The new 14-inch M1 Pro MacBook Pro is a truly satisfying notebook, and now it can be the crown of professional choice without hesitation.

Let's go back to the autumn of 2020. Remember the thunderous "boom" that shook the technology industry? That was the first appearance of Apple's M1. It exploded on the scene and shocked the Mac and PC world with its amazing performance.

After the debut of M1, the question came, how did Apple follow up with such a successful release? Well, now that a year has passed, Apple has brought another sensational "boom", it is shaking up the technology industry, this time may be even greater. This time it was two system-on-chips, M1 Pro and M1 Max. They blew the M1 away. After using the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro for some time, it is clear that Apple is working hard to use its chip. M1 Pro is simply an incredible chip.

If this is just the same processor as last year, then the new MacBook Pro will be a big story. But this laptop has a lot from the inside to the outside, and the result is the MacBook Pro, which is truly built for professionals who have the highest demands on hardware.

The 14-inch MacBook Pro is available in silver or space gray.

The 14-inch MacBook Pro I tested has the following specifications:

This laptop is a custom configuration of the $2,499 model with 32GB of RAM instead of 16GB, which raises the price to $2,899. (You can’t upgrade RAM after purchase because it’s built into the SoC. Although Apple’s silicon computer handles RAM much better than its Intel predecessors, you should still get the most benefit when placing an order.)

After opening the box and unpacking the MacBook Pro, it is "luxury". This is the first word that comes to my mind when I hold the laptop in my hand. The 100% recycled aluminum housing is smooth and feels like it has a silky coating (it is not a coating). When it is closed, you will notice that the edges are rounded, so the laptop will not go deep into your hands. This is in sharp contrast with the previous design, and it conveys a sense of Apple’s attention to detail.

Apple made sure to mark it by embossing the MacBook Pro on the bottom.

The 14-inch MacBook Pro measures 12.31 x 8.71 x 0.61 inches and weighs 3.5 pounds. It is actually the same height as the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro, but is about 0.34 inches wide, 0.35 inches deep, and weighs half a pound. However, the 14-inch model feels much stronger than the 13-inch model. Compared with the older 15-inch MacBook Pro, the 14-inch model is much smaller.

The new 14-inch MacBook Pro is equipped with the old 15-inch MacBook Pro that was discontinued in 2019.

Apple's laptops lag behind other industries in terms of displays, but with the advent of the MacBook Pro, this situation has finally changed. It uses many technologies that make it stand out. Starting with ProMotion, this feature can change the refresh rate based on what's happening on the screen. It can dial it up to 120Hz (while the frequency on all other laptops made by Apple is 60Hz), when it dials it, it is very satisfactory. The scrolling is very smooth and the movement on the screen is very smooth. When fewer events occur on the screen, a lower refresh rate is activated, which helps to save battery power.

Then comes the excellent color and image quality. The Liquid Retina XDR display uses mini-LED technology. When viewing HDR content, its peak brightness can reach 1,600 nits and the continuous brightness can reach 1,000 nits. The standard content is the same as the Intel-based MacBook Pro and the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro with 500 nits of brightness, but the details are incredible, especially in shadows and highlights, and the light across the display looks uniform. This is the best monitor ever on a MacBook, to a large extent.

The 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR display has a native resolution of 3024 x 1964 and 254 pixels per inch.

MacBook Pro has a notable new feature that will stand out when you turn on the laptop: a notch, just like you see on the iPhone. In order to provide users with as much screen space as possible, Apple made the notebook's bezel ultra-thin. But there is a module that can be cut into the screen to accommodate the 1080p FaceTime camera, so it is a notch. It should be pointed out that the bangs will not invade the screen area-there is still a 16 x 10 screen under the bangs, so compared with the old MacBook Pro, the bangs area is "extra" screen space. 

By default, the macOS menu bar passes through the groove, but in full-screen mode, you can choose to have the menu bar below the groove. This is a per-app setting in the "Get Info" box called "Zoom to fit below the built-in camera", you will find this option if the app developer has not defined the mode used in their app. After activation, the space around the notch will turn black, making the bezel look similar to that on the 13-inch MacBook Pro. (We have a separate article that covers this in detail.)

