The 15-inch MacBook Pro: A Review of its Features and Performance

As I picked up the 15-inch MacBook Pro, I couldn't help but notice how impressive it looked. The speakers, while not as revolutionary as some might have hoped, were still quite good and provided a solid listening experience. I was expecting them to be significantly better than those on the 13-inch MacBook Pro, but alas, they seemed to fall short of that mark. However, even with their limitations, the speakers were still very enjoyable to listen to, and the overall package felt premium.

One feature that really stood out to me was the massive trackpad. It's clear that Apple has put a lot of thought into creating an ergonomic experience, and this is evident in the sheer size of the trackpad. While I do use the right-click function as my secondary click, I can imagine it being a bit too large for some users. Additionally, I did encounter some issues with palm rejection due to the larger surface area, which occasionally caused unintended right-clicks.

In terms of everyday performance, such as email and web browsing, this laptop is incredibly fast. The Skylake chip inside is one of the fastest laptop CPUs available today, and it shows in the snappy performance I experienced while using this machine for these tasks. However, there are some notable exceptions to this rule. Specifically, Adobe Premiere Pro, which I use extensively for video editing, doesn't quite live up to the hype. The MacBook Pro's GPU, the Radeon Pro 460, struggles with performance, even when compared to last year's top-end 15-inch MacBook Pro.

To put this into perspective, I ran some render times for my last YouTube video using Adobe Premiere and OpenCL. The results were as follows:

* Top spec 2015 MacBook Pro: 10 minutes and 45 seconds

* Top spec 2016 MacBook Pro (the one I have): 9 minutes and 20 seconds

* Other setups: varies widely, but generally outperformed the 15-inch MacBook Pro

It's worth noting that Windows laptops with Nvidia cards and CUDA acceleration tend to perform better than MacBooks in Adobe Premiere. However, it's also clear that Apple has optimized their system for Final Cut Pro, which is a completely different beast.

Another notable aspect of this laptop is its thermal performance. Even when pushing the machine hard during video editing, the temperatures remain comfortable, with minimal fan noise on idle and even quieter fan activity when loading.

However, there are some notable downsides to the 15-inch MacBook Pro. The removable cable for the AC adapter is a great touch, but I do miss the MagSafe connection. Furthermore, the battery life has decreased by around 20% compared to last year's model, which is a bit of a disappointment.

In conclusion, while the 15-inch MacBook Pro has its share of impressive features and performance, it also comes with some notable drawbacks, particularly in terms of pricing and performance in Adobe Premiere. For most people, this laptop will be too expensive and overpriced compared to top-end Windows laptops or even last year's model. Nevertheless, it remains a solid package with many great features and capabilities, making it worth considering for users who don't require the absolute best performance and are willing to pay a premium for style and functionality.

Pricing-wise, I think Apple has made a huge mistake by pricing this laptop at such an exorbitant amount. At its core, it's essentially double the price of a top-end Windows laptop that can match its performance in various areas. If you're considering purchasing one of these laptops, I would strongly advise against it and instead opt for a top-tier thin-and-light Windows laptop with a powerful GPU like the GTX 960M or GTX 1050.

That being said, if you're an Apple enthusiast who doesn't care about Adobe Premiere's performance in comparison to other creative applications, this laptop might be worth considering. Additionally, those using Final Cut Pro will likely find it to be a fantastic machine for video editing tasks. Regardless of your needs, I hope this review has provided you with a comprehensive understanding of the 15-inch MacBook Pro and its various features and capabilities.

Closing Thoughts

As I wrap up my time with the 15-inch MacBook Pro, I have to say that while it's an impressive machine with many great features, its performance in Adobe Premiere is sadly underwhelming. The GPU, though powerful, struggles to keep up with demanding video editing tasks, making it a less-than-ideal choice for those who rely heavily on this application.

However, for everyday use, such as email, web browsing, or media consumption, the MacBook Pro performs admirably. It's clear that Apple has put a lot of thought into creating an ergonomic experience and prioritizing comfort during long sessions.

The OLED strip at the bottom of the display is a welcome feature, adding a touch of style to an already sleek machine. The Thunderbolt 3 ports provide plenty of connectivity options for peripherals and external drives, and the fast drive speeds are impressive for those who prioritize storage performance.

While the removal of MagSafe was a disappointment, the new design with a removable cable for the AC adapter is a great touch that makes charging and swapping power sources much easier. The battery life, while decreased by around 20% compared to last year's model, remains respectable during most usage scenarios.

