I don’t care what the M2 MacBook Pro gets for benchmarks.
I know it sounds like a weird statement coming from someone who runs benchmarks for their livelihood, but this is not a device where they matter so much, because if you’re the type of people who run benchmarks, or the type of people, for which the benchmarks the results are appropriate at all, I will tell you right above that you should not buy this.
Let’s explore the current MacBook market. This MacBook Pro has exactly the same chassis as the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro, which was launched in 2020 (which itself uses a design dating back to 2016). It’s the same 2560 x 1600 screen, the same Magic Keyboard, the same two Thunderbolt ports, the same Touch Bar and the same slightly pointed sides. Remember all those great new (technically old) design features like HDMI ports, SDXC slots and MagSafe charging that Apple put on the MacBook Pro models it released in late 2021? Yes, none of them are here. Neither is the sophisticated Mini LED display or the upgraded 1080p webcam.
In fact, only one change has been made to the 2020 MacBook Pro: it has a new processor. (Okay, Apple also added a 24GB memory option, the speakers now support Spatial Audio, the jack has “extended support for high-impedance headphones” and the adapter is six watts more powerful … but the CPU is the main thing.) Like the M1, the M2 uses Apple’s custom silicon arm. It has more transistors than the M1, more memory bandwidth and an updated multimedia engine, as well as additional GPU cores (10 to eight on the M1). This is a new chip in what is currently an outdated chassis.
The 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro starts at $ 1299. For this base price, you get an octa-core processor with a 10-core graphics processor, 8GB of unified memory and 256GB of SSD storage. The cheapest model of the 14-inch MacBook Pro comes with an M1 Pro processor (octa-core CPU, 14-core GPU), but with 16 GB of unified memory and 512 GB of storage. This model will cost $ 1,999. Now, Apple has sent me the M2 model, which is a step up from the base; this one has 16GB of unified memory and 1TB of storage space. It costs $ 1899 on Apple’s website, while a 14-inch M1 Pro with these RAM and storage specifications would be $ 2199.
In general, the MacBook Pro with M2 is constantly moving around a few hundred dollars under its more powerful and modern-looking 14-inch brother. But those few hundred dollars buy you a hell of a lot of benefits that will be of particular benefit to professional users, including a bigger screen, MagSafe, more ports, and all the extra cores. The M1 Pro processor also has more performance-oriented cores, while the M2 has more efficient cores aimed at extending battery life.
Read more: review of Apple MacBook Pro 14 and 16 and review of Apple MacBook Pro with M1
Good things
- Still fast
- Excellent battery life
- Dominant single-core performance
Bad things
- Only two USB-C ports
- The design is from 2016
- The webcam is still bad
This is an impressive chip in what is no longer the most impressive chassis.
We’ll talk about benchmarks later, but now I’ll spoil the surprise: as everyone expected, the M1 Pro smokes the M2 in most cases. It is close to doubling its results in some of our usual comparison tests – it performs more than twice as good in others. It’s easy with $ 300 better for professional work.
For this reason, the target audience for this M2 MacBook Pro is not people who will be exporting things to the Premiere all day. The target audience is, as far as I can tell, people like me. I spend most of my day with Google Docs, Spreadsheets and Slack – the 14-inch MacBook Pro is superfluous for what I need and costs more than I want to spend. But sometimes I have to do things in Photoshop, Lightroom and Audition. I love (very) sometimes to play and I want something that can withstand these loads.
Look, they’re twins.
This would be the perfect device for someone like me – if it weren’t for the new MacBook Air. This new MacBook Air, also powered by the M2, is coming very soon. As far as I can tell from the Apple website, it will be the same price as the M2 MacBook Pro for the same specifications in most cases (they equate to $ 1499). But unlike the MacBook Pro, the M2 MacBook Air has received a major redesign and includes all sorts of new features – including new colors, a larger display, a 1080p webcam and especially MagSafe – that this device doesn’t have.
Everything that was great and innovative for the M1 is still great and innovative for the M2 Regardless of your opinion of the Touch Bar, it is still here. Apple did not change the webcam hardware; it’s still 720p. Can you guess which is which?
Apple has not yet sent us this device and is currently not for pre-order. But it could very well be a much better choice for my use case. And that puts the 2022 MacBook Pro – and this review – in a bit of a weird place.
The question of whether you should buy this MacBook Pro, frankly, I can not answer until we understand exactly how good is this upcoming MacBook Air. What I can talk about at the moment is how well M2 is performing and what profits it has achieved compared to M1.
In summary: M2 is fast and efficient. The M1 was also fast and efficient.
The MacBook Pro 2022 can withstand heavy loads for long periods of time. His 30-minute Cinebench score was actually a little higher than his 10-minute Cinebench score, which is not something we see all the time. The results were the same, whether the device was powered or battery-powered, which we rarely see on Windows laptops. And while having an active cooling system (read: fan) is what traditionally distinguishes the MacBook Pro from the MacBook Air, I’ve never heard of the fan on this M2 – even when playing games.
We said all this about the M1 MacBook Pro. It is only to say that these qualities remain.
How did you handle this thing on benchmarks? In the results of the processor – Geekbench, Cinebench, Xcode benchmark, etc. – The results we see are slightly better than the M1. In GPU tests, including some games, the results are significantly better. This means that the games are much better, as I will discuss later.
The M2 overtook the more expensive M1 Pro in the single-core tests I used. This is impressive in itself (this shows that although the M1 Pro has more power cores than the M2, these cores are not as powerful as the M2 power cores on an individual level). But it’s also good for the M2 Pro, Max and Ultra variants we’ll probably see in the future; they are likely to show improvements in the speed of a single core over their M1-based predecessors, rather than simply loading more cores.
MacBook Pro 13 (2022)
Benchmark Score Benchmark Score Cinebench R23 Multi 8689 Cinebench R23 Single 1584 Cinebench R23 Multi Loop in 30 Minutes 8725 Geekbench 5.3 CPU Multi 8968 Geekbench 5.3 CPU Single 1937 CPU Single 1937 CPU Single 1937 Geekbench R23 Single 1584 Cinebench R23 Multi Lookup in 87 Geekbench 5.3 CPU Multi 8968 Geekbench 5.3 CPU Single 1937 CPU Single 1937 CPU Single 1937 Geekbench 1937 Geekbench 1584 Cinebench R23 Multi looped for 30 minutes. PugetBench for Premiere Pro 556 XcodeBenchmark 132,262 seconds 4K Export 0:07:09
MacBook Pro 13 (2020)
Benchmark Score Benchmark Score Cinebench R23 Multi 7729 Cinebench R23 Single 1519 Cinebench R23 Multi looped in 30 minutes 7729 Geekbench 5.3 CPU Multi 7554 Geekbench 5.3 CPU Single 1730 CPU Single 1730 CPU Single 1730 Geekbench R23 Single 1519 Cinebench R23 Multi looped in 29 minutes Geekbench 5.3 CPU Multi 7554 Geekbench 5.3 CPU Single 1730 CPU Single 1730 Geekbench 1730 Geekbench 1730 Geekbench R23 highest. …
Add Comment