Laptop

HP Envy 15 – A 4K OLED RTX Laptop!

We’ve been featuring some very interesting Laptops on the channel lately, and this is another very unique Laptop. HP has sent over their brand new HP Envy 15 and they also sponsored the video linked up top, for us to give you a closer look.

It comes with a 4K Touch-Display that’s also an OLED Panel, up to a 10th Generation Intel Core i9 and an NVIDIA RTX GPU. This Laptop is not just outstanding for Video-Editing, Photo-Editing and 3D Modelling, but it’s also a very good choice for Gaming as well.

So, without any further ado, get those snacks ready and here is our first look at the HP Envy 15.

Design

Starting off with the Design, the HP Envy 15 is a 15” Laptop, hence the name. It comes in this really nice silver metal build, this is a fully metal body. There’s no plastic here at all, so it has a very premium build. I’m also a big fan of the silver colour, especially now when most Laptops are black or dark grey, seeing something different definitely makes it stand out. 

Rather than being a thick and heavy power Laptop, the Envy 15 is surprisingly portable. At a weight of just 1.81kg and a thickness of just 1.8cm, this is one of the thinnest and lightest power Laptops that I’ve ever seen. Also, the body itself is actually tapered, so it is thinner on the front, at just 0.5cm, and then it gets thicker towards the back. The sides are also very thin, they’re about the same thickness as the Ports. Overall the HP Envy 15 has this very thin look to it, no matter the angle that you look at it from.

The full-metal Body and tapered design make this look & feel very premium

The full-metal Body and tapered design make this look & feel very premium

In terms of the Ports, we have a microSD card slot on the left, alongside not one, but two Thunderbolt 3 Ports with 40Gbs/s Transfer Speeds. You can also use Thunderbolt to connect a powerful eGPU, something like an RTX 3080, and get some insane Gaming Performance out of this. It’s just incredible what you can do with Thunderbolt. You can also hook this up to a 5K Monitor via Thunderbolt, or even a 5K and a 4K Monitor at the same time, they all connect via this single cable. I’m a big fan of Thunderbolt and it’s really nice to see that we do get two of them rather than the usual one that we see on most Windows Laptops.

Aside from this, we get a full-sized HDMI Port, which is also HDMI 2.0, meaning it can do 4K60. Then we get a USB 3.1 Type A Port as well as the Power Connector, which uses a powerful 200W Power Adapter. On the right-hand side, we have a Vent, a second USB 3.1 Type A Port and a Headphone Jack. On the bottom, the HP Envy 15 has some pretty tall rubber feet in order to give it as much airflow as possible, which will be quite important when we get to the Performance section of this video.

I have to say, I really love how this Laptop looks from the bottom as well. I haven’t said this about many Laptops.It’s got this industrial look to it, with perfectly cut cut-outs for the Air Intake, the Air Outtake and the Speakers. So, Design wise, the HP Envy 15 is one of the most premium looking Laptops on the market right now. 

Display 

When it comes to the Display, this is one of the most striking Displays you can find on a Laptop, and not just because this is a full 4K panel, which has a PPI of 282 across 15.6 inches.

The 4K OLED & Touch-Screen Display gives you everything you’d expect from a high-end Laptop

The 4K OLED & Touch-Screen Display gives you everything you’d expect from a high-end Laptop

Since this is an OLED Panel, a Samsung manufactured AMOLED Display to be more precise, the Black Levels are perfect, the Viewing Angles are incredible alongside a 100,000:1 Contrast ratio, you get what is one of the very best viewing experiences on a Laptop. Whether you’re watching a movie or playing a game, the colour will be super vibrant and the overall viewing experience is going to be very impressive. The Display itself can go up to 400 Nits of Brightness and it also supports HDR.

This is also a Touch Display, which means that even though the Panel doesn’t go fully flat, for you to be able to use it as a drawing Tablet, you can indeed interact with the on-screen elements by just touching the Panel.

Keyboard & Trackpad 

The Keyboard feels better than I expected. It’s soft to the touch, but you also get a clicky feel when you type. The Keyboard itself is Backlit but we do not have an RGB Backlight as this isn’t a Laptop dedicated to just Gaming, more about that in a bit. 

If you’re anything like us, you won’t miss that right Control Key.

If you’re anything like us, you won’t miss that right Control Key.

We do have a Fingerprint Reader, which for the first time that I have ever seen on a Laptop, is actually a Key on the Keyboard. You cannot physically press it, but it does replace the right-hand side Control Key. That’s a Key that I don’t think I ever use, I mostly use the left Control Key and I think most of you do the same. To be honest, I actually do like having the Fingerprint Reader here as opposed to on the top, built-into the Power Button. It just makes it so much easier to reach when I’m using the Trackpad and I’m in an App that has Fingerprint Support. 

Speaking of the Trackpad, we get a Glass one rather than the traditional Plastic that we see on a lot of Windows Laptops, we get full support for the Windows 10 gestures as well as Windows Precision Drivers. The Trackpad is also a single Button and it uses a ‘Diving Board’ mechanism, meaning that it gets more difficult to press the closer you are to the top.

Camera, Microphones & Speakers 

Check out the Video above to see & hear how these fair.

Check out the Video above to see & hear how these fair.

Moving on to the Camera, the Microphones and the Speakers. The Front Camera is positioned on the top, so no weird angles from having the Camera on the bottom Bezels, or even inside the Keyboard.

I’ll let you be the judge when it comes to the Camera & Speaker Quality and the Microphones, you can check that out in the video linked at the top. The Speakers themselves are powered by Bang & Olufsen audio.

Performance

So now that we’ve covered the Design, Display the Keyboard, Trackpad, Camera, Microphones and Speakers, let’s talk about my favourite section, the Performance. The model that we have comes with a 10th Generation Intel Core i7 10750H Processor. This is a Six-Core CPU with a turbo-boost of up to 5GHz. According to Intel, this offers up to 54% more FPS in Games, up to 44% better overall Performance compared to a 3 year old PC and up to two-times faster 4K Video & Rendering. 

It’s not a purpose-built Gaming Laptop, but it does a decent job of it

It’s not a purpose-built Gaming Laptop, but it does a decent job of it

GPU wise, we get the RTX 2060 Max-Q Edition with 6GB of GDDR6 Memory. This, in combination with 16GB of DDR4 2933MHz Memory and 1TB of NVMe Flash-Storage, make it a very powerful device for not just 4K Video Editing and 3D Modelling, but also Gaming. The 2060 isn’t really a 4K Gaming Card, so you wouldn’t be Gaming in 4K Resolution, however, you can easily play pretty much any modern game in 1080p on maxed out settings and get a very stable 60FPS or higher. In some games, you can even bump the Resolution to 1440p. In Fortnite for example, I can play on fully maxed out (Epic) settings and get a solid 90FPS in 1080p. If I bump the Resolution to around QHD, I still get 70FPS while still having everything on Epic settings. 

Since we have an RTX GPU, this Laptop is actually very good in terms of 3D Rendering. If you use software such as Keyshot 9, that support GPU Rendering, we’ve seen a noticeable improvement in rendering times, even coming from our 32-Core Rendering PC. This Laptop, thanks to its RTX GPU, can render faster than our dedicated Rendering PC using CPU Rendering. 

Overall, I would say that this Laptop is still suited more for creative professionals, rather than people who are just looking for a Gaming machine. Think of the HP Envy 15 as a Creative Laptop that can also game pretty well.

Battery Life

As with any PC of this variety, it is best to leave it plugged in to maximise Performance

As with any PC of this variety, it is best to leave it plugged in to maximise Performance

In terms of the Battery Life, HP promises up to 16.5 hours of battery on the HP Envy 15. Obviously, that does depend on how you intend to use it. The HP Envy does actually support Fast Charging, meaning that you can charge it to 50% in just 45 minutes, which is pretty impressive. Now, I do have to mention that if you do want to use this at its fullest potential, you need to have it plugged in as when you’re on the go, the RTX 2060 would just be too power-hungry, depending on on if it’s utilised at its max Performance. 

Value 

So in the end, who is the HP Envy 15 for and how much does it cost? Well, a similar spec’d model to our unit, that comes with the same i7 10750H Processor, RTX 2060 and 16GB of RAM, but 512GB of Storage rather than 1TB and an 4K IPS LCD Display rather than 4K OLED, costs around £1,800. I think that is pretty good considering that for this price, other Laptops don’t even come with a dedicated GPU at all, not even to mention a 4K Display.

Overall, if you’re a creative professional and you do Photo & Video Editing, 3D Modelling or 3D Rendering, I would definitely consider taking a look at the HP Envy 15 as it not only offers a stunning looking body, but also a stunning Display alongside some unrivalled Performance for its price.

MSI GS66 Stealth (2020) - A 300Hz Portable Gaming Laptop!

Meet the MSI GS66 Stealth Laptop, a Laptop that comes with a 300Hz Display, but unlike some other 300Hz Laptops, this one is actually very portable. It comes with a 15” Display, it’s thin, light and it also comes with pretty much the highest-end specs that you can find on a Laptop.

MSI sent this over, and sponsored this entire video, for us to take a closer look at probably the most powerful portable Laptop that you can buy. 

Design

Starting off with the Design, the MSI GS66 Stealth is an absolutely stunning looking Laptop. It’s got this very stealthy Matte Black look, which MSI is calling Core Black. The logo itself is laser etched into the body of the Laptop, so from certain angles it’s not even visible and you just get a slab of black metal. When closed down, the GS66 Stealth is simply just a straight piece of metal. I really love how this Laptop looks, it’s a very anonymous Laptop so to say, it’s definitely deserving of its ‘Stealth’ branding.

At some angles, you can’t see the MSI logo at all.

At some angles, you can’t see the MSI logo at all.

It’s also surprisingly portable. With a weight of just 2.1kg and a thickness of just 1.9cm, this is really the thinnest and most portable high-end Gaming Laptop that I have personally seen. The whole idea of the GS66 Stealth is that you have a very powerful Laptop when you’re at work, then you just pack it in your bag and take it to your place and use it as a high-end Gaming Laptop there. It’s really the best of both worlds, work and Gaming.

The Port selection is also very generous on this. We have a Thunderbolt 3 Port, which allows you to connect this Laptop to 5K Monitors or even connect an External GPU for even more Performance in case you need it. You get a full sized HDMI 2.0 Port, three USB 3.2 Type A Ports, as well as one USB 3.2 USB C Port and an Ethernet Port as well. The Cooling on this Laptop is very extensive as well. We have Vents on each side, in the Hinge as well as under the Laptop itself. You’ll see why this is important when I get to the Performance section of this video. 

Display

Now, the Display. The model we have comes with a 15.6”, 1080p, IPS Display with a 300Hz Refresh Rate. Usually, Laptops have a 60Hz Refresh Rate, meaning that they can display up to 60FPS. Some of the higher-end Gaming Monitors that you can buy have something like a 144Hz Refresh Rate, or 240Hz as a maximum. This one has an insane 300Hz Display, more than on any Desktop Monitor that you can buy as of right now. So, if you’re a competitive Gamer, this Display is going to make a massive difference as you’ll be able to see five times more frames per second, compared to a standard Display. 

This model has a 1080p Display, but there is a 4K option.

This model has a 1080p Display, but there is a 4K option.

Now, if you’re not a competitive Gamer, MSI does have a 4K option of this Display. This gives you more sharpness at a more standard 60Hz Refresh Rate. If you’re a Content Creator and not an E-Sports Gamer, I would recommend that version, but if you need an insanely high Refresh Rate, you do have this option on the GS66 Stealth. 

When it comes to the quality of the Display Panel itself, it’s a pretty great Panel. The Viewing Angles are great and the colours pop. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any calibration happening at the factory, at least not for the 1080p Panel. The Bezels are very thin, with the exception of the pretty noticeable chin. I would’ve loved this to be as thin as the other three Bezels, but of course that that would’ve required a 16:10 Aspect Ratio Display, which isn’t really that common on Gaming Laptops. 

Something that I really like about this Display is that you can tilt it all the way down and the Hinge itself, just like the entire Laptop, is fully made out of metal, giving the entire Laptop a very premium look and feel. 

Keyboard & Trackpad

It just wouldn’t be a Gaming Laptop without RGB.

It just wouldn’t be a Gaming Laptop without RGB.

What about the Keyboard and the Trackpad? I’ll start with the Trackpad because this is far simpler. You get a very wide Trackpad with the GS66 and there are no individual Buttons on it, it’s all just a single Button. Just like on most other Windows Laptops, it does indeed use a Diving Board mechanism, which means that it’s fairly easy to press near the Button and then it gets harder, the higher you go. We do have Windows Precision Drivers, so the tracking is really good, I don’t really have anything to complain about here.

Now, when it comes to the Keyboard, we do have a full RGB Keyboard, with each Key being individually back-lit. The Keyboard Backlight is provided by ‘Steel Series’ and there’s a ton of different effects that you can have and tweak, based to your liking. In terms of how it feels, it’s a very rubbery Keyboard so it’s soft to the touch rather than ‘clicky’. So, if you’re into that, you’ll definitely love this Keyboard. 

Camera, Microphones & Speakers

Before I talk about the Performance, which is what you’re all probably here for, we did some tests with the Camera, Microphones and Speakers in the video above. If that’s of interest, be sure to give it a watch.

Performance 

Right, time for the Performance. CPU-wise, we get the highest-end 10th Generation Intel i9 10980HK Chip, which is Intel’s most powerful Processor for a Laptop. It has eight Cores and can Turbo Boost up to 5.3GHz. As for the GPU, this model right here comes with the NVIDIA RTX 2080 Super Max-Q, with 8GB of GDDR6 Memory. With the RAM, our unit has 16GB of 2666MHz DDR4 Memory, but you can actually configure this to up to 64GB of RAM. Storage-wise, our unit has 1TB of NVMe Flash Storage, with Read Speeds of just over 3GB/s. So, these specs are pretty much the highest that you can get in a Laptop, normally stuff that you see in a large, thick 17” Gaming Laptop. But as you can probably tell, the GS66 is very thin and very portable, considering the specs that it packs. 

If you’re looking for a Gaming Laptop, you can’t get much better specs than these.

If you’re looking for a Gaming Laptop, you can’t get much better specs than these.

So, now let’s run some real world tests and see how it performs. In Fortnite, I was playing this game on maxed-out settings and I was getting around 120FPS, which is nuts for a Laptop. But, keep in mind that you do have that insane 300Hz Refresh Rate, so if you drop the settings a bit, you can actually get close to, or even exceed that 300FPS mark and take full advantage of what this Display has to offer.

