A new laptop arrives asking a familiar question about what a computer should be for. Apple's 14-inch MacBook Pro, with its M1 Pro chip, gives professionals a larger, brighter screen, a sharper webcam, and the ports it once removed, but asks them to carry half a pound more in exchange. CNET's reviewer, Dan Ackerman, sees a machine that turns against the long drift toward lightness, and whose worth depends entirely on whether the buyer's work demands what it offers.
Apple's 14-inch MacBook Pro Brings Back HDMI, SD and MagSafe, but Adds Weight for Pros
A half-pound may not sound like much, but laptops are now moving the other way
Mark
Why does a half pound matter so much on this laptop?
Mimi
Because laptops have spent years getting lighter, and this one reverses that. It's 3.5 pounds against 3.0 for the 13-inch Pro and 2.8 for the Air. The reviewer carried it for days without trouble, but says a daily subway commute could make it tiresome.
Mark
And what do you get for the weight?
Mimi
A 14.2-inch mini LED screen at 1,000 nits, a 1080p webcam, HDMI, an SD slot, MagSafe and far faster graphics.
Luke
Let me separate the measured from the felt. The benchmark numbers are the reviewer's own tests. The portability verdict is one person's impression from several days of use.
Mark
What about the notch?
Mimi
Apple changed MacOS so menu bars slide up beside it, and full-screen video hides it in a letterbox bar. The reviewer calls it a compromise and says tolerance will differ.
Luke
Notably, he doesn't say it's fine. He says it's less visible than on the iPhone.
Mark
Does the M1 Max beat the M1 Pro?
Mimi
In his early tests they were close. The 8K Premiere export took 10:44 on the 14-inch M1 Pro and 10:11 on the 16-inch M1 Max.
Luke
He says he hasn't yet found a heavy enough workload to separate them. So no conclusion there yet, and battery results are also still pending.
Mark
Who is it for?
Mimi
Professionals who value screen and performance. For mainstream buyers he still recommends the $999 Air.
Il Polso
- The machine weighs 3.5 pounds, moving against years of ever-lighter laptops and making every carry a conscious trade.
- A notch cut into the screen to house the webcam draws the same complaints iPhone users have voiced for years.
- Apple's new M1 Pro chip posts performance gains that sharply outrun the previous generation in multicore and video tests.
- At $1,999 to start, the price stings for students and casual users, who are steered toward the $999 M1 Air instead.
- The verdict is settling into a clear split: professionals who need screen and power are the target, while everyone else is advised to wait.
A new laptop arrives asking a familiar question about what a computer should be for. Apple's 14-inch MacBook Pro, with its M1 Pro chip, gives professionals a larger, brighter screen, a sharper webcam, and the ports it once removed, but asks them to carry half a pound more in exchange. CNET's reviewer, Dan Ackerman, sees a machine that turns against the long drift toward lightness, and whose worth depends entirely on whether the buyer's work demands what it offers.
Pick up the new 14-inch MacBook Pro after a stretch with a MacBook Air, and the first thing you notice is the weight. At 3.5 pounds it is half a pound heavier than the 13-inch Pro, and CNET's Dan Ackerman notes that after years of laptops growing thinner, this one moves the other way. From across a room it looks like its siblings, but up close the screen is larger at 14.2 inches, brighter at 1,000 nits of sustained brightness, and the Touch Bar has given way to function keys.
The trade-offs are real. A notch at the top of the screen houses a webcam that jumps from 720p to 1080p, a gain Ackerman finds hard to give up for anyone in daily video calls, though the notch itself is a compromise that macOS works to soften. The ports return as well: HDMI, an SD card slot, and MagSafe, a partial undoing of the years Apple spent stripping them away.
Under the hood, the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips deliver large jumps in testing. An 8K video export finishes in just over ten minutes, far faster than older Intel and iMac machines, and the 14-inch performs nearly on par with the 16-inch Max in early runs.
Who should buy it depends on who is asking. At $1,999 to start, against $999 for the M1 Air, the premium is steep for students and writers, who are better served by the Air. For professionals the choice narrows to this size or the 16-inch, which costs $200 to $300 more. Ackerman has carried it for days without trouble, though he wonders whether a daily commute would wear on the extra weight. CNET promises battery results and deeper analysis in the coming weeks.