In conclusion, the 15-inch MacBook Pro is an excellent machine that checks all the right boxes for many users. While its pricing may be off-putting for some, those who value style and functionality will likely find it to be a compelling choice.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey how's it going guys this is Dave - Dee and this is my review of the 2016 15 inch MacBook Pro so this is the fully SPECT out version the 2.9 gigahertz CPU and the Radeon Pro 460 retails for $3,100 u.s. is pretty steep the exterior is super clean there's no light up logo anymore but the build quality is amazing literally the best on the market the XPS 15 and the 14 inch razor blade are the closest but they're still pretty far off machining on this MacBook is really impressive the 13-inch base MacBook Pro had two Thunderbolt 3 ports I really didn't like how few there were but the 15-inch MacBook Pro has four of these ports a much more comfortable number a lot of people are upset about the adapters and dongles that we need to kind of make everything work now and I get it my camera uses an SD card slot I need to use an adapter now to make everything work but in 2018 like a year from now people will not care about the old-school USB port it's important now because we're in a transitionary period but this is what you need you need people like Apple and Lenovo and HP like you need the popular computer companies to be aggressive and stick use PC ports and everything so that accessory makers will adapt and bring us those devices as well I want use PC mice I want UCC everything and the best way to do it an aggressive way to do it is doing this it sucks while you're in the transition your period but a year from now will be good this is a keyboard that takes time to appreciate I didn't like the keyboard on the 12-inch MacBook the first gen butterfly switches were pretty lame and I never got used to them these switches are better and I would say that the biggest difference for me is that after using it for a week I've gotten used to and I actually really like this keyboard when you try it for the first time it's going to feel terrible because it's probably very different from what you're used to the travel is short the keys feel too big and the arrow keys are in that weird spot where you might hit shift when you're trying to press the uparrow key boards are all about personal preference but I think most people can learn to like this keyboard the display is awesome very brights with great color gamut and accuracy it's noticeably better than last year's model I don't fight call it the best of screen because there are some excellent 15 inch screens out there I prefer the display on the XPS 15 but this is a fantastic display definitely one of the best if you're unfamiliar with the touch part it's basically a strip of touchscreen with configurable software buttons and controls and this strip replaced all the function keys on the keyboard and when I first got this laptop in I use the touch bar as much as I could to get a feel for it so I could form an opinion on it and like most reviewers I found it cool like fun to play with but certainly not revolutionary and fast forward a week later I find that I don't use this touch bar very much there's nothing wrong with it it works as intended it's got great texture it doesn't get all fingerprint tea the tech is solid and touch ID works really well my problem with the touch bar is that you have to look away from the screen to look at the touch bar to use it and that inherently makes a workflow a little bit less efficient so let's say you're in mail and you're trying to manage your mail for the day it's nice to have extra functions and commands available on the touch bar but to use them I have to glance down press them and then look back up and the same thing goes with suggested words while you're typing or if you're in the calendar app or any of the touch bar features keyboard shortcuts let you maintain your focus on the screen so I flag emails edit videos play Starcraft all with keyboard shortcuts so I don't to look away from the screen now there are some cool things you can do with it I like scrubbing through videos I love the integration with Apple Maps I love neon cat and developers are working on better integration but I feel like we've been here before I feel like we've done the whole let's wait for developers to come up with something cool for it before we judge it I don't know I feel like it's something that I would probably never use very often the speakers are really good the baseline 13-inch MacBook Pro has killer speakers so I thought these would be way better because there's more room to work with but they sound very similar to the 13-inch possibly worse like they have better bass but not as clear sounding still really awesome speakers though the trackpad is massive it's a great trackpad MacBooks still have the best trackpads great texture excellent taptic mechanics but this time I think it's too big so I'm someone who uses the right click as secondary click and not everyone does this it's something a lot of Windows users do and I'm getting occasional issues with palm rejection because my hand is making contact with the bottom right surface while left clicking so it thinks I'm trying to right click ok in terms of everyday lightweight performance like email and web browsing this thing is super fast because the hardware is top end the skylake chip in here is one of the fastest laptop CPUs right now and they're running ridiculously fast drives now sadly these drives are soldered on which is so annoying you can't upgrade them or even replace them if they fail it has 16 gigs of RAM it's a bummer you can't upgrade it but I'm actually ok with 16 gigs it's enough for what I do the GPU in here is the Radeon Pro 460 now Apple talks it up a lot with some big numbers and cool crafts but for what I use the laptop for performance is not great these are some render times for my last YouTube video I use Adobe Premiere