Intel’s CPU speed increases in the last few years have been discouraging. Extremely limited repairability and upgradeability. Limited number of ports, limited port selection, and need for dongles will be inconvenient, especially at first. Impressive speakers for a 13-inch laptop.

Stellar battery life under light-to-medium use, battery life comparable to the 2015 MBPs under heavy use. Much-improved integrated GPU performance, which will help if you’re trying to drive a 4K or 5K display. Low-travel keyboard still isn’t for everyone, but it’s a marked improvement over the first-generation version in the MacBook. Thunderbolt 3 is a tremendously versatile port, and Apple will benefit from increased adoption in the wider PC industry. Rock-solid design that looks and feels great. At its current price, the $1,499 Pro feels like a laptop with a new design that just happens to be missing a bunch of the features that make the new design worthwhile. This would be a great laptop if it was positioned at the $1,300 starting price of the old MacBook Pros, though the 12-inch MacBook might need to move downmarket a bit to make room for it.

Those two extra ports and the extra speed bump will go a long way, and both the Touch Bar and Touch ID have a lot of potential (they should also only improve over the course of the three-to-five years that you’ll be using the laptop). They’ve never been particularly “pro.”Įven so, the $1,499 version of the laptop isn’t the one I’d recommend first, not unless the presence of a physical function row is make-or-break and you value it over the other stuff that’s missing. Some pros will claim that it isn’t “pro” enough, but the 13-inch models have always served as more of a bridge between the consumer MacBooks and MacBook Airs on the low end and the 15-inch Pros and the desktop lineup on the high end. …the new MacBook Pro is a very solid design that should serve Apple well over the next few years.

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