Monday night Norwegian time, Apple held a new launch event. There, the technology giant unveiled its brand new ones Macbook Pro-models. They offer both big and small news.
The most notable news is that the new Macbook models, which come in 14- and 16-inch versions, are equipped with the all-new and significantly more powerful versions of Apple’s M1 chips.
New M1 chips with lots of power
The new pieces have been christened M1 Pro and M1 Max, of which the latter is the most potent. According to Apple’s own marketing language, the M1 Max is “the world’s most powerful” system chip for professional laptops – a claim that is supported by quite impressive specifications.
The M1 Max comes with 10 CPU cores, a graphics processor of up to 32 cores, up to 64 GB of memory and a memory bandwidth of 400 GB / s. According to Apple, the graphics performance is four times higher than on the previous generation M1 chip, which should give a very noticeable performance for heavy graphics tasks.
The slightly less muscular M1 Pro chip can also be delivered with a 10-core CPU, but also comes in a slightly cheaper version with eight cores. It otherwise boasts up to 16-core graphics processor, memory bandwidth of 200 GB / s and up to 32 GB of memory.
In total, the chip will deliver 70 percent higher CPU performance and up to twice as high graphics performance as the “regular” M1 chip. This is also no slowdown, in other words.
Magsafe is back
Other notable news is that Apple’s proprietary magnetic Magsafe solution is now finally returning to the Macbook Pro after being removed from previous generations. The new Macbook Pro models come with Magsafe 3, which both updates the design and increases the charging capacity.
In fact, Apple can state that fast charging is in place for the first time on the Macbook Pro, which will make it possible to charge up to 50 percent in 30 minutes. Of the other connectivity options, both models come with three Thunderbolt 4 ports, one SDXC card port and HDMI port.
The screen has also received a major overhaul. The new Macbook Pro editions have screens of the type Liquid Retina XDR, which is the same mini-LED technology found in the Ipad Pro. This can deliver a brightness of up to 1600 nits, which should make the screen clearly visible even in direct sunlight. In addition, the screen frames are even thinner this time.
Otherwise, battery life is of course an important factor when it comes to laptops, and also in this field, Apple has made an ever so small adjustment.
Up to 21 hours of video playback
The 14-inch will now last for 17 hours of video playback, which is a full seven hours more than on the previous generation Macbook Pro. However, the 16-inch should give you up to 21 hours of video playback on a single charge, a solid 10 hours more than on the previous edition. As always, there are several factors that affect real battery life, but the improvement is probably significant anyway.
The new Macbook Pro models will be available from October 26, and can be ordered now. The 14-inch has a Norwegian starting price of NOK 23,490, while the 16-inch is NOK 29,490. These prices apply to the M1 Pro versions, and if you choose the 16-inch with the hefty M1 Max chip and 1 TB SSD, the price comes up to 41,990 kroner.
All the technical specifications can be found at product page.