In Call of Duty Warzone, I was getting around 120FPS. This was on ‘Epic’ settings with everything maxed out, except for Ray-Tracing, which was disabled. In Overwatch, I was getting 160FPS on ‘Epic’ settings and after dropping the settings to Medium, I got to 300FPS. I then decided to cap the Frame-Rate to 60 and, holy smokes, I was shocked to see how laggy 60FPS looked, compared to 300FPS. Next up, I tried Starcraft 2, one of my personal favourites and on the highest possible settings, I was getting between 200-220FPS. It’s unbelievable that we can do all of this on a Laptop that can easily fit in your bag.

Now, with this insane Performance, you can also use this Laptop for actual work. So, I loaded ‘Keyshot’, which is what we use for all the concepts and renders that you see on the channel, and the GS66 rendered our ZONEofTECH benchmark in just 29 seconds. This is using the GPU. For example, rendering the same project at the same exact settings, on the 2019 maxed out iMac that has an Eight-Core i9 9900K Processor, took 5 minutes and 50 seconds. This is why having an RTX Card in your computer makes such a massive difference. 

Battery Life 

That Thunderbolt Port could come in handy if you’re looking for the best performance on the go.

That Thunderbolt Port could come in handy if you’re looking for the best performance on the go.

The MSI GS66 Stealth features a 99WHr Battery, which is the largest Battery that you can legally carry with you on an Plane, so MSI have really gone all the way here. Since we do have a Thunderbolt 3 Port, we can actually charge it via any USB C Charger. In fact, you can even charge this Laptop on the go, via a USB C Power Bank. 

According to MSI, you can get up to 9 hours of productivity use out of it. This will of course drop if you’re Gaming or if you’re doing anything intensive. Also, because of how power hungry the NVIDIA GPU and the Eight-Core CPU is, you will need to have this Laptop plugged in if you want to take full advantage of its Performance. Otherwise, on Battery, it will run at about 50% of its full power.

Value

Ok, how much does the GS66 cost and what do you get for that money?

Well, at the moment you can get it for as low as £1,550 and for that price you get a Six-Core, 10th Gen, i7 Processor, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, an RTX 2060 GPU with 6GB of Video Memory and a 240Hz Refresh Rate. It’s not 300FPS, but it is very close.

That’s the configuration that I would personally recommend. It’s still extremely powerful and with that Thunderbolt 3 Port, you can indeed connect a Desktop Class GPU in case you do need more Performance.

iPad Pro vs MacBook Pro 13 (2020) - Which One's the Real Laptop?

Over the past few months, there have been two devices that I’ve been using a ton. The iPad Pro with the brand new Magic Keyboard, which has actually now become my home computer and a full Laptop replacement for when I’m on the go. Also, I’ve also been using the new 13” 2020 MacBook Pro, which has now replaced my 15” MacBook Pro from 2019.

The Full In-Depth Review of the 13” 2020 MacBook Pro is coming out the week following this video but until then, here’s the answer to the question that a lot of you have been asking. Should you buy an iPad Pro with the Magic Keyboard, which is finally a true Laptop replacement now, or should you get the MacBook Pro 13”?

Well, get all those snacks ready and buckle up because this is going to be a very detailed comparison. We’ll be covering everything from the Design, Display, Keyboard, Trackpad, Camera, Microphones, Speakers, Performance, Battery Life and the Value! 

Design

Starting off with the Design, these two devices couldn’t be any more different. The MacBook Pro was born to be a Laptop, while the iPad Pro was born to be a Tablet, which then became a Laptop.

In terms of which one looks better, this is very subjective because if you’re looking for a more traditional Laptop, the MacBook Pro is the winner here. You get a full Aluminium and Glass Unibody build, which is extremely sturdy and premium. But, if you’re looking for something that’s a bit more versatile, the iPad Pro is indeed the winner here. With that floating design, the iPad Pro definitely looks more futuristic. But with the Magic Keyboard itself, it doesn’t feel as premium as the MacBook Pro does. I’m not referring to the actual Keys, but the material that surrounds them. 

On the iPad Pro we have this Silicone/Rubber material, while it does indeed protect the iPad, you don’t get that ultra-premium feel that the MacBook Pro gives you. Also, this material gets smudged extremely easy, after even just a few hours of use. So, the iPad Pro will look very used, in a matter of hours, while the MacBook Pro will keep on looking brand new for years as it has a full metal body. So overall, the MacBook Pro does look and feel like a more premium device.

The iPad Pro 12.9” weighs roughly the same, and is slightly thicker than the MacBook Pro 13”. But it is much more versatile.

The iPad Pro 12.9” weighs roughly the same, and is slightly thicker than the MacBook Pro 13”. But it is much more versatile.

But which one is more usable? Well, the iPad Pro has a significant advantage here. You see, not only does the iPad Pro support Touch Input, but you can easily remove it from the Keyboard Case and use it just like a Tablet in Landscape or even Portrait mode, whenever you wish. You can use the iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil as well, you can use it as an External Monitor for your MacBook Pro, none of which you can do with a Mac. You also have FaceID, compared to the TouchID unlock on the MacBook Pro and I have to say, FaceID is significantly superior. The moment you tap the screen or even a Key on the Keyboard, the iPad instantly unlocks.

Same goes for when you’re filling in passwords or using Apple Pay, the iPad Pro is a massive improvement over a MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro is just a traditional Laptop, whereas the iPad Pro is this brand new modular device that you can use in any shape or form you want, it’s a magical device.

When it comes to the Portability, the iPad Pro comes in two sizes, the 11” and 12.9”. The MacBook Pro comes in 13” and 16”. So, if we compare both 13” sizes of both devices, the iPad Pro on its own weighs 641g, while the MacBook Pro 13” weighs 1.4kg. However, if we add in the Magic Keyboard to the 12.9” iPad Pro, it ends up being 1.35kg, almost as heavy as the MacBook Pro is. The 11” iPad Pro, with the Magic Keyboard, weighs 1.07kg, so that’s much lighter. However, both iPad Pro’s are actually slightly thicker than the 13” MacBook Pro. So, just because of how much more versatile and flexible the iPad is to use, I have to give the design award to the iPad Pro. 

Display

So now, what about the Display? Well, both the iPad Pro and the MacBook Pro have an outstanding Display Panel. 

They’re both LCD displays, but they’re IPS Panels, meaning that they have an almost 180 Degree viewing angle. They both have a DCI P3 Panel, which can display around 25% more colours, when compared to a standard sRGB Display. They’re very good Displays, the best LCD Displays that you can find on a Laptop or a Tablet. But, the iPad Pro’s Display is actually superior in three ways.

The iPad Pro’s biggest advantage, with the Display, is definitely that Dynamic Refresh Rate.

The iPad Pro’s biggest advantage, with the Display, is definitely that Dynamic Refresh Rate.

Firstly, the Bezels are much thinner on the iPad Pro. This means that the iPad Pro’s Display not only looks better and more futuristic, but if you get the 12.9” iPad Pro, it would be noticeably smaller than the Display on the MacBook Pro 13”, even-though they’re almost the same physical size.

Secondly, the iPad Pro’s Display is actually brighter, with a peak brightness of 600 Nits, compared to around 500 Nits on the MacBook Pro. This means that if you plan on using either of these outdoors, the iPad Pro is a much better option.

Lastly, the iPad Pro also has a ProMotion Display, which can adjust its Refresh Rate from 24Hz, 30Hz, 60Hz and all the way up to 120Hz, depending on the content that you’re watching. The MacBook Pro has a fixed 60Hz Refresh Rate Display. I have to say, this is by far the biggest advantage of the iPad Pro. Everything that you do on the iPad Pro feels so smooth. The thing is, my MacBook Pro does drop a lot of frames when scrolling and navigating through the UI. The animations don’t always run at 60FPS, so when they drop to 50FPS or even 40FPS and then you compare that to the iPad Pro, which always runs at 120FPS in the UI, the difference is just gigantic. Because of this, I have to give the Display win to the iPad Pro.

Keyboard & Trackpad

Next up, we have the Keyboard and the Trackpad.

When it comes to the Keyboard, both of these devices now feature Apple’s brand new Magic Keyboard. Long gone is the disastrous Magic Keyboard that had almost no Key Travel and Apple refused to replace over a period of five years, even-though it constantly broke. This Magic Keyboard is very similar to the one that we get on the iMac Keyboards, which is also called…the Magic Keyboard.  They’re also very similar to the amazing Keyboards that we used to get on all the MacBooks up until 2015.

The difference is some areas is not quite as black & white as it might seem.

The difference is some areas is not quite as black & white as it might seem.

The difference here is that we do get larger Key-Caps and a more stable Keyboard. Both of these Keyboards are actually much better than on the 2015 MacBook Pro and even better than the current Magic Keyboards on the iMacs. But which one of these is better?

Well, the MacBook Pro definitely has a better Keyboard, which you probably expected, as this is..you know…an actual Laptop. But the thing is, it’s not actually that much better. If the MacBook Pro has a 10/10  Keyboard, the iPad Pro probably has around an 8.8/10. At least when it comes to the 11” iPad Pro, which does indeed have a much smaller Keyboard overall. I do find it to be a bit too crammed and some of the Keys also have a much smaller size in order to fit in this footprint.

The 12.9” iPad Pro has a full-size Keyboard, just like the MacBook Pro and that one’s much more comfortable to type on. But, aside from the size difference, the typing experience is almost identical between the two sizes of the iPad Pro and the MacBook Pro. You get the same 1mm of Key Travel, I actually ended up scripting almost all of my videos off of the iPad Pro, until I got this 13” MacBook Pro. The moment I started scripting on the iPad Pro, I couldn’t go back to my 2019 15” MacBook Pro, which still comes with that Butterfly Keyboard. So, the typing experience is excellent! 

One advantage that the MacBook Pro has over the iPad Pro’s Keyboard is that we do get a function row of keys. We have the Escape Key as well as the TouchBar, which gives you virtual controls based on the App that you’re using. The iPad Pro however, has none of that. If you want to adjust the volume or the brightness, you have to go into the Control Centre, which takes noticeably longer, compared to the MacBook Pro.

Both Keyboards are Backlit but the iPad Pro does not have a Key, or even a software toggle in the Control Centre, to adjust its brightness. In order to do that, you have to go all the way into the Settings and adjust it from there, which is very inconvenient. On the MacBook Pro, you just have a toggle for the Backlight built into the TouchBar, it’s very quick and convenient to adjust it.

Interestingly enough, I do find typing on the iPad Pro do be somewhat more comfortable. This is mostly because, since it is a much thinner device when open, the Chassis doesn’t hurt on your Wrists as much as they hurt on the MacBook Pro. We also have a soft rubber Chassis, compared to a full metal Chassis on the MacBook Pro, so the iPad’s Magic Keyboard is much easier on the Wrists. 

The MacBook Pro does win in both departments, but that doesn’t make the Keyboard & Trackpad on the iPad Pro bad by any means.

The MacBook Pro does win in both departments, but that doesn’t make the Keyboard & Trackpad on the iPad Pro bad by any means.

The tilt is greater on the MacBook Pro, so you can lean the Display further down, compared to the iPad Pro. The MacBook Pro is also more stable, compared to the iPad Pro, which when tilted all the way backwards, does have a tendency to tip over. Overall, the MacBook Pro does have a better Keyboard. So, what about the Trackpad?

Well, the MacBook Pro takes this one as well. Not only is the Trackpad on the MacBook Pro much bigger, but it also doesn’t physically click. Instead, there’s a Vibration Motor inside it that gives you the impression that you’ve clicked the Trackpad. This way, you have two levels of pressure, with the second one being used for the Force Click, which gives you more options when pressing on an item.

The iPad Pro uses a much smaller Trackpad, which does indeed physically click. However, unlike the Trackpad on most Windows Laptops, you can press the iPad’s Trackpad anywhere, even on the top. So, this is not a diving board mechanism but instead, the entire Trackpad can click. The Gestures are very similar on both of these, however, the iPad does have a few that are different, such as taking you Home or displaying the Notification Centre. 

Overall, the MacBook Pro has a better Keyboard, as well as a better Trackpad. But, the iPad Pro still has a better Keyboard and Trackpad than most other Laptops on the market, so they’re still very, very good. 

Camera, Microphones & Speakers

In terms of Cameras, the iPad is the clear choice.

In terms of Cameras, the iPad is the clear choice.

Moving on to the Camera, Microphones & Speakers. Firstly, the Camera is a massive win for the iPad. Not only do we have a 1080p, 60FPS Front Camera, compared to the 720p, 60FPS Camera on the MacBook Pro, but the iPad Pro also comes with an actual Camera on the back. This Camera is capable of taking some breath-taking photos, 4K60 video and overall, images and videos that are pretty much just as good as on the iPhone.  Not only that, but we also have an Ultra-Wide Angle Module as well as a LiDAR Scanner for AR Apps, on the 2020 iPad Pro. 

In case you’re wondering what the Microphones sound like, be sure to check out the test in the video. In terms of the Speakers, they’re both very good. The MacBook Pro is better as it is a larger device, but we also tested both in the full video linked at the top.

Performance

Moving on to the Performance, this is probably going to be shocking for most of you. On paper, the MacBook Pro smokes the iPad Pro. My model has an Intel 10th Generation, Quad-Core Processor, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of Storage. The iPad Pro, on the other hand, has Apple’s A12Z Processor, 6GB of RAM and 128GB of Storage. Also, the MacBook Pro has two Cooling Fans and some pretty big Air Intake and Outtake Vents, whereas the iPad Pro has no Fans, or Vents, at all. 

In a lot of ways, the iPad can go toe-to-toe with the MacBook Pro.

In a lot of ways, the iPad can go toe-to-toe with the MacBook Pro.

So, you would expect the MacBook Pro to just murder the iPad Pro when it comes to performance. But, to my surprise, it was actually the other way around! In GeekBench 5, the iPad Pro scored 1114SC and 4654MC, while the MacBook Pro 13”, with the i5 10th Generation Intel Processor, scored 1128SC and 4370MC, quite a bit lower on the Multi-Core side. Interesting, so what about the GPU?

Well, the iPad Pro 2020 scores 9547 points, while the MacBook Pro scores around 8374 points, sometimes as high as 9960 points. Long story short, it seems like they’re both pretty much identical when it comes to raw performance. In fact, the iPad Pro even appears to be slightly more powerful. If you compare it to the baseline 13” MacBook Pro, the iPad Pro is clearly more powerful when it comes to both the CPU and GPU. 

