Macbook Pro 2019 15 Inch 17 Core Review

The 2019 iteration of Apple's fifteen-inch MacBook Pro is a powerful, stylish laptop with serious credibility as an alternative to Intel-powered Windows workstations for the artistic-work crowd. Given its starting price of $2,399, the entry ramp to this new model is steep, and you'll meet almost no outside changes from 2018's model, apart from an update to the keyboard that we'll discuss in a moment. The big story is a significant leap forward in raw calculating ability in the $six,549 top-end configuration reviewed hither. This is 1 of the near powerful laptops you lot can buy to perform CPU-intensive tasks like video rendering, but nosotros all the same wish Apple had remedied its lack of full-screen touch support and wholly overhauled the keyboard. Bolder moves are in order.

More than Power, Same Exterior

For the by decade or and then, Apple has followed a tried-and-true "tick-tock" approach to updating its laptops and desktops. Most years run across pocket-sized updates, while every three years or so there's a complete overhaul.

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The 2019 MacBook Pro falls into the quondam category. Viewed from the outside, it'southward the aforementioned machine that Apple tree has been selling since 2016, with a sleek aluminum chassis, a brilliant Retina display, the now-familiar Touch on Bar, and a gigantic touchpad.

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Inside, Apple has been deploying progressively more powerful calculating components into its flagship portable computer, an impressive feat when yous consider that the chassis is the same size—0.61 by 13.75 past 9.five inches (HWD)—and 4-pound weight every bit its predecessor. Iv pounds and 0.61 inch thick is remarkably svelte for a powerhouse 15-inch laptop. It's not unheard of, though, with the Dell Precision 5530 measuring 0.66 by fourteen.one past ix.3 inches and weighing 3.9 pounds.

Last year'south MacBook Pro refresh brought Intel'south Core i9 CPU to a macOS laptop for the first fourth dimension, while the latest update offers an fifty-fifty more powerful Cadre i9—an 8-core fleck with a maximum heave speed of 5GHz. Both chips utilise the same "Coffee Lake" microarchitecture, simply the 2019 MacBook Pro'south Core i9 is from Intel'due south latest 9th generation. The 8th generation flake in last twelvemonth's model has six cores and a maximum boost speed of 4.8GHz. The new laptop also has an upticked AMD Radeon Pro Vega graphics processor that features a seldom-seen type of fast video memory.

Calculation both of these components (and pumping up the RAM to the max) boosts the cost considerably above the $2,399 starting price, and they're certainly overkill for people who just want a large-screen macOS laptop for spider web browsing and watching videos. (Doing that would bring the car to $3,749 with those bits; the rest of our $vi,500 tester's cost revolved around its titanic-capacity boot bulldoze, which I'll go into afterwards.) Our benchmark results below confirm that they live upwards to their promise of serious computing ability, though. This is the almost powerful macOS laptop we've tested to date, at least when running apps that can scale to take advantage of all available CPU ability.

A Pattern-Forward Car

Calculating ability is arguably not the MacBook Pro's raison d'être, though. This is kickoff and foremost a blueprint-forward laptop for macOS fans or Windows converts who can piece of work their mode around a few quirks.

The outset quirk is the keyboard, a slightly revamped version of Apple's beleaguered butterfly-switch design that has been a feature of MacBooks since 2016. Using butterfly switches results in an extremely stable key (if you hit it off center, the depress is even), but likewise an extremely brusk distance to travel when you printing the key. The resulting sensation is different from every other laptop keyboard I've used, even those on thin MacBook Pro clones like the Huawei MateBook X Pro. You don't type; you only tap, as y'all would on a smartphone.

Some people accept adjusted to this new typing feel, while others have not. Compounding the controversy is that the beginning- and second-generation butterfly switches were beset with isolated central failures, resulting in a lawsuit and a complimentary repair program for affected laptops. Apple says information technology has fabricated changes to the keyboard mechanism on this model to address reliability concerns. One of the major bug was particulate debris getting stuck under the keys and preventing them from working.

