the envelope for the amount of power they're putting into laptop processors specifically I'm talking about these core i9 processors unfortunately Apple has had a pretty spotty record of putting these in the MacBook Pro 2018 Apple quickly through these processors into the 15-inch er and the results were severe throttling to the point where the Cori 9 was only a tiny bit faster than the core i7 despite being quite a bit more expensive in 2019 earlier this year the eight core core e9 did a bit better in the 15-inch MacBook Pro it was reasonably fast on a pretty big upgrade over the previous year but it was still always a step behind the Dell XPS 15 which was significantly faster in things like video editing and content creation which that's really important because that's what these laptops are made for but with this the 16 inch MacBook Pro Apple is actually taking the time to go in and redesign the thermal so that can actually handle these high-end laptop processors from Intel thinner fan blades larger heat sinks extra vents the whole deal and as it turns out these changes make a huge difference in performance despite using the same eight core Core M processor and 32 gigabytes of RAM although now you can go up to 64 this MacBook Pro really does leave its predecessor in the dust in pretty much every benchmark in real life test I could throw at it so I loaded up a fork a two-minute clip in Adobe Premiere and exported at pro res 422 and it completed it in just four minutes and 41 seconds now exporting that same clip on the 15-inch MacBook Pro earlier this year took me over twice as long that's crazy for using the same processor the sixth age bracket pro is now up to speed with something like the XPS 15 which is really where it should have been all along can only imagine how fast it would be in a Mac optimized software like Final Cut Pro now there's more to these great results than just increased airflow in the stone Adobe's software optimizations probably play into it a little bit from earlier this year as well as the new onboard graphics that Apple has included from AMD as with all recent MacBook Pros this guy uses a custom card from AMD this time is the Radeon Pro 5300 M or the 5500 M these graphics aren't your standard year-to-year upgrade though they are based on AMD's new 7 nanometre graphics architecture and clearly they are assisting here in to turning this macro pro into a powerhouse video editing machine they definitely don't turn the MacBook Pro into a gaming laptop overnight but really they were never meant to with the extra thickness Apple has also stuffed in a larger battery which I think a lot of people will be excited to hear about and these proposed battery improvements are really important because large laptops with big screens especially if they're high resolution like this one they often struggle with battery life just as the 15-inch MacBook Pro did the slightly larger battery cells increase the juice from 83 point 6 to 100 watt hours which just happens to be the largest battery you can put on a laptop that you can legally bring onto a plane but larger batteries don't always result in more time away from the wall socket and in the case of the 16 inch MacBook Pro I'm not seeing a huge improvement over the previous version the new model didn't get me through a full eight hour workday although I didn't really expect it to again because of laptops with this many pixels it's powering under my standard workload which involves dozens of tabs streaming music and Spotify slack other applications like that I got around five and a half hours of battery life which you know isn't get you through a full day but it's on par with what you get in other laptops like the 4k XPS 15 now you might be wondering I've gone this far in the review and not mentioned the actual namesake of the device this new 16 inch screen that Apple's put here now obviously it's bigger than before but also has a higher resolution which is great the thing I like about it best probably is that you've got some thinner bezels on these sides finally so it feels like a more modern laptop to actually compete with the others but no one's gonna be surprised that Apple's put a really high quality display in its new flagship MacBook Pro I mean color accuracy brightness contrast ratio doesn't matter what you measure this is one of the best displays you can get in a laptop which makes it great for photographers video editors and people who really need to trust that panel now Apple's also thrown in some new microphones and some new speakers which like they didn't need to do this because they already have the laptop with the best speakers a 15-inch MacBook Pro but these really take it a step further Apple says that you can even hear a half octave more of bass when you listen to this thing when you're watching movies listening to music they really do sound amazing and I really appreciate the extra effort that Apple took to you actually deliver meaningful improvements to them now let's talk a little bit about who this laptop is for because the sparkle of a new MacBook Pro that fixes all the problems of the previous versions it sounds really tempting even for people who this laptop really is not for if your day to day doesn't involve running heavy applications you're really not gonna have much use for a 6 chord let alone an 8 core processor like the ones featured here and you know that might be ok with you but that's a thousand bucks of unused power and more than that unused money because remember Apple doesn't sell these larger macro probes without at least 16 gigabytes of RAM a 6 core processor and discrete graphics and really not everybody needs those things the base configuration starts at 23 99 which is over a thousand bucks more than the 13-inch MacBook Pro and I get it that smaller version doesn't have all these new upgrades doesn't have the thin bezels and the fixed keyboard and the new thermals doesn't have any of that but I think it will eventually just Apple hasn't gotten to bringing those upgrades to it yet in the meantime you're stuck with a pretty hard decision because again you might want the benefits of this new 16 inch MacBook Pro but you don't really want to spend that much money or even really have a need for that much power but I'd recommend either just waiting it out or looking at some of the other options in the window space that are significantly cheaper and have a lot of those features already included but if you really do need this kind of power for the first time in a few years I can fully recommend with a sigh of relief this new 16 inch MacBook Pro it's not the most exciting thing it's not the most forward-thinking thing but in this case I really think Apple was smart to deliver the goods exactly how we wanted them hey thanks for checking out this review please leave a comment below letting us know what you think the 16 inch MacBook Pro and specifically I want to know what you wouldn't do with this new laptop what are the applications that you run that actually need this much power please leave a comment and then of course subscribe for more videos from Digital Trends\n"