Price: £2,699 from fave.co/3wx5VlS
In the autumn of 2021, Apple’s 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros made a grand entrance into the Mac line‑up, and made an instant impact, combining processing prowess with a sophisticated redesign. If you were aching for a new high-end MacBook Pro, the 2021 release offered soothing relief.
But maybe you decided to wait a little longer. Maybe you thought it would be wise to let a generation of Apple silicon pass so the company can work out the kinks and app developers can catch up with native software. Or maybe you just weren’t convinced this whole thing was really going to work, despite Apple’s past success with silicon transitions. Whatever the reason, let me tell you, for most people, there isn’t a reason to wait any longer. The transition has been smooth for the most part, tons of native software from third-party developers are available, and the M-series SoC is here to stay.
Actually, you benefit from waiting, because the new M2 Pro/Max offers a nice performance boost over the previous M1 Pro and M1 Max machines. On top of that, you get a much-needed upgrade for HDMI and futureproofing with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 – three features that might even be enough for current M1 Pro or M1 Max MacBook Pro owners to upgrade.
This review takes a look at the new 16-inch MacBook Pro. For a full list of specifications, see page 31.
This model takes the £2,699 standard configuration and upgrades the memory from 16GB to 32GB (a £400 upgrade) and the SSD from 512GB to 2TB (another £600). That brings the total price of our review unit to £3,699.
BRIEF OVERVIEW
Apple offers the MacBook Pro with the M2 Pro and M2 Max in different CPU, GPU, and memory set-ups, and it can get confusing to sort out what’s included with each chip at each standard configuration. Here’s an overview of what you need to know:
• For its lowest-priced (£2,149) 14-inch configuration, Apple offers a scaled-down version of the M2 Pro with 6 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores, and a 16-core GPU.
• The M2 Pro with 12 CPU cores,
