MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019) review
TWO MINUTE REVIEW
With the MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019), Apple set out to make the best MacBook Pro ever, offering fans of the MacBook Pro line – in Apple’s own words – “more of what they love.” By listening to the feedback from its customers, Apple has managed exactly that, refining the MacBook Pro in a number of ways that we couldn’t have predicted.
While the new larger beautiful screen is perhaps the most notable upgrade here, there are other refinement under the hood that prove even more crucial. Previous MacBook Pros were saddled with a keyboard with Butterfly switches that a huge number of people encountered problems with. The new 16-inch MacBook Pro 2019 has a new and much improved keyboard that ditches the problematic Butterfly switches for Scissor switches found in the Magic Keyboard, Apple’s popular keyboard for iMacs.
Not only does the new keyboard seemingly avoid the issues of previous versions, but it allows the 16-inch MacBook Pro to stay unbelievably slim (just 0.64 inches – a slight increase on the MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2019)’s 0.61-inches), while increasing the key travel to 1mm. This is the distance a key depresses when hit, and the greater the travel, the more tactile and responsive the keyboard feels.
Slim laptops can often suffer from shallow key travel that makes the keyboards feel unsatisfying and uncomfortable to type on. And, we’re pleased to report that because of its greater key travel, the MacBook Pro 16-inch’s keyboard is a joy to type on. In fact, it’s the best keyboard we’ve used on a MacBook.
Those who were holding off buying a new MacBook Pro until the keyboard issues were sorted will definitely be pleased with the new 16-inch MacBook Pro. Hopefully, all these improvements on new keyboard in the MacBook Pro will find its way onto regular MacBooks and MacBook Airs soon.
Further upgrades are found in the internal components, with 7nm AMD Radeon Pro 5000M series graphics cards making their debut, giving this mobile workstation some seriously impressive graphical grunt. And, for the first time ever, the MacBook Pro 16-inch can be configured with up to 64GB of RAM and up to 8TB of SSD storage. These two updates make this laptop a seriously formidable performer when it comes to graphic-intensive tasks like rendering videos.
The battery life has been boosted with a 100-watt-hour battery (16 WH larger than the previous models, and now the largest capacity laptop battery the FAA will allow on flights) – and in our tests, we were seriously blown away by how long the MacBook Pro 16-inch model lasted between charges. You really don’t have to suffer from miniscule battery life just because you’re using a powerful laptop with the new MacBook Pro. That’s a compromise many of its rivals ask us to make.
Much-improved speakers (seriously, you need to hear them) and built-in microphone both round out the 16-inch MacBook Pro as a seriously capable mobile workstation – and one where you no longer feel the need to plug in too many external devices. This, along with an almost identical thin and light design that we’ve come to love from the MacBook, makes the MacBook Pro 16-inch a truly portable pro laptop.
And, we haven’t even gotten to the screen yet. Oh, that screen. Apple’s move to 16-inches hasn’t resulted in a compromise in image quality, with the resolution being bumped up to 3,072 x 1,920 and a pixel density of 226 pixels per inch.
That’s a fairly decent jump over the 15-inch model’s 2,880 x 1,800 resolution, which offered a pixel density of 220ppi. A larger screen with an increased pixel density is very welcome indeed. But, there’s also the fact that the increase in screen size hasn’t made the 16-inch model much larger than the 15-inch model, thanks to the much thinner bezels surrounding the screen.
There’s a lot to love about the 16-inch MacBook Pro 2019, and not much to dislike. The lack of expansion outside of the four Thunderbolt ports remains a disappointment to pro users. But, the laptop also makes up for that by adding features that make you less likely to need to plug in external tools. Who needs an external hard drive when you have 8TB of SSD storage? There’s the matter of the price, which is admittedly pretty steep. However, in reality, it actually costs the same as the previous model, which might annoy anyone who just bought one of those.
Overall, Apple has improved on almost every aspect of the MacBook Pro, and address the complaints of people (like us) who were disappointed that recent MacBook Pro releases haven’t been revolutionary or exciting. The MacBook Pro 16-inch shows that Apple still loves the MacBook and has some exciting ideas for its future.