these are the speeds of the top spec 2015 MacBook Pro from last year using OpenCL and metal to render and then this is from the top spec 2016 MacBook Pro the one I have here performance is better but it's pretty mild and then these are some other setups I tested just for kicks now it's kind of silly to compare the performance across platform like this because Windows laptops have Nvidia cards and use CUDA acceleration but the takeaway is this if you're an Adobe user particularly Adobe Premiere this Apple laptop is going to perform worse than an equivalent Windows laptop I don't know mean equivalent in terms of pricing because Apple laptops are always going to be more expensive I'm talking about products here a top-tier thin and light Windows laptop with a gtx 960m or gtx 1050 that's coming out those will outperform this macbook easily so if you're kind of contemplating getting one of these things and you're an Adobe user you should probably end that train of thought and look at Windows laptops now if you're a final cut user it's a completely different ball of wax I don't use final cut so I can't speak about it intelligently but my understanding is this final cut is awesome on this new MacBook Pro in terms of gaming performance this is a laptop that isn't really designed for heavy gaming but I'll be doing a dedicated video for gaming on all the different Mac books including external GPUs pretty soon so stay tuned for that the thermals are great even when going full-tilt the temperatures are very comfortable to use fan noise is silent on idle as usual but unload it's actually a little quieter than last year's model it's a smaller battery this year the CP is more power efficient and Mac OS has really good power management so when I use a laptop for lighter stuff like emails web browsing or media consumption I'll hit eight hours comfortably but if I'm pushing it hard on a video edit I'm getting shorter battery life than last year by around 20% I don't love that the MagSafe connection is gone and that's a bummer but the removable cable on the AC adapter is awesome I've had many frayed cables over the years that require new chargers and now you can just replace the cable so even though Apple is making some serious Bank selling dongles they're probably going to sell less power adapters okay some closing thoughts here I like the idea of the 15-inch MacBook Pro I like the OLED strip I like the Thunderbolt 3 ports I like the display I love the fast drive speeds it has some shortcomings but the overall package is really nice to use the pricing however is ridiculous it's essentially double the price of really good top-end Windows laptops and compared to those and even last year's macbook pro like their top-end 15-inch MacBook Pro from last year this doesn't make sense as to why this is so expensive it's almost $1000 more than it should be in my opinion now it's a good product the feature set is good the performance is good but for most people it just is way too expensive and overpriced that's the end of this video hope you guys liked it thumbs would be liked it subs if you loved it it's been nice I'll see you guys next time youhey how's it going guys this is Dave - Dee and this is my review of the 2016 15 inch MacBook Pro so this is the fully SPECT out version the 2.9 gigahertz CPU and the Radeon Pro 460 retails for $3,100 u.s. is pretty steep the exterior is super clean there's no light up logo anymore but the build quality is amazing literally the best on the market the XPS 15 and the 14 inch razor blade are the closest but they're still pretty far off machining on this MacBook is really impressive the 13-inch base MacBook Pro had two Thunderbolt 3 ports I really didn't like how few there were but the 15-inch MacBook Pro has four of these ports a much more comfortable number a lot of people are upset about the adapters and dongles that we need to kind of make everything work now and I get it my camera uses an SD card slot I need to use an adapter now to make everything work but in 2018 like a year from now people will not care about the old-school USB port it's important now because we're in a transitionary period but this is what you need you need people like Apple and Lenovo and HP like you need the popular computer companies to be aggressive and stick use PC ports and everything so that accessory makers will adapt and bring us those devices as well I want use PC mice I want UCC everything and the best way to do it an aggressive way to do it is doing this it sucks while you're in the transition your period but a year from now will be good this is a keyboard that takes time to appreciate I didn't like the keyboard on the 12-inch MacBook the first gen butterfly switches were pretty lame and I never got used to them these switches are better and I would say that the biggest difference for me is that after using it for a week I've gotten used to and I actually really like this keyboard when you try it for the first time it's going to feel terrible because it's probably very different from what you're used to the travel is short the keys feel too big and the arrow keys are in that weird spot where you might hit shift when you're trying to press the uparrow key boards are all about personal preference but I think most people can learn to like this keyboard the display is awesome very brights with great color gamut and accuracy it's noticeably better than last year's model I don't fight call it the best of screen because there are some excellent 15 inch screens out there I prefer the display on the XPS 15 but this is a fantastic display definitely one of the best if you're unfamiliar with the touch part it's basically a strip of touchscreen with configurable software buttons and controls and this strip replaced all the function keys on the keyboard and when I first got this laptop in I use the touch bar as much as I could to get a feel for it so I could form an opinion on it and like most reviewers I found it cool like fun to play with but certainly