An Apple representative declined to comment on the specific improvements that were fabricated in the new design. After typing more than than five,000 words on the new keyboard, including nearly of this story, all I can say is that information technology feels more solid than terminal year's keyboard.

It's not a ocean change in design, by any measure. The key travel is still unapologetically short. Merely the "thunk" that the keys brand when they're pressed is slightly more satisfying than I've come to expect from previous generations. It is the very textbook definition of beloved-it-or-detest-information technology, and fellow PCMag annotator Sascha Segan and I debated the keyboard issue at length below. (He's a more passionate critic of information technology than I, and we also recap the recent history of the MacBook Pro keyboard.)

Touch on Bar's Back, But Nonetheless No Touch Screen

One thing that hasn't changed about the keyboard is its size, which represents another MacBook Pro quirk. On this 15-inch-screen model it'south withal a meaty "tenkeyless" board (that is, lacking a dedicated number pad), and it'due south the same size as the board on the 13-inch MacBook Pro ($one,299.99 at Amazon) . Information technology's positioned in the heart of the chassis, with an expansive area below information technology on which to rest your palms, and the now-familiar Touch Bar above it.

The Apple-unique Touch Bar is a narrow, touch-sensitive display with contextual controls that change based on what app y'all're using. Macs lack bear on capability on their main screens, so this is your just opportunity to collaborate with macOS using bear on. The Bear upon Bar is standard on every xv-inch MacBook Pro, then I'g non going to debate its claim hither; if you want a MacBook Pro at this screen size, you're getting the Touch Bar. For more nearly it, encounter our review of the xiii-inch MacBook Pro linked above.

On either side of the keyboard, big speaker grilles extend from the top of the Touch Bar to the bottom of the keyboard; they accept up the entire margin between the keyboard and the edges of the chassis. I can't help but bemoan that potential for a numpad; the lack of dedicated number keys volition disappoint spreadsheet jockeys who are accepted to their presence on many other 15-inch laptops. Simply the robust, voluminous audio output is a fair compromise. The MacBook Pro's speakers are amongst the best I've tested on a laptop of its screen size of late.

Keeping the keyboard pocket-size means plenty of room for another of the MacBook Pro'south all-time features, though: its giant Force Touch trackpad. With authentic cursor movement right out of the box, a massive vii.28-inch surface area, and a glass cease, this is one of the most precise and most comfortable pads on any laptop. It uses haptic feedback to simulate clicks instead of a physical depress-to-click mechanism, which means yous get a compatible clicking sensation no matter where your finger meets the surface. You can adjust the click sensitivity (through Lite, Medium, and Firm presets), something you won't notice on laptops with physical pad switches.

Another standout characteristic is the fifteen.4-inch LED Retina display. This console, which I've seen in previous MacBook Pros, is based on in-plane switching (IPS) applied science to widen viewing angles, and it features a very bright 500-nit backlight. Its ii,880-by-1,800-pixel resolution isn't quite 4K, simply the colors are every bit vivid, and the text as abrupt, equally on any 4K brandish I've seen in a late-model laptop.

Part of this is thank you to back up for the P3 color gamut. Also in play is Apple's automated True Tone white-rest adjustment. The latter makes the screen's colors appear warmer or cooler depending on the low-cal source in the room.

While the borders around many laptop screens have shrunk over the by few years, the MacBook Pro's accept not. They're still thin enough to keep from looking antiquated, but at half an inch thick, the elevation edge is especially prominent. Information technology's curious that Apple hasn't taken advantage of this space to add sensors for face recognition, the mode it has on its mobile devices. The MacBook Pro's camera is a simple 720p affair that's fine for FaceTime calls, but information technology captures grainy images in low light. Many Windows laptops can use face recognition to sign users into their accounts, and it'due south something that I hope Apple tree adds to its laptops and iMacs before long.

Whatsoever Port Yous Desire...If It's USB-C

The MacBook Pro offers a iii.5mm sound jack and 4 USB Type-C ports. The USBs are arrayed two on each side of the chassis.

That'south the full extent of the I/O complement, though. And that means yous'll likely need a USB Type-C-to-DisplayPort or Blazon-C-to-HDMI adapter to connect to an external display, as well equally an Ethernet adapter for wired networking.