As the gap plays out, the application menu will continue to be on the other side of the gap when necessary, but at the cost of the menu bar icons on the right-they will be temporarily removed from the menu bar and replaced when the space is created by switching or exiting application. This does not only happen in applications with many menus; if you use a lower screen resolution (such as the "Large Text" setting in the "Display" system preferences), you will easily see how the menu list enters the concave Slot and continue after it. The menu bar icon on the right disappears.

This behavior has always existed in macOS, but it rarely becomes a problem because there are not many applications that extend menu items that far. But now that the gap takes up valuable menu bar space, it may happen more frequently.

This suddenly makes the control center a more valuable menu bar item. Apple's macOS Control Center can be used to access some settings that may become unavailable in a crowded menu bar, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and volume. However, this gap magnifies the biggest flaw of the Control Center. It has limited customization options-not all settings are available, and you can't add third-party applications. Solving these issues will make the control center more useful and provide a solution to the crowded menu bar on the notched MacBook Pro.

Before Apple solves this problem, there are some utilities that can help organize your menu bar, such as Bartender 4, which we recently regarded as one of our Mac Gems. These types of utilities have been around for a while, but I suspect they may suddenly become very popular again. Apple also provides the option to run the application in full-screen mode, where "Zoom to fit the built-in camera" is turned on. Then the menu bar can use the space normally occupied by the notch.

All of this is to say that this gap is really prominent. Because I am used to the bangs of the iPhone, adapting to the bangs of the MacBook Pro is not a problem. I hardly noticed it when I used the laptop every day, it didn't infringe on the working space below, so I didn't really lose anything. However, overcrowded menu bars and lengthy menu items will be a big problem for many users.

Despite having a notch as wide as the iPhone, the MacBook Pro does not have a face ID. I thought the M1 iMac would be the first Mac equipped with Face ID, but this did not happen. I wish these high-end MacBook Pros had Face ID, but this did not happen either. Maybe it will appear in the upcoming 27-inch Intel iMac replacement. Currently, MacBook Pro is equipped with the new Touch ID sensor of M1 iMac, and it works well.

MacBook Pro has long used an outdated 720p camera, but its image quality is mediocre. On the MacBook Pro, the front camera has finally been upgraded. It has the same 1080p camera as the 24-inch iMac, with a new four-element lens, a larger aperture, and a new image sensor. This is a welcome change that produces better image quality than the 13-inch MacBook Pro.

But it is still not a camera worthy of professional laptop use. Prices start at $1,999. Buyers should get more than a minimal camera. Apple has one: an iPad’s 12MP ultra-wide FaceTime HD camera with a 122-degree field of view, f/2.4 aperture, and HDR for photos. 1080p HD video recording, most importantly, supports Center Stage, which is Apple's technology that allows you to always be in the center of the screen when you are moving.

This is a major flaw in the new MacBook Pro. People are participating in virtual meetings and gatherings more than ever, and installing a 12MP FaceTime camera on a MacBook Pro will provide professional users with a first-class video conferencing experience. The 1080p camera won't break the deal, and it's certainly better than the 720p camera it replaces, but it can definitely be better.

When I reviewed the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro last year, I wrote that its performance amazed me. After that review, the concept of how much performance can be improved is beyond my understanding. Maybe I'm just a tired old man, but I'm used to seeing 15% or 20% gains between Intel-based laptop upgrades, which makes me confused about what is possible. I need to change my mind because I was surprised after using the 10-core M1 Pro in the 14-inch MacBook Pro.

The laptop I tested has a 10-core M1 Pro processor, a 16-core GPU, a 16-core neural engine, 32GB LPDDR5 RAM, and a 200GBps video memory bandwidth. The 14-inch MacBook Pro I reviewed is equipped with a 1TB SSD and is priced at $2,899. For this review, we also include results from the following Macs:

If you are interested in learning more, we have a separate article explaining the difference between M1 Pro and M1 Max.

With Geekbench 5, the new M1 Pro puts everything behind. In the multi-core CPU test, the performance of the M1 Pro was nearly 65% ​​higher than the M1 Mac in our test group. This is not far from the 70% touted by Apple. The M1 Pro is 70% faster than the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro equipped with Intel 2.4GHz 8-core Core i9 CPU, which is the fastest processor provided by Apple. Nice to meet you, Intel.

The single-core CPU test of Geekbench 5 did not find anything surprising, and the M1 Pro and M1 released the same results. The M1 Pro (and M1) is 39% faster than Intel’s 2.4GHz Core i9 CPU.