How does this translate to some real world usage? Well, in our video we had the same 4K video timeline, with the same exact 4K60 shots taken from our Panasonic GH5, and they’re pretty demanding on both of these machines, I also added some transitions and titles. This five minute timeline took 2:53 to export on the iPad and 7:27 to export on the MacBook Pro, which is a significant difference. The iPad Pro was more than 2.5x times faster than the MacBook Pro. Obviously, if you have longer and more complex projects, the iPad Pro would have an even bigger advantage. 

Now, if you’re into Gaming, and you’re wondering which of these machines is better, the iPad Pro, strangely enough, is a significantly better option. Most of the games on the App Store are Mobile Games, but you do get millions of those and they’re extremely well optimised to run on the iPad. On the MacBook Pro, there are barely any games available. This is because Apple now prefers games to use Metal instead of openGL, macOS Catalina and 32-bit games have been dropped as well. Meaning that those very few games that we had on Steam are now barely even supported, as most games were dropped.

Let’s take a look at Fortnite for example. A game that runs on both platforms. Which machine can run it better? The iPad Pro can run Fortnite in Native Resolution at 2388x1668, on EPIC settings and we’re getting just about 30FPS. That’s extremely impressive because this is literally fully maxed out. If we drop the graphics to Medium, we’re now getting around 76FPS, if we drop them all the way to Low, we’re getting 120FPS. Since the iPad has a 120Hz Display, it means that we can actually see all those individual Frames. The experience running this game on the iPad is just unbelievable, everything is crazy fluid and smooth. Even on Low Settings, I still have the 3D Resolution scaling set to 100%, so this is still running in Native Resolution.

Now, taking a look at the MacBook Pro, I’m running the game in Native Resolution again, so 2560x1600 in this case, which is slightly higher than on the iPad Pro, but not by a lot. It seems like even on Medium Settings, we’re only getting around 17FPS. The game is fully unplayable and even if we drop to Low, we’re only getting 25FPS compared to the 120FPS that the iPad Pro was getting. That’s extremely impressive for the iPad Pro, a Tablet that’s miles thinner than the MacBook Pro and also has no Cooling Fans at all. All the Cooling is done passively and we get significantly better performance for both Video-Editing and Gaming, on the iPad Pro. 

But, probably the biggest advantage to the iPad Pro is that it can run both Mobile as well as some Desktop Apps too. These include iMovie, GarageBand, Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Lightroom and more, while the MacBook Pro can only run Desktop Apps. There are a few iOS Apps that have been ported to macOS, thanks to Apple’s Catalyst Tool. So, we do have Apps such as the Home App, News, Apple TV, and more, but the UI still sucks, they’re not that easy to control as they were designed for Touch Input first. The iPad does a much better job at running Desktop Apps such as Photoshop, especially now that we have full Keyboard and Trackpad support.

The iPad Pro is not capable of properly running External Displays.

The iPad Pro is not capable of properly running External Displays.

In this case, the iPad Pro is a much better Computer, and it has replaced my MacBook Pro, right? Well...not really.

You see, there are things that the iPad Pro still cannot do. For example, if you plan on connecting multiple Monitors, the iPad Pro is just a mess, the video output doesn’t scale properly and you can only connect one Monitor. With my MacBook Pro, I have a 5K Monitor, a 4K monitor and I’m also running its internal 2K Display, all through a single Thunderbolt 3 Cable, which the iPad does not support at all. Not only that, but I can directly connect to our Thunderbolt NAS and get some insane 1-2GB/s transfer speeds, wheres the iPad is limited to using a wireless connection, via SMB, with significantly lower speeds of just around 10MB/s. 

If you want to do any App Development, there is no XCode on the iPad. Same goes for Video-Editing. Whilst LumaFusion is very good, FCP X on the Mac is still better. Plus, you can run a lot more Pro tools on the Mac, such as LogicProX, Ableton, DaVinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects, all alongside a ton of their plugins. So, if you need any of those, the MacBook Pro is the way to go.

Now, remember when I said that I felt that my MacBook Pro 13” dropped Frames when scrolling through the UI? Well, I can use a tool called Quatrz Debug, which allows me to measure the drops. The iPad Pro on the other hand, has no way to actually measure that unless you open up the Xcode Viewer, but I couldn’t notice any lag or any slow-down whatsoever.

Battery Life

Next up, when it comes to the Battery Life, they both claim up to 10 hours of usage, which neither of these machines can achieve, unfortunately. With my usage, my MacBook Pro gets around 5-6 hours, while my iPad Pro gets around 6 hours. So, pretty much the same.You can detach the Magic Keyboard from the iPad Pro and actually get a better Battery Life that way.

Value 

Finally, having said all of this, which one is worth it the most?

The MacBook Pro starts at $1300 and for that you get a 1.4GHz Intel Core i5 Processor (8th Generation). You also get 8GB of RAM and 256GB of Storage. My MacBook Pro model is the higher-end $ 1800 model, which gets you the more powerful 2.0GHz Intel Core i5 Processor (10th Generation). With this, you get 16GB of RAM and 512GB of Storage.

The iPad Pro could end up costing you more than a baseline MacBook Pro 13”, but it could be just as good, for a lot of people.

The iPad Pro could end up costing you more than a baseline MacBook Pro 13”, but it could be just as good, for a lot of people.

The iPad Pro 11” starts from $800 for the 11” model or $1000 for the 12.9” model. If you add the Keyboard, which I’m assuming most of you will, that would bring the price of the 11” to $1100 and the 12.9” to $1350. So, the 12.9” iPad Pro, with the Keyboard, is actually more expensive than the baseline 13” MacBook Pro. Unfortunately, you only get 128GB of Storage. If you need 256GB, that would make the 13” $1200 and the 12.9” $1450.

Is the iPad Pro really worth it over a MacBook Pro? Especially considering that it is even more expensive? Well, for 90% of people, it actually is. If you don’t need to do any App Development or any high-end Video-Editing, the iPad Pro is actually a much better device than a MacBook Pro. You get a much more versatile device that supports Touch Input and Vertical or Landscape Orientation. It’s great for reading books, it’s great for browsing the web and it’s perfect for Photo-Editing and Graphic Design, thanks to the Apple Pencil.

On top of all this, it will feel way more fluid than the MacBook Pro does. I strongly believe that the iPad Pro is indeed the future. It seems like Microsoft was right from the very start! 

New Razer Blade Pro 17 (2020) - 300Hz GAMING Laptop!

Welcome to something pretty different. I’ve always been a very big fan of Razer Laptops and have always considered them to be the very best Gaming Laptops that money can buy. This is not just because of their outstanding industrial design, but also because of their incredible performance, amazing Displays and of course, the stunning Razer Chroma RGB Keyboards. 

Well, this is our very first video on a Razer Laptop, we have featured the Razer Core X GPU before, but not a Razer Laptop, and what better way to start featuring Razer Laptops than to review the highest-end one that they make. This is our first look at the brand new Razer Blade Pro 17 (2020), which is likely the best Gaming Laptop that money can buy right now.

Design

Design wise, the new Razer Blade Pro 17 2020 looks pretty much identical to the 2019 model. The 2020 iteration is a spec bump rather than a complete redesign, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. That’s because the Razer Blade Pro 17 has one of the most premium designs that I have ever seen on a Laptop.

It is made entirely out of machined metal, with an anodised finish that gives it this dark grey or even black look. It’s very sturdy and feels like a tank. Just by using this for a few minutes, I could immediately tell how high the quality of the experience was going to be, just judging by the extraordinary build quality. In a way, it reminds me of using a MacBook Pro. They both have that machined unibody look, the only difference being that the Razer Blade Pro 17 is much larger as it has as 17 inch Display and is also thicker & heavier than the MacBook Pro. You’ll see why that is, when we get to the performance section.

The Razer is built for Performance, but it still looks the part.

The Razer is built for Performance, but it still looks the part.

Razer also sent over a brand new Razer Studio, which is a beast in its own right with a full 4K OLED Display. That thing is just nuts, but definitely stay tuned for a completely separate video just on the Razer Studio 15. 

On the back we have a Razer logo which does light up, just like on the old-school MacBooks, and then on the bottom we have three massive Vents, with another Air Out-Take on the back of the Hinge. On top of that, the new Razer Blade Pro 17 also features a Vapour Chamber. So, the Cooling on this Laptop is extremely well thought-out, which it really has to be because of the insane specs that we’ll talk about in just a second.

When it comes to the Ports, on the left we have the proprietary power connector, which supports up to 230W of Power. We then have a 2.5Gb Ethernet Port which is two and a half times faster than your usual Ethernet Port, meaning that you can get wired speeds of up to 2.5Gb/s, pretty nuts. Then we get two 3.2 Gen 2 USB A Ports, a USB type C Port, (Gen 2) as well as a 3.5mm Headphone Jack. On the left we have an SD Card reader, I love seeing that. We also get a Thunderbolt 3 Port, I love seeing this even more. It can be used to connect even more powerful Desktop-Class GPU’s, 5K Monitors and more. We then have another USB A Port and a HDMI 2.0B Port, which supports 4K 60 Output as well as a Kensington Lock. So there you go, Port select wise, the Razer features everything you could wish for, which is great.

In terms of portability, the Razer Blade Pro 17 is definitely not the most portable Laptop out there. It’s pretty massive and it also weighs 2.75kg, but at the same time, there are other 17” Laptops out there that are not portable at all. You can at least put the Blade Pro 17 in your backpack when you want to take it to places. So, it is portable, just not as portable as a Razer Studio 15 or a MacBook Pro 15”/16”.

Display

When it comes to the Display, the Blade Pro 17 comes with…a 17” Display of course, which in the case of our unit, is a 1080p Panel. Now, 1080p at 17” is probably not the best idea. The Text looks noticeably blurry and it’s just nowhere near as sharp as a QHD or a 4K Laptop. But, on the upside, it is an IPS Panel with 100% sRGB coverage, so the Colour Gamut on this Display is very good, the viewing angles are great. Overall, it’s just a very good 1080p Panel, one of the best I’ve seen.

With the Blade Pro, you can get up to 10 times the FPS that you might be used to on the current Games Consoles.

With the Blade Pro, you can get up to 10 times the FPS that you might be used to on the current Games Consoles.

But, what makes this Display so special, is the Refresh Rate. On Consoles, you mostly get a 30FPS experience. On PC, 60FPS is pretty much standard and this is what gamers aim for. However, over the past two years, we started seeing more and more high Refresh Rate Monitors. These were mostly 144Hz Panels and in order to achieve 144FPS, you needed a pretty beefy GPU, something like a ‘2080’. Well, this panel isn’t 60Hz, 90Hz or even 144Hz. This Display is 300Hz, Meaning that It can display up to 300FPS in a game! That’s absolutely insane. I have done a few tests where I got around 220FPS on this Laptop and it felt unlike anything that I’ve experienced before. Everything was so smooth and so fluid, it almost felt like real life.

So, there you go. This is why we have a 1080p Panel, because if this Resolution was any higher, we wouldn’t have been able to hit 300FPS. The highest that I have seen is 270FPS, which was in Starcraft 2 with everything maxed out.

Now, if you really want, you can actually upgrade this Display to 4K. It won’t be a 300Hz Display in that case, but it will still be 120Hz, which will also support Touch-Input. It does depend on the game that you usually play but I would personally go for that. 120FPS is more than enough and unless you’re an e-sports player, a sharper 4K Display would make a more noticeable difference than the 1080p 300Hz Panel.

Keyboard & Trackpad

When it comes to the Keyboard and the Trackpad, the Trackpad is absolutely brilliant. It’s made entirely out of glass and there are no other buttons to it, it is just one piece. It is definitely one of the best Trackpads I have experienced on a Windows Laptop, with full multi-touch gestures. It’s not quite as good as on a MacBook but that’s mostly due to how well the Trackpad is optimised in macOS, compared to Windows. Overall, still a very similar experience to a Mac and one of the best Trackpads on a Windows Laptop.

It just wouldn’t be a Razer Laptop without the RGB Keyboard.

It just wouldn’t be a Razer Laptop without the RGB Keyboard.

The Keyboard on the other hand is interesting. I found the typing experience to be… I don’t wanna say bad but let’s just say that I was making more mistakes with this Keyboard, than I was on my horrible MacBook Pro Butterfly Keyboard. Most of this is just me not being used to this Keyboard but, the layout of the Keys is a bit strange. The Left Shift Key is quite narrow on the European models, even more so than on other Laptops. The Arrow Keys are similar to the ones on the MacBook Pro’s, with the Butterfly Keyboard, rather than the usual T-Shape style.

But it was mostly the typing experience that felt odd. Something about the Keys didn’t feel right, maybe that’s just me. Anyway, what definitely blew me away was the Razer Chroma RGB functionality. Every Razer Laptop comes with the built-in Razer Synapse App, from which you can adjust the Backlight of the Keys in almost any way you can imagine. You can have a specific Key light up in a specific way when you press it and really have a bunch of different styles and effects that just immerse you into the gaming experience. 

The RGB Lighting makes this one of the most unique Laptops that I have ever seen. For those of you who think that RGB is a gimmick, it might be, but it’s so cool! You can’t argue with that.

Camera, Microphones & Speakers

The stand-out feature with the Camera is definitely the Windows Hello functionality.

The stand-out feature with the Camera is definitely the Windows Hello functionality.

Now, the next most important thing in a Laptop for me are the Speakers, the Microphones and the Front-Facing Camera. The Razer Blade Pro 17 comes with a 720p Camera. The good news here is that we also get Windows Hello, meaning that we can log into Windows by just using our face, which is nice. In terms of the Speakers, they do sound good and you can check out the comparison between the 2020 Blade Pro, my MacBook Pro 15” from 2019 and the Blade Studio, in the video.

Performance

Now let’s talk about the reason why you’ll want to buy this Laptop, the performance. The new 2020 Razer Blade Pro 17, comes with the new Intel 10th generation i7-10875 Processor, which is an Eight-Core CPU with a Turbo Boost of up to 5.1GHz. This makes the Razer Blade Pro 17 one of the very first Laptops to come with an Intel 10th Generation H series Processor.

With the GPU, our unit comes with the brand new Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER, Max-Q, with 8GB of Dedicated Video Memory. We also get 16GB of DDR4 2933MHz Memory, which is upgradable to 64GB, as well as a 512GB PCIe Flash Storage. This is combined with a free m.2 Slot, in which you can install your very own m.2 Flash Module. On paper, that sounds pretty amazing. So, how does all of this translate to some real world usage?