The silver lining is that all of the USB Type-C ports, while working as ordinary USB conduits, too back up the Thunderbolt 3 interface and its 40Gbps maximum data rates. If you have a hub or an external drive that supports these speeds, you've got plenty of places to plug it in. Many premium laptops take i or two Thunderbolt 3 ports, only no other mainstream consumer car has iv.

The wireless connectivity comprises the usual 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0. Curiously missing is support for the 802.11ax wireless standard, known as Wi-Fi half-dozen. (Run across our primer What Is Wi-Fi 6?) Wi-Fi six is nascent at this point, with just a few routers and other devices supporting it, but information technology is the future of Wi-Fi. Its absence on the 2019 MacBook Pro, while understandable in light of other cutting-border machines on the marketplace, is a consideration if you're planning on using your new laptop for the side by side four to five years.

Benchmark Tests: Flexing i9 and Vega Muscle

With the 2019 MacBook Pro, Apple'due south sample sent to PC Labs was an all-out monster. Our top-of-the line review unit packs in all of the available peak hardware options that Apple offers.

That includes the more powerful of the 2 Core i9 CPU options yous can get. (The less powerful one has a slightly lower clock speed.) The tester also has the more powerful of the two AMD Vega Pro GPU choices, equipped with twenty compute units ("Radeon Pro Vega twenty"); the less powerful choice has 16.

For all of their brawn, though, the CPU and GPU actually aren't responsible for the lion's share of this MacBook Pro's sky-high $6,549 request price. The main culprit is the 4TB solid-country drive (SSD), which by itself adds $two,800 to the bill. Our review unit too features the maximum memory loadout, 32GB.

As I noted up peak, the entry point for the fifteen-inch MacBook Pro is $2,399—far from cheap, merely also a far weep from $6,500. The $2,399 base of operations level 15-inch MacBook Pro has a two.6GHz Cadre i7 CPU, a Radeon Pro 555X graphics chip, 16GB of memory, and a 256GB SSD. That's more than than plenty for bones computing tasks, especially considering that the Radeon Pro 500-serial GPUs were the top of the line on last year's model, so if you lot're interested in the 15-inch MacBook Pro solely for the size of its screen, you may not need to configure any upgrades.

If you need raw power and all the internal storage possible, though, the top-stop configuration will not disappoint. On our Cinebench R15 all-cores CPU test, the MacBook Pro eked out a score of ane,353...

That'south college than last year's Core i9 config by a good for you margin of 22 percent. It's also significantly college than the scores of all of the MacBook Pro'south straight competitors that we've tested recently, including a host of workstation-course laptops from the large three in that infinite: the Dell Precision 5530, the larger HP ZBook 17 G5, and the Lenovo ThinkPad P52 ($1,299.99 at Amazon) . Here'due south a look at the comparison configurations from the machines facing off against the MacBook Pro in our tests...

The Cinebench all-cores test is just a simulation, which times how long it takes a system to render a circuitous 3D epitome without the help of graphics dispatch from the GPU. But, because it scales up well with more cores, more than threads, and higher sustained clocks, this basic test remains an excellent predictor of performance in CPU-limited situations. If you're running an app that leverages all the CPU cores and threads it tin get its easily on—say, a late-model video editor or a photo-editing plan—and you're acquiescent to macOS, the MacBook Pro is the laptop for the job. Most $1,000 ultraportables, including the thirteen-inch MacBook Pro, don't break 800 on this test.

The workflow of many media professionals and scientists involves more than only the CPU, notwithstanding. Another critical part of a laptop's operation is the storage subsystem. The wildly expensive 4TB SSD in the test unit I accept, which uses Apple's custom SSD controller, delivers up read and write speeds of around 2,600MBps as measured by the Blackmagic Disk Speed Exam. These speeds are below those of the best SSDs we've tested, which top out at effectually 3,200MBps, just they're still enough fast enough to suggest that the storage drive will never exist a performance bottleneck.