not revolutionary and fast forward a week later I find that I don't use this touch bar very much there's nothing wrong with it it works as intended it's got great texture it doesn't get all fingerprint tea the tech is solid and touch ID works really well my problem with the touch bar is that you have to look away from the screen to look at the touch bar to use it and that inherently makes a workflow a little bit less efficient so let's say you're in mail and you're trying to manage your mail for the day it's nice to have extra functions and commands available on the touch bar but to use them I have to glance down press them and then look back up and the same thing goes with suggested words while you're typing or if you're in the calendar app or any of the touch bar features keyboard shortcuts let you maintain your focus on the screen so I flag emails edit videos play Starcraft all with keyboard shortcuts so I don't to look away from the screen now there are some cool things you can do with it I like scrubbing through videos I love the integration with Apple Maps I love neon cat and developers are working on better integration but I feel like we've been here before I feel like we've done the whole let's wait for developers to come up with something cool for it before we judge it I don't know I feel like it's something that I would probably never use very often the speakers are really good the baseline 13-inch MacBook Pro has killer speakers so I thought these would be way better because there's more room to work with but they sound very similar to the 13-inch possibly worse like they have better bass but not as clear sounding still really awesome speakers though the trackpad is massive it's a great trackpad MacBooks still have the best trackpads great texture excellent taptic mechanics but this time I think it's too big so I'm someone who uses the right click as secondary click and not everyone does this it's something a lot of Windows users do and I'm getting occasional issues with palm rejection because my hand is making contact with the bottom right surface while left clicking so it thinks I'm trying to right click ok in terms of everyday lightweight performance like email and web browsing this thing is super fast because the hardware is top end the skylake chip in here is one of the fastest laptop CPUs right now and they're running ridiculously fast drives now sadly these drives are soldered on which is so annoying you can't upgrade them or even replace them if they fail it has 16 gigs of RAM it's a bummer you can't upgrade it but I'm actually ok with 16 gigs it's enough for what I do the GPU in here is the Radeon Pro 460 now Apple talks it up a lot with some big numbers and cool crafts but for what I use the laptop for performance is not great these are some render times for my last YouTube video I use Adobe Premiere these are the speeds of the top spec 2015 MacBook Pro from last year using OpenCL and metal to render and then this is from the top spec 2016 MacBook Pro the one I have here performance is better but it's pretty mild and then these are some other setups I tested just for kicks now it's kind of silly to compare the performance across platform like this because Windows laptops have Nvidia cards and use CUDA acceleration but the takeaway is this if you're an Adobe user particularly Adobe Premiere this Apple laptop is going to perform worse than an equivalent Windows laptop I don't know mean equivalent in terms of pricing because Apple laptops are always going to be more expensive I'm talking about products here a top-tier thin and light Windows laptop with a gtx 960m or gtx 1050 that's coming out those will outperform this macbook easily so if you're kind of contemplating getting one of these things and you're an Adobe user you should probably end that train of thought and look at Windows laptops now if you're a final cut user it's a completely different ball of wax I don't use final cut so I can't speak about it intelligently but my understanding is this final cut is awesome on this new MacBook Pro in terms of gaming performance this is a laptop that isn't really designed for heavy gaming but I'll be doing a dedicated video for gaming on all the different Mac books including external GPUs pretty soon so stay tuned for that the thermals are great even when going full-tilt the temperatures are very comfortable to use fan noise is silent on idle as usual but unload it's actually a little quieter than last year's model it's a smaller battery this year the CP is more power efficient and Mac OS has really good power management so when I use a laptop for lighter stuff like emails web browsing or media consumption I'll hit eight hours comfortably but if I'm pushing it hard on a video edit I'm getting shorter battery life than last year by around 20% I don't love that the MagSafe connection is gone and that's a bummer but the removable cable on the AC adapter is awesome I've had many frayed cables over the years that require new chargers and now you can just replace the cable so even though Apple is making some serious Bank selling dongles they're probably going to sell less power adapters okay some closing thoughts here I like the idea of the 15-inch MacBook Pro I like the OLED strip I like the Thunderbolt 3 ports I like the display I love the fast drive speeds it has some shortcomings but the overall package is really nice to use the pricing however is ridiculous it's essentially double the price of really good top-end Windows laptops and compared to those and even last year's macbook pro like their top-end 15-inch MacBook Pro from last year this doesn't make sense as to why this is so expensive it's almost $1000 more than it should be in my opinion now it's a good product the feature set is good the performance is good but for most people it just is way too expensive and overpriced that's the end of this video hope you guys liked it thumbs would be liked it subs if you loved it it's been nice I'll see you guys next time you\n"