Despite all that the Blade Pro already has, you can add even more.

Despite all that the Blade Pro already has, you can add even more.

Well, in Doom Eternal, with everything maxed out to the teeth, we were getting an average of 240FPS. Do keep in mind that this is a flagship 2020 game, imagine what you would get in older titles. In StarCraft 2 for example, a game that I’ve never been able to play fully maxed out, the Razer Blade Pro 17 can do this at an average of 270FPS. Overwatch runs at 200FPS with everything maxed out. Fortnite runs at 120FPS with everything maxed out, I was expecting to see even better performance in Fortnite here. Finally, in Modern Warfare, more specifically in Warzone, I was getting around 130FPS with everything maxed out aside from Ray-Tracing. When I enabled Ray-Tracing, I was getting 120FPS, which is still pretty insane.

Also, as a disclaimer, I did those tests about three weeks ago with an unreleased Razer Blade Pro 17, so the Drivers weren’t even up to date. In fact, I was even getting errors that I have unsupported Drivers, yet I was still getting an insane 120-270FPS in all the games that I tested. Once the Drivers do get updated, expect those numbers to be even higher!

Temperature wise, I haven’t’ seen this Laptop exceed 75 Degrees, which is very good. It’s just that if you want to do any intensive tasks, you need to have it plugged in, otherwise you will get less than half of the performance that you get when plugged in.

Battery Life

With its size and capabilities, the Blade Pro will drain its Battery very quickly.

With its size and capabilities, the Blade Pro will drain its Battery very quickly.

When it comes to the Battery Life, I cannot really talk about that as much because my time with the machine was pretty limited and I’ve mostly used it plugged in. We do have a 70.5Whr Battery, which is fairly decent, size wise. But, the MacBook Pro 16”, which has a much smaller body, comes with a much larger 100Whr Battery.

Now, when the Blade Pro 17 was not plugged in, it would discharge basically overnight. So, standby time wasn’t great. Do keep in mind that this was with a pre-release unit though. But, considering that you need to have to plugged in, in order to achieve peak performance, I wouldn’t expect a great Battery Life out of this. Especially when you’re gaming. 

Value

Finally, when it comes to the value, is the new Razer Blade Pro 17 2020..worth it?

At a starting price of $2500/2900 Euros, which can go up to $4200/3800 Euros, the Razer Blade Pro 17 is one of the most expensive Laptops that you can buy. However, you do get an outstanding level of performance with the ability to play pretty much any game in well over 100FPS, sometimes even getting close to that 300FPS mark. Also, if you’re not a gamer and you’re into content creation and 3D modeling, the Blade Pro is still incredibly powerful for that as well.

There’s really not much to complain about it. My only wish would be that the next version would feature a QHD Display at maybe 144Hz. This is just because 4K is honestly overkill on a small 17” Display. You won’t be able to reach 4K 120, but you’ll definitely be able to reach 144fps in QHD and overall, it would be a much better experience.

,

The Best Laptop for Students?

,

HONOR reached out and wanted us to show you their brand new MagicBook Laptop. They claimed that this is the very best Laptop for students and it does have some very unique features which no other Laptop has. We are going to run you through all the specifications, all the features and everything that this Laptop can do, then you can decide if the new HONOR MagicBook is a good option for you!

What We Will Cover

As most of you were, or probably still are students, the most important factors when buying a Laptop for University are: 

1. The Portability – You need this to be a lightweight Laptop that you can easily take it to classes. 

2. The Battery Life – You cannot have this last for two hours, you need this to last for pretty much an entire day. 

3. The Display - This has to be pretty good, both in terms of its size and also in terms of its sharpness. The last thing you want is a horrible Display that you need to look at all day. 

4. The Keyboard - You’ll (hopefully) be doing a lot of typing, so the Keyboard is extremely important. 

5. The Performance - This depends on what you are studying. If you’re into Computer Science, Animation or Graphic Design, you need your Laptop to be able to handle all of that.

6. The Price - No student wants to spend a ton on a Laptop, unless your parents buy it for you, then it doesn’t really matter. However, as a student who bought my own gear, from my own hard earned money, I know how important it is to get all of the above for a good price.

1) The Portability

Starting off with the Portability, the new HONOR MagicBook 14 is… well…a 14” Laptop, but it’s footprint is just about the same, or even smaller than some 13” Laptops. It weighs in at just 1.38kg and is just 15.9mm thick. It is not the lightest Laptop on the market but it is still one of the thinnest. You’ll see why that is, when we get to the Performance section, we think you’ll be quite impressed. 

One of the more compact Laptops on the market right now.

One of the more compact Laptops on the market right now.

Just to give you guys an idea on how light this really is, we can lift and hold it with just two fingers and, when this is in a bag, you almost don’t feel it at all. Sometimes we thought that the bag was empty and had to stop and check that is was still there. So, if you’re a student, the HONOR MagicBook 14 is great for Portability.

Also, it’s not just the Portability that’s great about the MagicBook 14, it also looks stunning. It comes in a full Aluminum build, which also has a matt finish, so no need to worry about fingerprints and smudges. On top of this, the MagicBook 14 also has this beautiful diamond-cut Chamfered Edge Frame that shines in blue whenever you shine some light on it. We absolutely love this effect, it almost gives you the impression that it has an LED strip all around the body. 

2) Battery Life

When it comes to the Battery Life, you get 10 hours for things such as web-browsing and office work. This is what most students will be doing, so you can pretty much get an all-day battery life in this scenario. But, the MagicBook does indeed come with two very special battery related features that students would absolutely love. 

When it comes to charging, one size fits all

When it comes to charging, one size fits all

The first one being the fact that it comes with a USB Type C Port for charging. This means that if you have any modern Smartphone, you can actually use your Smartphone Charger to charge your Laptop as well (and vice-versa). On top of this, you can even buy a USB Type C Battery Bank and charge the MagicBook from there, if you’re out in the wilds and you have no power socket anywhere near you.

But what is probably our favourite feature of this laptop is the fact that you get this very powerful 65W Charger with it, which also supports Fast Charging. Normally, Laptops take around three to four hours to fully charge, depending on the model of course, but the MagicBook 14 can charge to close to 50% in just 30 minutes. This means that if you’re running late for class and you just have a few minutes to top off, you can easily get a few more hours of usage out of it. With most other Laptops, this would not be possible at all.

3) Display

The MagicBook 14, as the name implies, comes with a 14” Display. This is a 1920x1080 Resolution Display with a 16:9 Aspect Ratio. We do like the fact that it’s 14 inches in size and the Bezels are insanely thin. However, the bottom Bezel looks more like on a traditional Laptop. We would’ve loved to see those thin Bezels on all four sides, but this would’ve resulted in the Keyboard or the Trackpad being sacrificed. A 16:10 Display would have solved this to some extent, as it is taller. 

Regardless, it is a pretty nice Display with about 300-400 Nits of Brightness, which is also laminated with an anti-reflective coating. It’s not a Touch-Screen, in case you’re wondering, but the Display can go full flat so you get 180 degrees of tilt here, perfect for any viewing experience. 

4) Keyboard

The Keyboard is where it gets really interesting. We have a Scissor-Type Keyboard mechanism, pretty standard on most Laptops. The keys themselves are quite thin, but they do provide significantly more travel than the Butterfly Keyboard that we’ve had on MacBooks for so many years now. The Keyboard is also backlit so you can easily type at night, which is always a nice feature to have.

A fresh take on a Web-Cam, stashed away at the top of the Keyboard

A fresh take on a Web-Cam, stashed away at the top of the Keyboard

You might have noticed that there is no visible Camera on this. This is because HONOR actually hid it inside the Keyboard. All you have to do to bring it up, is to press on the Camera key. If you were ever concerned about someone spying on you through the Webcam, this is really the best approach there is. The Camera is always hidden unless you want it visible. 

Also, our next favourite thing about this Keyboard is that you also have a built-in Fingerprint Reader. It’s built into the power button, so you can always use that to unlock your Laptop, so no need to type in your password. 

5) Performance

The MagicBook actually comes with an AMD Processor, the Ryzen 5 3500U in the case of our unit and this is a pretty powerful Chip. It’s a 15W Processor with a base clock of 2.1GHz and Turbo up to 3.7GHz, this is also a Quad-Core Processor. 

We also get 16GB of 2400MHz DDR4 Memory as well as an AMD GPU. This is an integrated GPU, the RX Vega 8, but it’s actually quite powerful when it comes to the Performance, for an integrated GPU. You can indeed play some games in low to medium settings, at 1080p Resolution and get a decent FPS. If you’re into photo editing and even some 1080p or light-weight 4K video editing, the MagicBook can even handle that.

The MagicBook 14 also comes with a unique S-Shaped Blade design for the Fan, with 49% more Blades than in competitor Laptops. This gives you a 28% better Fan performance, while Heat Dissipation is also increased by up to 38%, according to HONOR. We also get a very good selection of Ports here. We get one USB Type C, one USB Type A, one HDMI, another USB type A on the other side and a 3.5mm Headphone Jack

‘Magic-Link’ is one of the stand-out features on this Laptop

‘Magic-Link’ is one of the stand-out features on this Laptop

But probably one of the coolest things that this Laptop can do is something called Magic-Link. If you have an HONOR or Huawei Smartphone, you can just hold it close to the HONOR Magic Link sticker on the MagicBook and it will instantly open up the EMUI Desktop on your Laptop. Long story short, this lets you control your Smartphone using your Laptop, but you can transfer photos and files directly to your MagicBook. It actually works like magic. You just open up your Photo Gallery app and drag them from your Smartphone onto your Laptop and they instantly transfer. This is honestly the best phone-to-laptop sync tool that we’ve ever seen. It’s fast, it’s powerful and it’s extremely easy and intuitive to use. 

6) Price

Having said all of this. What is the price of the MagicBook? Well, we’re guessing most of you would expect this to cost around £1200 or around £1000 at least, but that’s not really the case here.

We mentioned Price as one of the most important things for a student that buys a new Laptop and definitely the best news here is that the HONOR MagicBook 14 only costs £550. 

Conclusion

In the end, what are our final thoughts on the MagicBook 14 and who should get this? 

First off all, this is a very portable Laptop that not only offers a great all-day Battery Life but it also gives you some insanely fast Charging. If you’re the kind of person that’s always on the go, and you need that Portability and Battery Life, the MagicBook 14 is definitely for you.

Also, if you are a student, this is an amazing choice as it costs pretty much half of what you would expect a good student Laptop to cost. You get a great selection of Ports and a Quad-Core Processor, alongside a very powerful integrated GPU, which can handle everything from photo editing to lightweight video editing & gaming.

The Webcam, which is hidden inside the Keyboard, as well as the Fingerprint Reader, make this a very good option for anyone concerned about their privacy.

This Laptop Has Two Displays - The ASUS ZenBook Duo!

So every few years we get one product that changes everything! We saw it back in 2007 when the first iPhone launched, we saw it back when Ultrabooks started becoming a mainstream and we’ve also seen it when 2-in-1 laptops that were both a tablet and a laptop started appearing and now it’s that time again!

So, I’m very excited to show you what ASUS believes is the future of laptops, and I actually think they’re right. I think that this is indeed where laptops are heading towards, because you see this is a brand new generation of laptops! 

Let me introduce to you the ASUS ZenBook Duo! This laptop not only has Intel’s latest 10th generation processors but it also comes with two displays, Pen support, dedicated Nvidia graphics,an insane twenty two hour battery life and so much more! 

Also, the ZenBook Duo is actually a brand-new product that just came out, so it’s not to be confused with the ZenBook Pro Duo, which is its larger brother. The ZenBook Duo is smaller, more portable but it still comes with two displays making this the best laptop for productivity that you can easily take with you on the go, so huge thanks to ASUS for not only sending over the ASUS ZenBook Duo but also sponsoring this project!

So now, let’s take a look at what makes this laptop so special!

DUAL DISPLAYS

This is by far the main feature of this laptop, I mean it is literally in the name. 

But you see, what’s really unique about ASUS’s implementation of this secondary display is that instead of this display being sort of like a control panel for your laptop, like some other manufacturers have tried and failed, it literally is a secondary display. What I mean by this is that Windows itself sees this as a secondary monitor which means that you can do all sorts of things with it. You can drag and drop windows from the main display onto the secondary, in fact ASUS even added a dedicated button on the keyboard, so that you can easily snap an app directly on the secondary display and full-screen it at the same time. But you can also use this in extended or mirror mode. 

The second screen can be used as a place to put your colour grading tools when editing

The second screen can be used as a place to put your colour grading tools when editing

And there’s so many use cases for this display! You can use it when you’re video editing, and have your colour grading tools right there, if you’re a gamer you can have your chat boxes and discord on the secondary display, while having the game on the main screen. But probably my favourite part is that you can even merge the displays and have one massive continuous display with you anywhere you go! That’s amazing! 

But wait, there’s more! The secondary display is also a touchscreen, meaning that you can now comfortably navigate your browser tabs with just a swipe of a finger! The main display is not a touchscreen panel, but for me at least, I’m perfectly fine with that. I always find it very uncomfortable holding my arm up and using a touchscreen laptop. However, if that display is sitting flat, like the secondary display sits, it’s much more comfortable to use, as I’m not straining my arm. 

Furthermore the ASUS ZenBook Duo also supports Pen input on the secondary display, meaning that if you’re a graphic designer or someone that uses Photoshop a lot for their work, the ZenBook Duo will make your life so much easier.

There’s really not a single laptop on the market that can do this, have two displays in such as small and portable form factor.

The dual display makes for a truly unique laptop

The dual display makes for a truly unique laptop

The main display is also very good for photo and video work. It’s got 100% sRGB coverage, 1080p resolution, and you’ll see why this matters once we get to the battery life section of this video. However, my favourite part about this display is just how thin the bezels are. We have a 90% screen-to-body ratio so add this to the dual display and this looks like a laptop that truly came from the future! 

We also get FaceUnlock thanks to the built-in Windows Hello support which is made possible by the Infrared Cameras that ASUS mange to include into this very slim bezel. 

PERFORMANCE

The second feature that makes this laptop so unique, is the performance.