Putting everything together, our Adobe Photoshop CC benchmark takes into business relationship storage speed, CPU and GPU power, and retention, for a comprehensive look at a system's power to handle complex workflows. The Photoshop test times how long it takes to finish applying a series of 10 filters and other effects to a JPEG image. Non but does this involve, to an extent, graphics acceleration, just it's besides a very "bursty" workflow—once a filter is applied, we stop and record the duration before moving onto the next ane. The laptop has a scrap of time to cool down.

The MacBook Pro's fourth dimension of two minutes and 29 seconds on the Photoshop test is good, but it'southward non a standout. All of its competitors finished within a few seconds of each other. Taken together with the Cinebench result, information technology'south clear that the MacBook Pro's master computing advantage is its CPU.

That doesn't mean its graphics muscle is anything to scoff at, however. The mobile Radeon Pro Vega 20 GPU hither uses a form of second-generation high-bandwidth retentivity (HBM2) that's rare in consumer devices. HBM2 has roughly twice the transfer rates of HBM, which in turn is faster than the memory used alongside well-nigh consumer graphics fries, called GDDR5. So even though the Radeon Pro Vega 20 has merely 4GB of video memory, it'due south able to address that retentivity much faster than a comparable chip with 4GB of GDDR5.

Run into How Nosotros Test Laptops

The result is a graphics processor that's capable of playing resource-intensive games at a full HD (1080p) resolution and maximum detail settings. The MacBook Pro achieved an boilerplate of 38 frames per second (fps) on our Unigine Sky gaming-graphics simulation at 1080p and Ultra quality settings, compared with only 18fps for its predecessor. Merely HBM2 or not, the MacBook Pro is clearly not a gaming laptop. Most high-end gaming laptops can achieve at to the lowest degree 60fps on the Heaven test at Ultra quality settings.

More relevant is the Radeon Pro Vega's ability to handle graphics-accelerated professional workflows. Ane proxy for this is the Cinebench OpenGL test, a benchmark that uses the OpenGL programming language to simulate a typical GPU-accelerated rendering workflow. The MacBook Pro's score of 148fps on the Cinebench OpenGL test is impressive, nearly matching the 151fps score of the 27-inch Apple iMac ($ane,299.99 at Amazon) , which uses a Radeon Pro Vega 48 with twice the video retentivity and more than twice the number of compute units. But it'south nevertheless slower than its Windows competitors, especially the HP ZBook 17 G5, which achieved 199fps on the Cinebench OpenGL test.

One further minor quibble with the MacBook Pro's performance is its battery life of 10 hours and 24 minutes of video playback at fifty per centum screen brightness with Wi-Fi turned off. Here'southward how it placed versus the lot...

This is unquestionably excellent for a laptop with a power-hungry Cadre i9 and a large, almost-4K display. But it's as well significantly shorter than its predecessor's time of more than 16 hours. Many factors could influence the difference, including the addition of the more powerful, higher-core-count Core i9. The fact remains that nearly all modern Mac laptops have excellent battery life; this one'southward is simply slightly less so.

However a Content Creator's Engine

If Apple tree had managed to increase the xv-inch MacBook Pro'southward battery life and graphics horsepower in step with its significant improvement in loftier-end CPU options, and rolled out an all-new keyboard design, the 2019 version would probable achieve the aforementioned Editors' Choice award as its predecessor. Non so this time.

As it stands, this is one of the most powerful laptops you can buy that is also sleek and exquisitely designed. Some Windows laptop workstations give information technology a run for its money, however, especially on GPU-accelerated workflows, which means Apple's new flagship laptop is an fantabulous—admitting not exceptional—tool for creative pros.

For the next wheel of upgrades, information technology's on Apple to bring out a brash new MacBook Pro. This one's solid but only iterative, in a time when many other machines are making bigger strides.

Apple MacBook Pro 15-Inch (2019)

The Lesser Line

Cheers in part to its Intel Cadre i9 CPU option, the sleek 2019 reboot of the 15-inch Apple MacBook Pro we tested is one of the most powerful laptops you can buy for multimedia editing, data assay, and other similar tasks. We'd just like to see some bolder design moves in the next model.

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Source: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/apple-macbook-pro-15-inch-2019

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