The 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros have been my favorite laptops of the past two years. These computers are the real deal and have no real weaknesses – apart from the high price, of course. But you absolutely get what you pay for.
And don’t get me wrong. I’m excited about the announcement of the M2 Pro and Max MacBook Pro, which unexpectedly launched yesterday. But these aren’t “new” laptops, hence the informal nature of the surprise launch. This means that all changes are internal and the list of new features is quite small.
They take the M1 Pro and Max models and bring them to the latest M2 speeds, which we first saw in the M2 MacBook Air last year. These are undoubtedly faster chips, and Apple says there are significant gains graphically over last year’s model. Overall, Apple claims the M2 Max has 30% faster graphics than the M1 Max, which is a substantial upgrade from generation to generation. The 38-core GPU, available as a top option in both 14-inch and 16-inch models, is obviously where you see the biggest jump in performance.
In real-world applications, the company claims the new MacBook Pros are up to 20% faster at rendering titles and animations in Motion, which is Apple’s own version of After Effects. Meanwhile, compiling in Xcode is 25% faster and image processing in Photoshop is 40% faster. These are just claims, of course, and no one has yet been able to back them up with review samples.
But even if those jumps in performance turn out to be legitimate, the truth is that most people just don’t need that extra boost in performance. I know – these are meant to be professional machines, and if your job depends on them, you’ll be hard pressed to render or compile any faster. But many people buy these laptops as general purpose machines first and content creation tools second.
Because the M1 Pro represents the cheapest “discrete-level” graphics you can get on a MacBook, it attracts a lot of people into this group, especially the cheaper 14-inch model. In other words, this group of people want something with decent power, but probably won’t benefit much from a switch between the M1 Pro and M2 Pro.
Everything new with these MacBook Pros is relatively small. There’s Wi-Fi 6E, HDMI 2.1 and slightly longer battery life – all good things, they’re unlikely to represent a significant change in user experience.
All that to say, if that’s going to be true for you, you better save some cash and go with the previous generation MacBook Pro, whether it’s the M1 Pro or the M1 Max. They’re still very capable machines, and as Apple points out, they still have the amazing screen, speakers, keyboard, and trackpad that the machine is known for.
But here’s the catch: Apple didn’t keep the previous generation model in the lineup. And if you look at retailers like Amazon, the M1 Pro and Max MacBook Pro don’t have a big discount yet. I expect that to change, however, once the new models are released, which is next week. So, I recommend that you wait until next week to check how far these prices drop. I hope to see significant drops even in the basic configurations.
For now, though, Apple is offering a refurbished version of the 16-inch M1 Max model, knocking the price down by over $600. It’s a high-end configuration, though, and it’s currently the only one available through Apple’s refurbished program. Again, we’re hoping to see some bigger price drops soon, but that’s all we have at the moment.
So if you’re not someone who really needs the generational transition from M1 to M2, there’s no reason to get one of these new MacBook Pros. Instead, save some cash and wait for a likely price drop next week on the previous generation.
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