So, the ZenBook Pro Duo (the larger sibling of the ZenBook Duo) is pretty much a beast! That one comes with the Intel i9 9980HK, which has a 45W 8-core processor, 32GB of 2666MHz RAM, the RTX 2060, up to 1TB of PCIe flash storage and a 15.6” 4K OLED panel. But whilst it is a monster of a machine, it’s also bigger, heavier and thicker. The ASUS ZenBook Duo is not as powerful as the ZenBook Pro Duo, but it is much more portable, thinner and lighter. 

However, what surprises me is that we still get very good specs on this! You get the Intel 10th generation i7 10510U processor, which is a 15W Quad-Core CPU that can turbo up to 4.9GHz. We get 16GB of 2133MHz LPDDR3 RAM, up to 1TB of PCIe flash storage and the Nvidia MX250 graphics card. So while this isn’t as powerful as it’s bigger brother, for a 14” laptop that you can very easily take anywhere with you, having Intel’s latest U-series i7 chip, and a dedicated GPU, and two displays is just something unheard of before! 

By design the ASUS ZenBook Duo lifts its keyboard up to not only allow for better cooling but also ergonomics

By design the ASUS ZenBook Duo lifts its keyboard up to not only allow for better cooling but also ergonomics

Something that I really like about the design of the ZenBook Duo is how it also helps cool down the entire unit. So when you open up the lid the hinge actual raises the laptop close to 2cm from your desk, meaning that airflow would be just perfect on this, when you’re doing anything intensive such as gaming or rendering a video. Not only that but this hinge also puts the keyboard at an angle and the typing experience on this is actually very good. The keys have enough travel to make them easy to see even when you’re in the dark. They’re actually back-lit too by the way, and I personally like the track-pad on the right.It makes much more sense to have it there, since that’s how you use a mouse, so overall the performance, the ergonomics, and the usability of this laptop have impressed me more than any other laptop has yet.

Now, while the ZenBook Duo is not made with high end gaming in mind, you can actually play most games at 1080p on Medium settings and get 30-60fps, or even higher in some cases. So if you’re into more casual gaming the ZenBook Duo can easily handle that.

And performance in Adobe Premiere or Photoshop is great on this laptop. It can handle 4K footage in Premiere quite easily, and Photoshop on this, like I said before with the Pencil especially, is a experience you cannot really have on any other laptop, unless you have the ZenBook Pro Duo of course.

 

BATTERY LIFE

Now, all that performance and all those features would mean nothing on the go, if the battery life isn’t great. Now, I’m not sure how ASUS did it but it’s actually very good!

ASUS claims up to twenty two hours of battery life on this or two full days of work, but that’s only if you keep the secondary display off and keep the display brightness to just 150 nits. In a more realistic scenario you should expect around eight-ten hours of battery life at least! 

In my case, the first day I got it I fully charged it and then started installing apps on it, windows updates, games etc, and those apps were literally installing over night and the next evening, the battery was at 42% and the ZenBook Duo still had about 6 hours left.

So that’s very impressive! Of course overnight the displays were both off and the ZenBook was installing everything in the background, but still, I’m very impressed with the battery life. Even when I was using it with both displays on, the battery was still barely even dropping, whereas something like my MacBook Pro would’ve long been dead. What really helps here is that 1080p display. If we were to have a 4K panel on this, then the battery life would've been severely impacted. 

 

CONNECTIVITY

Now when it comes to connectivity, we not only do we get the latest Bluetooth 5.0 on this, but we also get WiFI 6, or 802.11ax, which is the next generation of WiFi, with speeds up to 9.6Gb/s. However, whats more important about this is that if you have a WiFi 6 router, and more WiFi 6 devices on your network, they will manage themselves much better than they could on WiFi 5. This means that if you have a fast connection, you will experience 0 slow-downs or traffic congestion on any of your devices. 

The selection of ports available on the ASUS ZenBook Duo

The selection of ports available on the ASUS ZenBook Duo

We also get a great selection of ports on this as well. We have the power input, a HDMI port, a USB type A which is actually USB 3.1 gen 2, and then a USB type C port which is also USB 3.1 gen 2 in terms of its speed. We then have another USB A port on the right, this one is 3.1 Gen 1, we then have the 3.5mm headphone jack, and we also get a microSD card slot, which I’m quite surprised to see as you don’t normally get this in laptops.

But since you can now easily find even 1TB microSD cards for quiet cheap, you can upgrade the storage very easily in this, or you can just use a microSD to SD Card adapter and use that card in your DSLR camera, meaning you could easily transfer your footage directly to your laptop.

I just wish that ASUS included a thunderbolt 3 port on this. It would’ve been the perfect laptop for me in that case, since I do need thunderbolt for work and thunderbolt also lets you connect an eGPU. However, if you really want this specific laptop design with a thunderbolt 3 port, then the ASUS ZenBook PRO Duo does actually have one. 

PORTABILITY

The last thing that makes this laptop so unique is just how portable it really is! At 1.5kg, this is very similar to the weight of other 13” Laptops out there.

But you see, I use two monitors at work, and whenever I’m travelling I find myself yearning for a second monitor, just because I find it much more productive to have two, and I’m very used to having two displays. Yes, you can connect a tablet to a laptop and have two displays that way, but you have to carry the tablet with you and it will also cost you a ton buying both a laptop and a tablet. 

So, to me at least, it seems like ASUS has found a solution to all those issues, and that solution is the ZenBook Duo a truly one of a kind laptop.

What Is Happening with the 16" MacBook Pro?

We’ve seen so many leaks, rumors and even actual proof found in Beta versions of macOS, that clearly showed that Apple is working on a brand new generation of MacBook Pro’s. 

We were expecting to see a new MacBook Pro by the end of October, but that hasn’t happened so here’s an update on everything we know so far and what is really the status of the this 16” MacBook Pro!

It is now November which means that Apple has not had any event in October this year like most of us were expecting, or at least were hoping. 

Apple has two big events every single year. We have WWDC in June, which is Apple’s software event where they announce the new versions of iOS, macOS & tvOS, then in September we have the big hardware focused event, where Apple introduces the brand new iPhones, the new Apple Watch and sometimes a few more things as well.

However, the Macs and the iPads never really had a place in any event. WWDC was always too full with software and the September event was always too full with the iPhones. So because of that, Apple sometimes has two more events in the year. A March event where they release new entry level iPads, and an October event where they release new Macs and iPad Pros.

However, when it comes to Mac events it’s a bit more complicated, as Apple need to wait for Intel to release new processors before they can update their machines. 

Now the MacBook Pro and Air are by far the most popular Macs that Apple has ever made and because, unlike the iPhones which get updated every 2-3 years, Macs don’t really get updated that often there is always a lot of hype around a new generation.

The current generation of MacBook Pros came out in 2016, the previous gen came out in 2012 and the one before that came out in 2008. So it seems like every 4 years, Apple releases a brand new design. So a new design to this generation isn’t expected until 2020.

But as you may know, Ming-Chi-Kuo, Bloomberg, DigiTimes Taiwan, and pretty much every well known source has said that Apple will be releasing a new 16” MacBook Pro in 2019, which was supposed to be launching by the end of October. But all this was quite weird. Why would Apple release the new generation of MacBook Pro’s a year earlier than usual, and why didn’t they have any event to announce it?

Especially considering the amount of issues that this generation has had, ranging from severe keyboard issues, thermal throttling issues, creaking noise issues, faulty speaker issues and much more, if a you were going to bring out a new generation that solved those problems you’d make a big deal out of it wouldn’t you?

I’ve made multiple videos with my own issues with this generation of MacBook Pros, and how Apple’s customer support is just straight up garbage when it comes to dealing with expensive devices such as this. Full video on how Apple still hasn’t fixed my broken $5000 MacBook Pro here. 

Overtime Apple has attempted to fix the keyboard issues with small upgrades to the keys (Source: iFixit)

Overtime Apple has attempted to fix the keyboard issues with small upgrades to the keys (Source: iFixit)

In short, this generation needs to be replaced as soon as. Apple tried “fixing” the keyboard with every new model that they’ve launched since 2016, with small improvements in the key-cap mechanism but they just couldn’t, just because the butterfly key-switch mechanism was faulty from the very start. Apparently this new generation is said to come with a brand new mechanism, the scissor mechanism, which funnily enough was the one that previous generations of MacBook Pros had. This will give us more key travel than before, since at the moment you can barely even feel the keys moving. So a fixed keyboard is the first change.

We’ll also be getting a larger display, a 16-16.4” panel from the 15.4” one that we have on the current model, whilst also getting slimmer bezels. 

The body will also be getting thicker in order to improve cooling but that’s mostly it, in terms of the main changes.

So that doesn’t seem like a lot. We’ve actually made our own concept, in which we increased the size of the touchbar to make it even more usable and extend it to the very top of the frame, as before, this area was unused and it just didn’t look good at all. However, it seems like the changes would be even smaller than we expected.

French Website, MacGeneration found an icon of the 16” MacBook Pro in the latest macOS Catalina 10.15.1 Beta that even has a file name that says 16” in silver & space grey. However, it looks pretty much identical to the current model. But this is as official as it gets until the unveil. 

The MacBook Pro 15” (Left) compared to the leaked 16” icon (Right) (Source: MacGeneration)

The MacBook Pro 15” (Left) compared to the leaked 16” icon (Right) (Source: MacGeneration)

Unfortunately, unless you put them side by side you cannot really tell the difference. By putting them side by side you can see that the entire machine is indeed larger and the bezels are slightly thinner, but the differences are so small that I just cannot call this a new generation of MacBook Pros.

Even though the bezels are thinner, they’re still thicker than on something like a Dell XPS 13” 2-in-1 or many of the more modern laptops released in 2019. We still have the big chin with the MacBook Pro branding on the bottom which I don’t really like, it’s way too fat and it takes up way too much unnecessary space. I always preferred the previous look of the 2012 Retina MacBook Pro’s that had no branding at all on the display.

Now, there are a few other changes that we get, aside from the slightly thinner bezels and the larger display. For example, if you look at the top left section of the touchbar on the 16” MacBook Pro icon, you can see that there seems to be a space in between the touchbar and a button on the left. Now, we’ve even had a second image that was discovered by developer Guilherme Rambo in macOS 10.15.1 beta again, that shows the full official image of the right hand side of the new 16” MacBook Pro. And there’s probably one thing that you’ve noticed right away, and that is how the touchID sensor is separated from the touchbar now. 

The 16” (Bottom) appears to leave some space between the touchbar and a button on the left (Source: MacGeneration)

The 16” (Bottom) appears to leave some space between the touchbar and a button on the left (Source: MacGeneration)

This means that the button on the left is most likely the escape key which will also now be separated from the touchbar as well. That was one of the main complaints that developers had, I had it as well, since escape is a key that I do hit very often in certain apps and not having a physical key for that, can be extremely frustrating. 

Also in this image we can also see the keyboard, but to me at least, it looks identical to the current gen, with no more key travel than what we have now. So that’s pretty disappointing to see.

Keep in mind that if this is a new generation then this is what we’ll get for the next 3-4 years. Which means a total of 6-8 years with what’s mostly the exact same design and what looks to be the same keyboard.

The touchbar is looking to be the same size as before, maybe even a bit shorter because of the introduction of the escape key. When you take into account that you have laptops such as the Asus ZenBook Duo that have two fully usable displays, or laptops that are 2-in-1 with pen support as well, and a 22 hour battery life and crazy specs and features like that, the MacBook Pro feel extremely old and already outdated, even before it’s out!

Unless of course, this is not a new generation of MacBook Pro’s!

Every new generation has seen some massive changes, in pretty much every single way. The 2012 Retina MacBook Pro was by far the biggest change ever, in a MacBook Pro. It had a high resolution Retina Display, something never before seen in a laptop, a full flash storage from the HDD of the previous generation, it had a design that was pretty much half the thickness of the previous model, and it was lighter, so it was years ahead of the previous generation.

The 2016 generation that we have now, was a much smaller upgrade. Aside from the DCI-P3 displays, slightly thinner bezels, space grey colour, the downgraded keyboard and touchID and touchbar, we didn’t really get much else. 

This is mostly because we’ve reached to a point where laptops have become as good as they can be and the only things that we can improve are the specs. Unless of course we have dual displays or innovative concepts such as that, which Apple doesn’t usually do first.

MacRumors posted a gif of the current 15” MacBook Pro and the 16” MacBook Pro leaked image and like I said, they’re pretty much identical, I will leave a link to it here so you can see what I am talking about. The touchbar appears to maybe be a bit taller, barely even noticeable and luckily the top portion of the case is now a bit slimmer. The keys do seem to have more space in between, than on the current 15” model, which is always a welcome change.

So judging by all these official images that were actually found in macOS 10.15.1 beta, the release of the 16” MacBook Pro seems to be imminent. 

Now, Ming-Chi-Kuo actually released a report this week, updating his research note on the 16” MacBook Pro. In it he said that Apple would only switch to a scissor switch keyboard, in Q2 or Q3 2020. Which means either June or September of next year. And he was also the one that initially talked about Apple working on a scissor keyboard switch for the new MacBook Pro 16” for this year. So if that gets delayed, there’s a very high chance that this MacBook Pro 16” will also get delayed, rather than shipping with the old style keyboard which would be another disaster. 

The headline from the article on MacRumors where Ming-Chi Kuo said it was likely that the new keyboard would be mid 2020 (Source: MacRumors)

The headline from the article on MacRumors where Ming-Chi Kuo said it was likely that the new keyboard would be mid 2020 (Source: MacRumors)

DigiTimes reported that Apple will begin receiving shipments of the 16” MacBook Pro. That’s another reason why I do see this being delayed is because of Intel and AMD.

Intel’s 10th generation processors have indeed launched, but these are only the Y and the U series. So the 7W and 15W ones that are aimed at the MacBook Air and the 13” MacBook Pro are here, but not the H series, which represents the 45W processors aimed at the 15” MacBook Pro’s. 

Those are only coming out next year, around May-June, just in time for a truly next generation of MacBooks Otherwise, if this 16” MacBook Pro gets released before then we would still be getting the exact same processor, the Intel 9980HK, that we already have in the May 2019 release. The same goes for the GPU. Aside from the Vega 20 that we got back in November 2018, which is already an outdated architecture, we haven’t had anything new from AMD since. Now, maybe Apple is working alongside AMD on a custom RDNA GPU, similar to what Sony and Microsoft are doing for the PS5 and Xbox 2, but don’t get your hopes too high. The chances of that happening are extremely slim. 

