Apple's 2023 MacBook Pro 14 With M2 Pro Is an Evolution, Not a Revolution, but a Compelling Upgrade

Hot Hardware bought its own review unit. Apple didn't supply one, so the reviewers paid retail for the 2023 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M2 Pro chip, a configuration the review puts at about $2,500 (the entry price is $1,999). Their verdict is that this is an evolution of the 2021 design, not a revolution, and that this is not necessarily a bad thing.

The context is Apple's move away from x86 processors to its own Arm64 designs, announced at the virtual WWDC in summer 2020. Nearly three years later, this is the second iteration of the 14-inch design. The outside is unchanged apart from the darker Space Gray finish, which the reviewers say looks almost bronze in warm light and steely blue in cool light. Silver is also offered. Midnight and Starlight are reserved for the M2 MacBook Air.

The chip is where the changes sit. Built on the second generation of TSMC's 5-nanometer process, the M2 Pro has twelve CPU cores: eight performance and four efficiency. The GPU has 19 cores, up from 14 on the 14-inch M1 Pro the site reviewed before. That earlier unit, though, was a trimmed-down M1 Pro missing two performance cores and two GPU cores, so the performance-core count against a full M1 Pro hasn't really moved. Apple claims an 18% increase in GPU cores over the fully enabled predecessor, which it says delivers about 30% faster graphics.

Per-thread gains are modest. Geekbench 5 reports the M2 Pro's performance cores at 3.47 GHz against 3.2 GHz for the M1 Pro, an 8.4% bump. The L2 cache for the performance cores grows from 12 MB to 16 MB, with the efficiency cores keeping their own 4 MB. The base M2 Pro model has six performance cores. Getting the full eight costs $500 more, but $200 of that is the step to 1 TB of storage, so the extra performance cores are effectively a $300 premium. The reviewers' conclusion is that M1 Pro owners shouldn't bother, while anyone clinging to an x86 Mac, such as a late-2019 MacBook Pro with a ninth-generation Core processor, would see a huge jump.

Memory is unchanged: 16 GB of LPDDR5 at 200 GB per second, soldered to the board. So is the 1 TB SSD, whose flash chips are soldered directly. The reviewers say they can accept this in a mainstream machine like the Dell XPS 13 9315, but in a supposedly pro system it is a recurring disappointment. The base model ships with 512 GB. Wireless comes from Broadcom's BCM4388, which supports Bluetooth 5.3 and Wi-Fi 6E; the reviewer moved large files across a local network at about 850 megabits per second, possibly limited by the gigabit Ethernet on the other end.

The display is the same 14.2-inch panel as before, at 3,024 x 1,964. It's a mini LED with more than 8,000 dimming zones, sustained brightness of 1,000 nits, full DCI-P3 coverage, and a variable refresh rate up to 120 Hz that Apple calls ProMotion. The reviewers fault Apple for capping fixed refresh rates at 60 Hz, so 120 Hz can't be locked in. They also tire of the notch, though they note it mainly intrudes on very wide menus, and full-screen apps can use a 3,024 x 1,900 area below it. The notch houses a 1080p webcam, flanked by noise-canceling microphones, a welcome step up from the 720p cameras still common in laptops.

The keyboard and trackpad also carry over. The butterfly switches are gone; the current keys are comfortable, backlit, and responsive, though the reviewers would like a bit more travel. Touch ID sits at the top right. Six speakers with Dolby Atmos certification sound better than most compact notebooks, and the haptic trackpad is convincing. The ports remain three Thunderbolt 4 connectors, MagSafe, an SD card reader fast enough to max out their Sandisk Extreme card, and a headphone jack. The review's contents list also flags HDMI 2.0 as a shortcoming for a pro machine.

The takeaway is a buying guide: owners of Intel-era Macs have the most to gain, owners of the M1 Pro have little reason to move, and soldered storage remains the reviewers' main complaint.