In our Cinebench R23 results, we see that the muscle flexion of the M1 Pro is higher, which is 60% higher than that of the M1 in the multi-core test. The Cinebench single-core results are the same as the Geekbench single-core CPU results, which are basically the same on the Apple silicon Macs we tested.

Apple claims that the SSD read speed in the new MacBook Pro is 7.4GBps, which is more than twice the 3.3GBps of the SSD in the M1 Mac they claim. When we used Blackmagic's 1TB SSD for disk speed tests in our evaluation unit, we didn't get these numbers, but we did see a 100% improvement over M1 Pro when performing reads-M1 Pro's SSD was 126 faster % Better than the SSD in the 2019 16-inch Intel MacBook Pro. 

We also ran the AmorphousDiskMark benchmark on the M1 and M1 Pro. In this test, the M1 Pro is closer to Apple's specifications, with a reading speed of 6.77GBps. The read rate of M1 is 2.4GBps. Using another SSD benchmark tool, Stibium, the M1 Pro is rated at 7.05GBps, while the read value of M1 is 2.06GBps.

The test involves converting 4K video to 1080p. When using the H.265 x265 setting, the speed of the M1 Pro is 155% higher than that of the M1 and 91% higher than the 16-inch Intel MacBook Pro in 2019. When using H.265 VideoToolbox settings, the improvement of M1 Pro relative to M1 is negligible, and it is 14% higher than Intel MacBook Pro.

Another test we conducted involved Topaz Labs Gigapixel AI. The application uses "deep learning" to enhance image details. Using 41MB satellite photos, M1 Pro is 161% faster than M1. Gigapixel AI is not a native application; it was created for Intel CPUs, so the application runs under Rosetta on Apple chips. View test data and performance graphs.

M1 Pro pays more attention to graphics performance than M1. The GPU in our evaluation unit has a 16-core GPU, which is twice that of the M1. During my testing of the original M1, I found that it has greatly improved its graphics performance. Let's see what happens when the number of GPU cores doubles.

Rise of the Tomb Raider and Civilization VI are older games written for Intel, but M1 Pro still greatly improves the graphics speed of M1-there is no reason to use lower graphics settings. You can use high settings and enjoy the game as a game.

Compared with the standalone 8GB AMD Radeon Pro 5500M GPU in the 16-inch Intel MacBook Pro, the M1 Pro’s GPU either beats it or keeps up with it. This is impressive, it is the low end of Apple's latest chip. Another new SoC launched by Apple, M1 Max, is equipped with 24-core or 32-core GPU, which is 4 times faster than M1. We will test it as soon as possible, but we hope it can run around the M1 Pro.

We also used the Compute benchmark in Geekbench 5, which uses OpenCL or Metal API to benchmark GPU performance. Since the M1 Pro’s GPU core is twice that of the M1, we see twice the performance. Compared with the 8GB AMD Radeon Pro 5500M GPU in the 16-inch Intel MacBook Pro, the M1 Pro’s 16-core GPU has a 69% increase in Metal and 15% in OpenCL.

In addition to the above tests, we also ran some other graphics benchmark tests to compare M1 and M1 Pro. It is foreseeable that the M1 Pro is faster than the M1, although it is interesting to see how much. A summary of the results is listed below, and you can click on the links to learn more about each benchmark. Unless otherwise noted, these benchmarks are not native to M1, but are run using Rosetta.

Four years later, MagSafe ushered in the return of the MacBook Pro. It is a connector that is magnetically connected to the power adapter port of the laptop. If you pull it hard, it will disconnect. This is a great safety feature that I really miss, especially when someone trips over an inserted cable and drops the laptop on the floor more than a few times.

Another nice thing is that the included USB-C to MagSafe cable is braided, so it is more durable than the regular vinyl used on other cables. However, try not to lose that MagSafe cable-a replacement cable can cost as much as $49 in the Apple Store. If you don’t want to use MagSafe, you can use the more affordable $19 USB-C charging cable and charge it through one of the Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports.

The MagSafe 3 port (left side) is located on the left side of the MacBook Pro, there are several Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports and a headphone jack.