There are a few more leaks that I want to mention. We did a very detailed video on the 16” MacBook Pro back in July and that was when we had barely any leaks on it, and it that video I talked about a few interesting things that I’ve noticed.

A leaked power adapter from the suspected 16” MacBook Pro showing the 96W Charging (Source: Chongdiantou)

A leaked power adapter from the suspected 16” MacBook Pro showing the 96W Charging (Source: Chongdiantou)

For example, how the upcoming Apple Pro Display XDR supports up to 96W of power output, but the current gen 15” MacBook Pro’s, only support up to 87W. So my theory here was that the new 16” MacBook Pro would require either a 94W or a 96W power adapter. 94W was also an option since the new LG UltraFine 5K display supports up to 94W of power output via thunderbolt 3, rather than 96W. And it seems like there’s been a leaked power adapter, presumably for this 16” MacBook Pro that actually shows a 96W USB-C Power adapter. So it seems like my theory might have been correct here and we should be seeing a 16” MacBook Pro with a power requirement of 96W.

In case you’re wondering what we might need those extra 9W of power for, well it’s very likely for the display, which is not just going to be larger but there’s a very high change that Apple will also brand this display a Pro XDR display to match it up with their actual Mac Pro Pro XDR display and also the new Super Retina XDR naming that they’re now using in iPhones. So this display will very likely be brighter than the 500 nit panel that we currently have in the current generation of MacBook Pro’s. 

I’m just very disappointed that this new 16” MacBook Pro which is supposed to be a new generation of MacBook Pro’s, only seems to be a very slight week to the current gen, which we might have to stick with, for the next 4 years. There’s no FaceID, no larger TouchBar, no touchscreen, no flappable display, no OLED display and nothing really that would make this truly next gen.

2019 13" MacBook Pro (Baseline) Review

This is a 13” MacBook Pro that Apple has just released last week. But wait Daniel, you’ve already reviewed the 8-core 15” MacBook Pro as well as the 13” 2019 MacBook Pro, so what is this?

Well this is the $1,300 baseline model that doesn’t have a touch bar, or quad-core processors and hasn’t been updated since 2017, or at least it was until this year where it has received a massive upgrade whilst retaining the same $1,300 price point! 

So lets discuss what changes we have received this year on Apple’s baseline model.

BUILD

So first of all, it now has the same 5th generation butterfly keyboard that we got on the other 13” and 15” MacBook’s from earlier this year, with the new sturdier build which should resolve the issues that consumers were having with the previous iterations where they keys were sticking or breaking entirely.

In terms of the typing experience. It’s very similar to the 2018 MacBook Pros, with the 4th butterfly keyboard iteration, so they feel more springy and mushy than the 2017 and 2016 models but they’re also not as loud as those. So if you don’t like Apple’s butterfly keyboard because of the low key travel and lack of feedback, you won’t like this one either. If you do, then this one’s better than the last generation. 

Apple did add all 2019 MacBook’s to the keyboard replacement programme so if it breaks, Apple will replace it for free for the next 4 years, so that’s good! 

The keyboard is a very important part of any laptop so I’m glad to see that Apple improved it this year, again. 

Speaking of the keyboard, we finally have a touch bar on this! Yes the non-touch bar MacBook Pro now has a touch bar which means that Apple is no longer selling any MacBook Pros that do not come with one, which is something that they should’ve done from 2016 in my opinion.

The 13” Baseline model now features a touch bar, as well as TouchID

The 13” Baseline model now features a touch bar, as well as TouchID

This means that you get extra controls in a lot of your apps, most of which are useless since you can do them so much faster with keyboard shortcuts, but for those of you who are not familiar with keyboard shortcuts, the touch bar can indeed be very useful. If you take Photoshop for example, the touch bar gives you access to great tools such as the ability to resize a brush or swipe through the blending modes which is just amazing! 

Alongside the touch bar we also get a TouchID or fingerprint sensor! This is in my opinion even better than the touch bar since you can unlock you Mac very easily and you can also scan you finger to fill in passwords and make Apple Pay payments, so it’s an incredibly useful thing to have. 

The display also got a very welcome improvement with True Tone support. This means that the color temperature of the display is automatically adjusted so that it matches the light around you, which is amazing! This makes reading so much easier on the eyes, just make sure that you disable it before you do any photo or video editing!

Another big improvement is the addition of the T2 processor. Now this is something that now comes standard in every new Mac aside from the iMac, and it’s this tiny chip that handles a lot of the basic processes that the Intel CPU would normally handle. 

The main advantages of having the T2 are:

  • Better quality photos and video with the built-in camera.

  • Real-Time disk encryption and decryption,

  • Improved audio quality from the microphones,

  • Faster h.265 video encoding so h.265 video exports will be much faster

  • The ability to locate you Mac if its gets stolen, even when it is not connected to a WiFi network.

Unfortunately your Mac will crash more often, especially if you use Thunderbolt, but the majority of people buying this MacBook Pro wouldn’t be doing that much intense work anyways, so for most people the T2 will be a positive thing.

So, so far the new baseline $1,300 13” MacBook Pro seems to have all the features that the more expensive $1,800 model has, however there are a few features that it is missing. 

The speakers for example are identical to the 2017 model. They’re not bad my any means, in fact they’re still better than on most laptops out there but they are just not as powerful and as clear as on the 2018 and more expensive 2019 models of the 13” MacBook Pro. However, they are located right underneath the speaker grills rather than towards the bottom and then the sound being redirected – like it is on the more expensive models. 

The speakers on the baseline model are now under the speaker grills

The speakers on the baseline model are now under the speaker grills

Another lacking feature is when it comes to the Thunderbolt 3 ports. On the $1,800 model we have four whereas on this entry level model we have two. Now for most people this is more than enough, but I just miss the convenience of being able to plug accessories and charge my MacBook from either side, rather than having to do it from the left hand side all the time. 

But probably the biggest downgrade in my opinion, is in terms of the Flash Storage. It is considerably slower than the $1,800 model, with speeds averaging 505 MB/s Write vs 2750MB/s Write and 1333MB/s Read vs 2650MB/s Read. 

PERFORMANCE

Performance wise, this new entry level MacBook Pro is a significant step up from the 2017 model. 

First off we get a Quad Core processor from dual core, so we have the Intel i5 8257U 1.4GHz – 3.9GHz. Now you could upgrade this to the i7 8557U, which has a 1.7GHz base clock from 1.4GHz and can turbo boost to 4.5GHz from 3.9, but I honestly don’t recommend it since the performance is already extremely good on the stock processor.

In Geekbench 4 the 2019 model was 1.11 times faster Single Core (SC) wise and 1.87 times faster in Multi Core (SC)! That's, almost twice as fast as the previous 2017 model and only 1.13 times slower SC wise than the 2019 $1800 model and 1.1 times slower MC wise. So it is very close to the much more expensive 4 thunderbolt 3 model. 

In Cinebench R15 it got 651 points vs 705 on the $1800 maxed out model and this was actually very very close to the 2017 15” MacBook Pro which got 672 points. In Cinebench R20 it got 1628 compared to 1763 on the $1800 model and 1672 on the 15” 2017 MacBook Pro. So again very impressive results, as the baseline MacBook Pro was just 1.08 times slower than the maxed out 13” model with the quad core 2.8GHz processor.

An example of the render we use for our tests

An example of the render we use for our tests

But how does it handle 3D Rendering? Well it only took this MacBook Pro 14 minute and 16 seconds to finish the example render versus 13 minutes and 43seconds on the 2017 15” MacBook Pro. 

I was quite impressed with the temperatures that this was running at as well. The baseline 13” MacBook Pro was running at 90 degrees as the average temperature, and a clock of 2.9GHz from the base 1.4GHz clock. Comparatively, the 13” maxed out 2019 model was running at 94 degrees and a clock of 3.2GHz, whilst the 2017 15” model was running at 97 degrees and a clock of 3GHz. Now the really interesting thing here is that the 13” baseline model only has a single fan, whereas the $18,00 4 thunderbolt 3 port model has two fans, just like the 15” and the temperature and clock speeds were still very good, for a Mac at least. 

So the CPU performance is indeed very impressive on this base MacBook Pro. There’s absolutely no need to upgrade to the 1.7GHz model if the maxed out 2.7GHz 13” model is barely any faster. 

But what about the GPU performance?

As you all know the 15” MacBook Pro’s comes with a dedicated GPU, so if you’re into Video Editing, 3D Modelling, Graphic Design, Gaming or anything that requires a high end GPU you’re going to get significantly better performance from a 15” MacBook Pro.

The 13” models have an integrated GPU. The Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655 on the $1,800 4 thunderbolt 3 port model and the Intel Iris Plus Graphics 645 on this baseline. Now the integrated GPU is even more powerful the more RAM you have in your computer, since it can indeed take use of the system RAM. I am using the baseline 8GB of RAM model for this and I wanted to see how much the GPU is impacted when compared to the maxed out 13” model with 16GB of RAM. 

Firstly, the Cinebench OpenCL test where the baseline MBP was only 1.05 times slower than the maxed out 13” model, a negligible difference. In Cinebench R15, we got 54.69fps compared to 56.56fps on the maxed out 13” model, so again a negligible difference.

Now if you care about gaming, in the Unigine Heaven Benchmark we got 10.3fps versus 11.1fps, so almost the same. In actual games like Fortnite, with all the settings set to EPIC in 1680x1050 resolution, we got about 13fps in the bus drop scene compared to around 15fps.

But if both the CPU and GPU benchmarks are almost identical to the maxed out 13” model, how does it compare in Final Cut Pro X for example, when editing and exporting 4K video?

A snippet of the Final Cut Pro X Project we use for our tests

A snippet of the Final Cut Pro X Project we use for our tests

For this I used our OnePlus 7 Pro Blind Camera test, which is a very demanding 15 minute 4K project, with multiple 4K picture in picture clips and it took the baseline 13” MacBook Pro 51 minutes and 28 seconds to export this versus 50 minutes and 2 seconds on the maxed out 13” MacBook Pro. So the baseline was just 1.02 times slower. Just as a comparison, the maxed out 15” MacBook Pro exported this in just 17 minutes and 44 seconds, so that one was 2.9 times faster than the baseline 13”.

But personally I find the video editing performance in the timeline to be much more important than the actual rendering time. So looking at that in the same project we’re getting about 15-20fps playback in quality and just over 30fps in performance mode. Now, considering that the video itself is 29.97fps, the baseline 13” MBP can actually play this full project back in real time in performance, which is incredible!

But you see one of my favourite things about this new MacBook Pro are those two Thunderbolt 3 ports. Aside from just charging and connecting external HDD’s, Thunderbolt is so powerful that it allows you to connect a full 5K monitor. But if you have a Thunderbolt 3 dock such as the one from CalDigit I have in the video, you can get access to a ton of ports, with HDMI, multiple USB type A ports, while also charging your MacBook Pro, all from that single Thunderbolt 3 port.

By adding an eGPU to your set up you will get a significant improvement in the performance of your MacBook

By adding an eGPU to your set up you will get a significant improvement in the performance of your MacBook

On top of that, you can even connect an eGPU or external graphics card with an enclosure and have some insane GPU performance coming out of this tiny MacBook Pro. Using an eGPU I was able to get over 60fps in Fornite in 1080p, so an even higher resolution than before, with everything on EPIC! So actual gaming is now possible thanks to an eGPU and Thunderbolt 3. Even in Final Cut Pro X, the rendering time was reduced from 51 minutes and 28 seconds to just 34 minutes! Now that is not as fast as a 15” MacBook Pro, but it is a significant improvement of 1.5 times! So an eGPU makes a huge difference and I highly recommend getting one, especially if you have a 13” MacBook Pro that does not have a dedicated GPU.

 

CONCLUSION

Ok, so in the end if you’re thinking about getting a brand new Mac don’t get a MacBook Air, because it only has a dual core processor and no touch bar, get this MacBook Pro Instead. It costs $200 more, but it gives you so many more features and performance wise it’s extremely close to the maxed out $3,100 13” MacBook Pro.

2019 15" MacBook Pro (Maxed Out) Review

This is the brand new 2019 15” MacBook Pro, and out of all the devices that I own this is my true daily driver. I have used this thing solidly for at least 12 hours a day every week day and 5 or more hours at the weekend, so in total I have used this for at least 70 hours every week, and continue to do so.

In this review I want to cover the 3 biggest change!

SPECS

Seeing as the 2019 models has the exact same design as the 2016, 17, and 18 models, there is not much to cover in that regard. But when I say this is the maxed out specs, I mean maxed out, apart from the 4TB of storage. Check out the specs of the model I am reviewing below:

  • 2.3GHz 8-Core 9th Generation Intel Core i9 Processor with Turbo Boost up to 4.8GHz

  • 32GB 2400MHz DDR4 Memory

  • Radeon Pro Vega 20 with 4GB of HBM2 Memory

  • 1TB SSD Storage

The 2019 Model hasn’t changed in design since 2016

The 2019 Model hasn’t changed in design since 2016

 

KEYBOARD

Ok, so in terms of the keyboard, this is Apple’s 5th butterfly design as they have been making small changes every single year since 2015.

Now Apple claimed that they changed some materials to make the keyboard significantly more reliable than before. However Apple did include the 2019 Models to their Keyboard Replacement programme on launch day, which raises doubt into how reliable these keyboards truly are. 

A teardown of the keys on the 5th Generation Keyboard (Source: iFixit)

A teardown of the keys on the 5th Generation Keyboard (Source: iFixit)

iFixit did do a full keyboard teardown and they found that Apple replaced the silicone key switch cap with one made out of nylon, so it’s a bit sturdier and most of the components had slight changes to them, which I mentioned back in my 13” Review so feel free to check that out too.

But it terms of how the keyboard feels, it is very similar to the 2018 one, but feels a tiny bit sturdier. So overall I do like typing on the 2019 15” MacBook’s the most, but it’s still a butterfly keyboard so it’s still bad in terms of key travel and tactile feedback. 

 

PERFORMANCE

Considering that this is the maxed out version, you’d expect the performance to be maxed out too right? Well lets have a look.

Now the difference the 2019 model has over the 2018 model is that we now get an Intel i9 9th generation 8-core processor, which is actually Intel’s fastest laptop processor to date. We also get 8-cores up from 6, 16MP L3 cache up from 12MP on the 2018 6-core models, and a base clock of 2.4GHz down from 2.9GHz but we do get a turbo boost of up to 5GHz from 4.8GHz. Now just to clarify the Turbo Clock speed is just for a single core and only when the temperature is under 60 degrees, this is what Intel’s now calling ‘Thermal Velocity Boost’. 

