Apple has officially launched its latest generation MacBook Pro laptops. Both the 14-inch MacBook Pro and 16-inch MacBook Pro models come with the new M2 Pro and M2 Max chips. Apple is promising “longest battery life ever in a Mac,” with up to 22 hours of runtime. They also include an upgraded HDMI with 8K display support, as well as Wi-Fi 6E, which is for the first time.
The list of the specs are including a Liquid Retina XDR display with a notch, an all-black keyboard housing, three Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI port, an SD card slot, a 3.5mm headphone jack, MagSafe 3 for charging, a 1080p FaceTime HD camera, and a six-speaker sound system.
Apple claims the new MacBook Pros offer six times faster performance than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Pro and support for up to 96GB of unified memory, which is a lot of RAM. The new M2 Pro chip in the new MacBook Pro has a 10-core or 12-core CPU and offers up to 20% faster performance than the previous-gen M1 Pro chip. The M2 Pro chipset is also combined with up to a 19-core GPU that delivers up to 30% more graphics performance, while the Neural Engine is 40% faster, and you can also add up to 32GB of unified memory.
On the other side, the M2 Max chip can go even further, including an up to 38-core GPU, double the unified memory bandwidth, and up to 96GB of unified memory. To recall, the previous-gen MacBook Pro models were launched with up to 64GB of memory with the M1 Max chip onboard. The M2 Max packs an improved 12-core CPU with up to eight high-performance and four high-efficiency cores, delivering up to 20% faster performance than the previous-gen M1 Max chip. These notebooks are best fit for video editing, photo editing and coding projects.
Both the 14-inch and 16-inc MacBook Pros will be offered with up to 96GB of unified memory, configured with the highest-end M2 Max chip. Memory bandwidth still remains the same at up to 200GB/s for the M2 Pro chip and up to 400GB/s for the M2 Max chip.
In addition to the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips under the hood, these new machines support Wi-Fi 6E, which brings faster wireless connectivity and lower latency over the 6GHz band. The Previous-gen notebooks were limited to Wi-Fi 6, operating over the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. The HDMI port has also been upgraded to the HDMI 2.1 standard, which provides support for 8K displays up to 60Hz and 4K displays up to 240Hz.
Storage configuration options on the new MacBook Pro models can be configured from 512GB on the low end and up to 8TB of SSD storage on the high end, just like the previous-gen notebooks. Users can choose between the same space gray and silver color options as the previous generation.
According to Apple, the new 16-inch MacBook Pro can last up to 22 hours of battery life on a single charge, while the new 14-inch model is said to offer up to 18 hours of battery life per charge. That is just one extra hour of battery life for each model compared to the previous generation.
Price & Availability
Both the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros are available to pre-order from today at Apple website, and will begin shipping on January 24.
Apple fans can order the new 16-inch MacBook Pro for a starting price of $2,499, which packs an M2 Pro chip, 16GB of RAM and 516GB of storage. The most decked-out version is priced at $3,499, which comes packed in an M2 Max chip, 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage.
To be precise, the new 14-inch MacBook Pro with M2 Pro starts at $1,999, or $1,849 for education. The 16-inch MacBook Pro with M2 Pro starts at $2,499, or $2,299 for education.
Source: Apple