Pick up the new 14-inch MacBook Pro after a stretch with a MacBook Air, and the first thing you notice is the heft. It weighs 3.5 pounds. The current 13-inch Pro is 3.0 pounds, and the M1 MacBook Air is 2.8. CNET's Dan Ackerman, who reviewed it, points out that after years of laptops getting slimmer and lighter, this one moves the other way.
From across a room, it looks much like the 13-inch machines it sits beside. Up close, the screen is bigger, the bezels are slimmer and the keyboard has a new color scheme. The Touch Bar is gone, replaced by function keys. The screen is 14.2 inches, up from 13.3, with a resolution of 3024x1964. Apple calls it a Liquid Retina XDR display. It is a mini LED panel like the one in the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, and its sustained brightness doubles from 500 nits to 1,000.
The slim border has a cost: a notch cut into the top of the screen to hold the webcam, the same feature iPhone users have complained about for several generations. Apple has adjusted MacOS to soften it. Menu bars slide up beside the notch, and full-screen photo or video content hides it in a letterbox bar. Ackerman calls it a compromise and says tolerance will vary. The camera itself is a real gain, jumping from 720p to 1080p. For anyone in daily video meetings, he writes, the difference is obvious and hard to give up. The 27-inch Intel iMac and the 24-inch M1 iMac already have 1080p cameras, as do a handful of Windows laptops, but it is still far from standard.
The ports are the other reversal. Over roughly 15 years, since the first MacBook Pro in 2006, Apple has moved from miniDisplayPort to HDMI, then dropped HDMI for USB-C, and now brings HDMI back. The SD card slot returns too, along with the MagSafe power connector. The laptop has three Thunderbolt USB-C ports, an HDMI port, an SDXC card slot and MagSafe 3. Ackerman says MagSafe is as good as he remembered, though he also likes that nearly everything now charges over USB-C.
Inside, the 14-inch and its 16-inch sibling are part of Apple's second wave of its own chips. Buyers choose between the M1 Pro and the M1 Max rather than the standard M1. The M1 Pro comes with eight CPU cores and 14 GPU cores, or 10 CPU cores and 16 GPU cores. The M1 Max has 10 CPU cores and 24 or 32 GPU cores. The standard M1 has 7 or 8 GPU cores. Both new chips add more video encoding and decoding hardware. The 14-inch can be configured with up to 64GB of RAM and 8TB of storage, like the 16-inch. That top configuration costs about $5,800, against $6,100 for the 16-inch. Two lower-end M1 Pro options exist only on the 14-inch.
In testing, the gains were large. The 14-inch M1 Pro scored 12529 on Geekbench multicore and 12302 on Cinebench R23, against 7457 and 7772 for the 2020 13-inch M1 Pro. The 16-inch M1 Max was only slightly higher, at 12627 and 12365. An 8K Premiere export took 10 minutes 44 seconds on the 14-inch M1 Pro and 10:11 on the 16-inch M1 Max. The 24-inch M1 iMac needed 22:20, and a 2019 15-inch Intel MacBook Pro with AMD graphics needed 20:37. Ackerman says the Pro and Max performed similarly in his early testing, and he is looking for heavier workloads to separate them.
His verdict depends on who is buying. The starting price is $1,999, against $999 for the M1 Air and $1,299 for the 13-inch Pro. For students, coffee shop writers and other mainstream users, he calls that a steep premium for a better screen, webcam and ports, like buying a sports car to drive in city traffic. He still recommends the Air for them. Heavy video-call users might justify it. For the professionals Apple built it for, the choice is between the 14-inch and the 16-inch, which costs $200 to $300 more and echoes the 17-inch MacBook Pro discontinued in 2012. Ackerman carried the 14-inch for several days without trouble, though he says a daily subway commute could make the extra half pound wearing. CNET plans to add battery test results and more analysis in the coming weeks.
Citazioni salienti
The $999 M1 MacBook Air is still my recommendation for mainstream users.— Dan Ackerman, CNET
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