Unfortunately due to the still weak cooling system this model never reached 5GHz at all in my case. In fact, it even struggled to hit 4.8GHz. The highest that I’ve seen it hit was about 4.7GHz and that was only for a second or so. 

But does it throttle you might ask? Well not as much as the 2018 one did.

Now since I also have the Vega 20 Model, the cooling is indeed better, with the fans being able to reach 6000 RPM’s from 5930 and 5490 on the 2018 non-Vega MBP’s. Add that to the fact that the GPU doesn’t heat up as much as, the CPU can run cooler meaning it can actually run at a higher clock speed than the 6-core 2018 model could, even though this is an 8-core CPU.

So the temperatures were lower when using it, 87-90 degrees was the top celling compared to 98 degrees on the 2018 model, and because of this the 2019 model was also much quieter as the fans didn’t start to spin up this early. 

So how do those 2 extra cores and Vega 20 GPU translate to actual usage?

Well, let’s start out with some benchmarks first. Starting off with the CPU. 

In the Geekbench 4 Single Core CPU test, the 2019 MBP scores 2.9% higher than the 6-core 2018 MacBook Pro, 18.6% higher than 4-core 2017 MBP and 25% higher than the 4-core 2016 MBP. Then in the Multicore test, the 2019 MacBook Pro scores 24.4% higher than the 2018 model, 47.3% higher than the 2017 and 51.2% higher than the 2016. 

In Cinebench R15, the 2019 MBP scores 29.3% higher than the 2018, 48.6% higher than the 2017 and 45.4% higher than the 2016. Yes the 2017 started throttling more than the 2016 it seems. In Cinebench R20, the 2019 MBP scores 26% higher than the 2018, 46% higher than the 2017 and 42.5% higher than the 2016. 

And next up, I ran our ZONEofTECH Keyshot 8 3D Rendering benchmark, which is a very CPU intensive task, and the 2019 model was 38.2% faster than the 2018, so a very big difference there, 53.3% faster than the 2017 and 42.1% faster than the 2016. 

The temperatures were also significantly better. 75 degrees on the 2019 compared to 87 on the 2018, 97 on the 2017, and 98 on the 2016 and the clock speed was at about 2.7GHz versus 2.5GHz on the 2018 model, so very impressive so far.

Now when it comes to the GPU, in Geekbench 4 Compute, openCL test the Vega 20 2019 MacBook Pro was 24.8% faster than the 2018 with the 560X, 43.2% faster with the 2017 with the 560 and 34.6% faster than the 2016 with the 460.  However, the 2016 MacBook Pro was recently replaced by Apple with a brand new case and cleaned fans, which is why I think it’s getting higher scores than our 2017, as there might be some dust in the fans.

In CineBench R15, the 2019 MBP was 18.7% faster than the 560X 2018, 35.3% faster than the 560 from 2017 and 33.4% faster than the 460 from 2016. 

Next up we have the Unigine Heaven benchmark and here the 2019 was 38.9% faster than the 2018, 45.7% faster than the 2017 and 49.2% faster than the 2016. 

So overall CPU wise, the 2019 is about 20-40% faster than the 2018 and GPU wise we get about a 40% difference. So quite some substantial gains so far. 

Taking a look at some more real-world usage, in Final Cut Pro X I had our OnePlus 7 Pro blind camera test project and this was a massive one with a ton of 4K picture-in-picture clips, effects, titles and it was a full 15 minute 4K project. The 2019 MacBook Pro only took 16 minutes and 48 seconds to export this versus the 2018 which was 24.3% slower, the 2017 was 34.3% slower, and the 2016 was 33.8% slower. Now while 5 minutes or so doesn’t seem like much, on a bigger and more complex project, that would be substantially more and if you do this on a daily basis it will have a significant impact on your workflow.

Finally let’s have a look at the Disk performance. The 2019 and 2018 models were pretty much identical in terms of Write Speeds, 2017 and 2016 were 35.7% slower when using disk encryption. And in terms of the Read Speeds, the 2019 was identical to the 2018 and 16% faster than 2017 and 2016.

If you don’t use disk encryption for FireVault the results would be much more similar but if you do, since we have the T2 Chip on both the 2018 and 2019 models, the disk decryption is done in real time on the T2 chip itself and we get much higher IO performance. 

Now there are a few more things that I want to address. 

The 2019 model feature brand new thermal paste on its internals (Source: Snazzy Labs)

The 2019 model feature brand new thermal paste on its internals (Source: Snazzy Labs)

The reason why the 2019 is getting much better thermals isn’t just because of the faster fan speeds but also because of a brand new thermal paste. This is what I suspected in our initial video with the ‘20 Things You Didn’t Know’ but Quinn Nelson from Snazzy Labs has now confirmed this in his teardown. 

Also if you’re thinking of using an eGPU on a 15” just don’t! You’re getting far better performance from a built-in dedicated GPU such as a Vega 20, especially in apps such as Final Cut Pro X which does not yet take full advantage of a GPU. A big update will be coming in November, in order to fix that.

Additionally if you’re upgrading from the 13” MacBook Pro you can actually have up to four 4K Monitors at 60Hz, two 5K monitors at 60Hz, or one 6K Apple Pro XDR display, potentially two but that’s not confirmed as of yet. 

T2 Crashes

Aside from the keyboard and the performance I had one more thing that I wanted to address, and that was the T2 processor. 

So, to my surprise I haven’t had any T2 crashes on my 2019 for the past 2 weeks. Unfortunately I had two T2 crashes on the same day on the 2019 MacBook Pro a few days ago. Shortly after I created a return for this model as it clearly has the same T2 issues as previous ones. Yes, after almost 3 weeks of using this daily, I am now sending it back.

The article on MacRumors showing the new model names for the 7 unreleased models (Source: MacRumors)

The article on MacRumors showing the new model names for the 7 unreleased models (Source: MacRumors)

But it wasn’t just because of the T2 crashes, on the exact same day, we’ve had a leak of an ECC (Eurasian Economic Commision) filing that showed Apple registering 7 brand new models of MacBook’s. Two of which are very likely to be that brand new redesign of the MacBook Pro, that Ming-Chi-Kuo talked about with a 16” display, a redesigned cooling system, and new keyboard that seems likely to actually come out this year. So I’m really looking forward to that, and until then this baby is going back!

2019 13" MacBook Pro (Maxed Out) Review

So ever since I was young, I was really interested in Apple Laptops, MacBooks. In fact I started ZONEofTECH from a 2011 13” MacBook Pro and it was such an amazing device overall, especially after my SSD and RAM upgrade. I then upgraded to a 2013 15” MacBook Pro and I now haven’t used a 13” MacBook as my daily driver for 6 years, as I had never found them to be sufficient for what I wanted to use them for which was content creation.

So what has changed since then, and who is the MacBook actually for?

DESIGN

A design comparison between the 15” MacBook Pro (Left) and the 13” MacBook Pro (Right)

A design comparison between the 15” MacBook Pro (Left) and the 13” MacBook Pro (Right)

Now, as the 2019 model is still part of Apple’s 3rd generation of MacBook Pros, which launched in 2016, they also have the exact same design as the 2016 models. This means that we have this single block of aluminium, from which the entire MacBook was machined from and it just looks stunning! In my opinion, it is the best looking laptop on the market, especially in space grey. The 15” has those massive palm-rests, speakers and touch bar gap which I don’t like. However, the 13” looks to be what the entire design generation was based on. Yes, the bezels could be made thinner but, aside from that, this is just a stunning piece of metal to look at. 

This is also a highly portable MacBook, since it weighs just 1.37kg and has an incredibly compact form factor. So if you’re traveling around a lot or you commute to work with your laptop and you need power and portability this MacBook Pro would be the best to get. Also, if you’re coming from a MacBook Air, the 13” Pro feels exactly the same in the hand as the 2018 Air. Additionally, because of that small form factor the 13” Pro would fit perfectly on airplane table seats, or on your lap when you’re traveling by train or bus. So it’s really good for that!

 

DISPLAY

When it comes to the display the 13” is great! In my opinion, both the 13” and the 15” have the best display on any laptop on the market, for creating content at least.

Now, when you compare this to other laptop displays on the market spec wise it looks weak. Razer for example have OLED displays now, up to 4K, whilst Apple’s still using a QHD LCD panel. Now although that it is true, Apple’s panel is actually extremely good. It’s a 500 nit LCD panel that’s also IPS, so you get very good viewing angles. You also have 100% sRGB coverage a DCI-P3 color gamut as well. The resolution of panel is 2560x1600 but at 227PPI, and from the regular viewing distance you cannot see any pixels on this thing at all. This means that text is razor sharp and everything just looks like printing paper.

The reflectivity seems to be identical to the one on the iPad Pro’s which is just 1.8%, so reflections won’t be an issue here. 

Due to the screens 16:10 aspect ratio we get more vertical screen real-estate than traditional laptops

Due to the screens 16:10 aspect ratio we get more vertical screen real-estate than traditional laptops

Now, something that not a lot of reviewers talk about is that this is also a 16:10 aspect ratio display, rather than the traditional 16:9. So compared to more traditional laptops, you do get more vertical screen real-estate, which with a 13.3 inch panel which I really do like, especially for reading.

Speaking of reading, just like the 2018 MacBook Pro, the 2019 models also have a True Tone display. This means your display automatically adjusts the colour temperature so that it matches the ambient light conditions. So if you’re in a room with a lot of yellow light, the display would match that color, same as a piece of paper does. I do like True Tone a lot for reading and writing scripts such as this but when I’m doing any photo or video-work I need to disable it, otherwise my colors would be all messed up. Which brings me to my first issue with this MacBook and that’s that there is no way to quickly disable True Tone. Realistically it should automatically disable in photo and video apps but it doesn’t, so I have to manually go into the settings and disable it from there. Its not a major issue but it can become laborious over time.

Now, having one display is great but what if you want to use some external monitors?

Well I’m happy to say that the 13” MacBook Pro supports two 4K displays at 60Hz at the same time or one 5K display at 60Hz. There are ways to connect more monitors than just that, which I’ll cover in the Performance section but I would say that two 4K displays is what most people would use on a 13” MacBook Pro anyways. In regard to the internal display, the best scaling for retina resolution would be 1280x800 since that way, every two horizontal and every two vertical pixels make one larger “Retina” pixel. This is how retina scaling works. But 1280x800 makes everything just too big on this display, so I was using it in 1680x1050 which is the highest scaled resolution that you can natively use and I find that one to be the best overall. 

The 13” MacBook Pro can be connected to external monitors via Thunderbolt 3

The 13” MacBook Pro can be connected to external monitors via Thunderbolt 3

Well I’m happy to say that the 13” MacBook Pro supports two 4K displays at 60Hz at the same time or one 5K display at 60Hz. There are ways to connect more monitors than just that, which I’ll cover in the Performance section but I would say that two 4K displays is what most people would use on a 13” MacBook Pro anyways. In regard to the internal display, the best scaling for retina resolution would be 1280x800 since that way, every two horizontal and every two vertical pixels make one larger “Retina” pixel. This is how retina scaling works. But 1280x800 makes everything just too big on this display, so I was using it in 1680x1050 which is the highest scaled resolution that you can natively use and I find that one to be the best overall. 

Overall I do think that the display on this is brilliant. For photo editing, and video editing this is pretty much the best panel on the market for a laptop. However, I do wish that there was a way to turn off True Tone like I mentioned, and additionally I wish that the bezels were smaller, so that we could have say a 14” display in the same form factor.

KEYBOARD

So what about the keyboard? Well, it’s still using Apple’s extremely controversial Butterfly Keyboard switch with a few small improvements. Now, I do not like the Butterfly Keyboard switch, the one on the 2016 15” MacBook Pro was the worst keyboard that I have ever used. I ended up with two broken keyboards, where the keys would stop typing or they typed twice. I do not know who’s idea it was to bring the keyboard over to the Pro’s since no one was asking for them.

Apple did make a small change to the design in 2017 but it wasn’t until 2018 that we got our first big change when Apple added a silicone membrane that would keep debris out of the key switch and prevent them from breaking. This made the keyboard quieter and also added a bit more travel to it.

The new material design of the keys in should resolve the reliability issues (Source: iFixit)

The new material design of the keys in should resolve the reliability issues (Source: iFixit)

The keys on this 2019 model seem to still have that membrane but it appears to be made out of sturdier nylon which means that in theory the reliability issues should be resolved.

But in terms of how the keyboard feels, I do find it a bit sturdier than the 2018 one, which I do like but that as big of an improvement from the previous gen, as the 2018 one was, from the 2017 MacBooks.

The touch bar is still there which I do like having, I prefer having controls rather than not having them at all but realistically I almost never use it. Most of the things are just keyboard shortcuts that I can do from my keyboard much quicker but there are some useful shortcuts in Photoshop which I do like. Things such as brush size, blending modes and more, so some apps are taking good use of the touch bar, but I can count those on one finger. 

 

SPEAKERS

The speakers are also very good on this. They are pretty much the same as on the 2018 models, so they are much better when compared to the 2017 MacBook Pros. Now, Apple did say that they will be adding Dolby Atmos support to the 2018 MacBook Pros and later so that will be coming in macOS Catalina.

 

PERFORMANCE

As I mentioned earlier, the reason I switched from the 13” MacBooks was because they were not sufficient for my needs, but overall I was very impressed by the performance of the 2019 model.

It still uses Intel’s 8th gen processors compared to the 9th gen that the 15” model got. This is because Intel has yet to release an Iris Plus Graphics 9th gen CPU, which Apple needs in this machine. The model I have in the video is the maxed out 13” model with; the i7 8569U with 4 cores, base clock speed of 2.8GHz, turbo boost to up to 4.7GHz, Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655, 1.5GB of DDR4 memory, as well as 16GB of 2133MHz LPDDR3 memory. 

Small tip, the more RAM you have on this device, the more memory the integrated GPU will have and the faster it will run. So if you get this upgrade to 16GB of RAM because it will make a huge difference. 

CPU performance was really good! In Geekbench 4 we got 5,481 Single-Core (SC) and 18,904 Multi-Core (MC). The SC is actually higher than the 6-core 2018 MacBook Pro 15” so that’s very impressive and the MC performance is not that far off.  In Cinebench we got 705 points in R15 and 1763 points in R20, which is pretty much identical to the 2017 15” MBP. 