Both the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro support the new fast charging feature, and the battery can go from zero to 50% battery life in 30 minutes. However, fast charging on the 14-inch model requires a 96W power adapter, which is included in the standard configuration of $2,499, but not required for the $1,999 model-you must pay an additional $20 to upgrade. For 14-inch laptops (equipped with 69.6 watt-hour batteries), fast charging can be done via MagSafe or Thunderbolt ports, but on 16-inch models, you must use MagSafe.

This sounds like many conditions, but if you have the right adapter and cable, fast charging will work as advertised. After the 14-inch MacBook Pro battery was dead, using the bundled 96W power adapter and MagSafe or USB-C port, it was exactly 50% full in 30 minutes. I also tried to charge the battery for 30 minutes with 27% battery life, and the result was 72%-although not a 50% improvement, it was close. Charging starts to slow down after a certain point to help maintain the overall health of the battery.

Although we are talking about battery life, Apple claims that the battery life when watching 1080p videos in the Apple TV app is 17 hours. This is exactly what I get when I loop the full screen video until the battery runs out. For general use, a whole day can be spent on batteries alone. Even people who are engaged in more intensive work (video or graphics rendering or compiled code) can work for a long time without plugging in.

Apple has added Thunderbolt/USB 4 to the MacBook Pro, but the number of ports the company provides you seems puzzling. Both the 14-inch and 16-inch models contain three ports. For the 14-inch model, this is one more than the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro. But a large part of the target audience of this laptop is graphics and video professionals who are using multiple displays and other devices. These ports will be occupied soon, which means you need to turn to Thunderbolt hubs. We will never see a laptop equipped with up to six Thunderbolt/USB-C ports, but four will be more practical, even with MagSafe as a charging option.

The right side of the MacBook Pro is equipped with an SDXC card slot, a Thunderbolt/USB 4 port and an HDMI 2.0 port.

The SDXC slot is another important feature for content professionals who want to transfer work from their devices in an easy way. High-end cameras, voice recorders, etc. use SDXC cards. It is very convenient to eject the card from the device and insert it into the MacBook Pro.

Apple now provides a full-size HDMI 2.0 port, which may seem strange for high-end professional work, but this port is important for people who often do presentations. You can plug in a large external monitor without the need for an adapter, and you don’t need to worry about it on the go. HDMI 2.1 is more suitable for the future, but it may take several years for high-end 4K, 120Hz displays to be affordable and popular.

Apple also includes a headphone jack, in order to maintain the needs of professionals, the company upgraded the jack so that it can support high-impedance headphones. OK. The one port we hope to get is the Ethernet jack on the power adapter, just like the port on the 24-inch iMac. Unfortunately, this did not happen, so it stayed on the wish list.

The decision to abandon the Touch Bar will certainly anger some MacBook Pro users. For the record, I don't care about it, but the vast majority of respondents to an article I wrote about the Touch Bar said I was wrong. (You can see some of these comments here.)

Apple replaced the Touch Bar with full-size function keys instead of the half-height keys you found on MacBook Air. Having full-size function keys is a boon for professional users who use these keys in their applications. With the Touch Bar, you can switch it to function key mode, but the function buttons on its screen are not obvious, and the lack of feedback is unsatisfactory. The physical function keys provide much-needed usability hints.

Toodle-loo, touch bar. Apple replaced them with full-size function keys.

However, the Touch Bar has not completely disappeared from Apple's product line. It is still part of the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro, so if your love for the Touch Bar replaces everything else in the MacBook Pro, you can grab one of them before they run out. Apple hasn’t made any announcements yet, but don’t be surprised if the 13-inch MacBook Pro eventually disappears.

Over the years, the MacBook Pro’s reputation as the best-performing notebook computer has lost some of its brilliance. The latest update is gradual, and even the latest 16-inch model is in urgent need of a redesign. This is no longer a problem.

According to Apple's hardware engineers, this new MacBook Pro has been in use since 2019. Judging from its look and feel, this laptop has been put into a lot of careful consideration. It starts from the exterior design, with a stylish appearance, firmness and luxurious feel. Turn it on, your eyes cannot be removed from the gorgeous display, and the keyboard brings out your working intuition. When you start working, your MacBook Pro will respond without hesitation, as if it knows what you want to do and how quickly you want to complete it. 

All these are enough for MacBook Pro to overcome some of its shortcomings, which are expected to be resolved in a short time. But there is no doubt that the new MacBook Pro is a truly satisfying notebook, and now it can be the crown of professional choice without hesitation.

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