GPU wise we got 52,165 Geekbench 4 openCL which is even higher than on the 2019 15” MBP because the 13” has a better integrated GPU than the 15”, but then the 15” does have the dedicated GPU as well, which just crushes the iGPU inside the 13”. Taking a look at Cinebench we got a surprising score of 56.56FPS, just 20 FPS lower than the 2017 15” MBP with the Radeon Pro 560 dedicated GPU, which got 77.5 FPS.

So the 2019 maxed out 13” MacBook Pro is very comparable to the 2017 maxed out 15”!

The SSD performance is really good on the 13” 2019 as well. I was getting 2750 MB/s Write & 2650 MB/s Read, not as fast as the 15” 2019 with the same drive size, but very close and enough to handle all 4K workflows.

A snippet from the Final Cut Pro Project we ran on the 13” MacBook Pro with multiple 4K clips

A snippet from the Final Cut Pro Project we ran on the 13” MacBook Pro with multiple 4K clips

Speaking of, the 13” surprisingly handled 4K workflows really well. We used our Final Cut Pro project on the OnePlus 7 Pro Blind camera test which was one of our most demanding projects yet. It had lots of overlays, lots of 4K side by side clips and surprisingly the MacBook Pro 13” could play it back pretty smoothly. It’s not real time but it’s close to. But if we switched to Performance mode from Quality, the playback became even smoother. It wasn’t as fluid as a 15” MacBook Pro, but pretty good considering that this doesn’t even have a dedicated GPU at all. 

But its a different story when it comes to exporting this 15min 4K project. The 13” MacBook Pro 50 minutes to export the project, compared to just 17 minutes and 52 seconds on the 2019 15” MacBook Pro or 26 minutes on a 2017 15” MacBook Pro. So while you can edit 4K video with this, more complex projects are going to take about 3 times more to export than on a 15” model. So if you are doing that, or plan on doing that, on a daily basis this isn’t the MacBook for you. 

Same issue applies to 3D Rendering, this is CPU based by the way. The example render we used took 16 minutes 50 seconds to render on the 13” compare to 8 minutes and 57 seconds on the 15”.

Long story short, if you occasionally do intensive work than the 13” can handle all that, it’s just that it’s going to take it longer than it would take other laptops that have more powerful CPU’s and dedicated GPU’s.

But how does it handle games you may ask. Well in Fornite I has everything set to Epic in 1680x1050 resolution, and I was getting about 15FPS in the bus drop scene. Now you can drop these settings to Medium and drop the resolution and get over 30FPS. but realistically I wouldn’t say that this was a gaming laptop on its own. 

However, something very unique about the 13” model that no other laptops have aside from the 15” model, is four thunderbolt 3 ports. I know a lot of people complained about the lack of legacy ports but thunderbolt is the future and I’m really happy to see Apple fully implementing this across all of their computers.

With thunderbolt, you can not only connecting things such as a 5K monitor to this or 10Gb ethernet adaptor and a ton of very fast external SSD’s . Not only these but you can also connect external graphic cards via an eGPU enclosure and get an NVidia RTX 2080Ti or a Radeon Vega 64 GPU working on this!

This changes the performance entirely! From the 15FPS we were getting in Fortnite, we now pretty much get a solid 60, with an even higher resolution than before. 

Exporting times in FCP X have been reduced to just 32 minutes from 50 minute, which although still not as fast as a 15” MBP with a dedicated GPU, its still a noticeable improvement.

It does depend on the app and how well it takes full advantage of the eGPU. Final Cut Pro does not, at least not at the moment, a big update will be coming this fall. Until then DaVinci Resolve is the best option for eGPU use in video editing, and in that case you’ll see some massive performance gains, and the same applies to games that do take full advantage of the eGPU. Also by using an eGPU you can connect way more monitors to the 13”, since you’ll be connecting those directly to the GPU itself. 

So if you want to go the eGPU route, it’s probably the best laptop for it but it will be more expensive than just buying a 15” MBP which will give you better rendering times out the box. 

BATTERY

So what about the battery life on this?

Well Apple’s claiming up to 10 hours of web-browsing. I didn’t really get 10 hours, I got around 8, which is far better than 5 or so that I got with my 15”.

The reason for this is because since the 13” does not have a dedicated GPU it will last you longer. The 15” does switch to the dGPU quite a lot which kills a lot of your battery.

Now the MacBook Air will last you longer, up to 12 hours, but I would say that the 13” MacBook Pro is more than enough for most people, when it comes to the battery life.

 

PRICE

Now, when it comes to the price, there are a few things that I want to point out.

Only the touch bar model has an update so get that one if you’re considering this (Source: Apple)

Only the touch bar model has an update so get that one if you’re considering this (Source: Apple)

The first is only the touch bar model has been updated in 2019, the non-touch bar MacBook Pro is still the same 2017 MacBook Pro with no updates, and the same old broken keyboard so please avoid buying that! Unless you’re looking for a better MacBook Air for the same price and you don’t care about the keyboard. 

Additionally the configuration from the video costs $2900 which is $500 more than the baseline 15” model that gives you a much more powerful 6 core i7 CPU, a faster 2400MHz ram, as well as a dedicated Radeon Pro 555X GPU.

So the 13” config that I would go for would be the $2000 one which has everything on the base except for the RAM, which I’ve bumped to 16GB. 

If you do any photo or video work, you can of course bump the storage but keep in mind that if you do that, the MBP 15” would be very close in price, just with less storage.

 

CONCLUSION

Ok, so in the end, who is this 13” MacBook Pro for?

Well I would say that this is perfect for students. Students who study computer science who need a bit more power than the average student. Since you get a very powerful QC MacBook Pro, more powerful than what the 15’ QC MacBook Pros used to be this is the MacBook for you. It’s just that the GPU isn’t that great.

However, even if you don’t need a dedicated GPU, this could be perfect for you. Same goes for people that need a very portable laptop that can handle everything they throw at it. The 13” MacBook Pro is actually the most powerful 13” laptop that you can buy CPU wise, and with that thunderbolt expandability you can indeed connect a very powerful Desktop Graphics card which will turn it into a beast of a machine, it’s just that you’ll have to pay for that, even more than a 15” MacBook Pro which will give you better performance per cost.


MacBook Pro Vega 20 Review

Back in July 2018 Apple silently released the new 2018 MacBook Pros, without any event or anything, it randomly appeared on their website and it turned out to be a significant upgrade over the 2017 and 2016 models. It came with an i9 6-core processor, from the i7 quad core one that we got before, it came with 32GB of RAM, the Radeon 560X GPU over the 560, a True Tone Display, an improved keyboard as well as up to 4TB of 3.2GB/s flash storage. This thing was a huge upgrade over the 2017 model.

I’ve been using it every day for 12 hours, sometimes more, for about 6 months now, so what are my overall thoughts?

BUILD

The new wrap that Apple has installed around the keys on the keyboard. Source: iFixit

The new wrap that Apple has installed around the keys on the keyboard. Source: iFixit

Like I said in the introduction, the keyboard itself has had quite a big improvement. I type a lot on my MacBook Pro and with the 2017 model I was forced to use an external keyboard but on this one I can comfortably type fast enough without making a considerable amount of spelling errors.

Apple also added a tiny wrap around the keys to protect them from any dust and debris that could get inside the switches. This makes the keys a bit quieter than before but definitely more tactile as there’s a more key travel thanks to the wraps. 

The speakers are also way better than they were before. I mean, they’re were already great on the 15” 2017 model, but now they have even more bass and they’re also louder than before. 

The new True Tone Display means that the MacBook Pro will automatically adjust the color temperature in order to match the lighting in your room and I honestly love it! It makes reading and writing so much easier on the eyes, and what’s pretty cool about it is that it also works on the TouchBar as well as with LG’s UltraFine 5K and 4K Monitors, as long as you keep the MacBook Pro’s lid open. 

The only issue that I have with True Tone (and it’s quite a big one really) is that if you do any Video or Photo Editing, it will not automatically turn itself off. Even in 1st party apps such as iMovie or Final Cut Pro X it wouldn’t automatically turn off. This means that you would need to constantly remind yourself to dig through the settings app and disable it every single time you need to edit and image or video, otherwise your whole color temperature would be messed up.

So here’s hoping Apple at least add a shortcut on the touch bar to do this!

 

PERFORMANCE

Ok, let’s talk about the performance. 

So aside from the 2 extra cores and 4 extra threads that we get with the 2018 models, we also get 32GB of 2400MHz DDR4 memory, which is even faster than the LPDDR3 2133MHz memory that we had in the 2017 models. The 560X is about 10-15% faster than the 560 was in 2017. So the main improvement here is in terms of the CPU and the RAM.

Now just 3 months after Apple released the 2018 MacBook Pros, they decided to release one more update. That was an additional GPU option which was the Vega 16 and Vega 20 Options, for the 15” MacBook Pros. Honestly, this broke my heart. Not just mine but everyone else’s who bought a maxed out 2018 model just month or so before. That’s because the Vega 20 models especially, are finally a massive improvement over even the 560X that we got a few weeks before. Apple could’ve at least said that they were going to release a major GPU option a few month later, or release the 2018 models in November, but nope they kept silent and screwed over everyone who bought a 2018 15” MacBook Pro.

But I digress. Anyway here’s how the 2017 compares to the 2018 560X and 2018 Vega 20: 

Geekbench 4 Single Core:

  • 2017 i7 16GB 560 - 4742

  • 2018 i9 32GB 560X - 5608

  • 2018 i9 32GB Vega 20 - 5698

Geekbench 4 Multi Core:

  • 2017 i7 16GB 560 - 15829

  • 2018 i9 32GB 560X - 23795

  • 2018 i9 32GB Vega 20 - 25086

Cinebench CPU:

  • 2017 i7 16GB 560 - 689 

  • 2018 i9 32GB 560X - 1013

  • 2018 i9 32GB Vega 20 - 1073

Disk Read Test:

  • 2017 i7 16GB 560 - 2504R MB/s 

  • 2018 i9 32GB 560X - 3106R MB/s  

  • 2018 i9 32GB Vega 20 - 3081R MB/s 

Disk Write Test:

  • 2017 i7 16GB 560 - 1587W MB/s 

  • 2018 i9 32GB 560X - 3004W MB/s 

  • 2018 i9 32GB Vega 20 2987W MB/s 

Keyshot 8:

  • 2017 i7 16GB 560 - 8:39 

  • 2018 i9 32GB 560X -  5:50

  • 2018 i9 32GB Vega 20 -5:36

The difference in internals between the VEGA and the 560X

The difference in internals between the VEGA and the 560X

Looking at this, even though both the models have the exact same CPU, it seems like the Vega 20 MBP does perform better even in CPU demanding tasks. This is because Apple has slightly redesigned the internals. I took the back covers off and you can see how much bigger the GPU is on the Vega 20 model. This is because the GPU memory is now inside the GPU itself. This is why AMD memory is called HBM2, it’s their second generation of high bandwidth memory and the only way it can be faster than the standard GDDR5 is by being placed inside the GPU rather than outside, like we have on the 560X model.  

The Vega 20 can also achieve more performance per watt than the 560X, meaning that the wattage can be lowered and therefore the GPU temperatures are lowered as well which means that in return the CPU has more room to breathe since Apple’s using a unified cooling system for both the CPU and the GPU. 

But how do they compare in GPU tests?

Cinebench GPU:

  • 2017 i7 16GB 560 -  86fps

  • 2018 i9 32GB 560X - 106fps

  • 2018 i9 32GB Vega 20 - 111fps


Heaven Benchmark:

  • 2017 i7 16GB 560 -19fps

  • 2018 i9 32GB 560X - 21fps

  • 2018 i9 32GB Vega 20 -  38fps


FCP X:

  • 2017 i7 16GB 560 - 13min 51s 

  • 2018 i9 32GB 560X - 11min 48s

  • 2018 i9 32GB Vega 20 - 10min 51s


Starcraft 2

  • 2017 i7 16GB 560 -35fps

  • 2018 i9 32GB 560X - 39fps

  • 2018 i9 32GB Vega 20 - 78fps


Fortnite

  • 2017 i7 16GB 560 - 16fps

  • 2018 i9 32GB 560X - 19fps

  • 2018 i9 32GB Vega 20 - 28fps

So CPU wise you do get a small improvement but GPU wise you get almost a two times increase in performance. So if you’re into gaming this is going to be huge improvement compared to even the 560X model. If you’re into video editing, the improvement is just about 10% on the Vega 20 compared to the 560X. 

Finally the last thing that I want to cover in this section is the T2 processor. So this is something that Apple initially added to the 2017 iMac Pro and then to all new Macs released afterwards.

Graph showing the difference in the Write speeds between the 2018 VEGA, the 2018 560X and the 2017 560

Graph showing the difference in the Write speeds between the 2018 VEGA, the 2018 560X and the 2017 560

The 2018 MacBook Pros, the 2018 MacBook Air, and the new Mac Mini all come with the T2 chip. What it is essentially is an ARM based processor, very similar to Apple’s A10 chip that’s inside the iPhone 7 and it handles all the background system processes such as; the boot sequence, the microphones, the camera processing, even the disk encryption. This is the reason why we got double the write speeds on the 2018 MacBook Pro vs the 2017 model when using FireVault.

So the T2 lifts a lot of the lighter workloads from the main Intel processor, allowing it to perform faster, and what Apple did is remarkable! They have devices that run on both the x86-64 platform as well as the ARM platform. This is something that’s even more difficult to do than a MacBook running just on an ARM processor such as Apple’s A12 or so processors.

But the downside to this is that every Mac with the T2 processor will crash a lot! I’ve had my 2018 MacBook Pro for 6 months at the time of writing this, and this thing has crashed close to 40 times already. And yes, I did lose some work in the process. It’s a nightmare to be honest. I’ve had T2 crashes with the Vega 20 MBP as well, the Mac Mini, 2 Mac Minis actually and the MacBook Air.

So unfortunately, even though Apple’s T2 processor is supposed to make your MacBook more secure, which it does, it also has a negative impact on the usability, just because of how often it crashes your system.

CONCLUSION

So overall, I do love my 2018 15” i9 560X MacBook Pro. It’s by far the best mac that I’ve used and even though it’s far from perfect, what with all the T2 crashes, but it’s still an amazing device overall. I’m using Thunderbolt 3 to its full potential, connecting directly to my server, the Mac Mini, my 5K monitor as well as sometimes my Vega 64 eGPU as well. If you’re into gaming than yes the Vega it is worth it, otherwise the 560X is still a great GPU for content creation.