Wendell Lambard
Listen to this articleBefore we start the Review proper on Apple MacBook Pro 13 (2022) new chip, and old threads, let me say I don’t really care what the M2 MacBook Pro gets on benchmarks. I know that sounds like an odd statement coming from someone who runs benchmarks for a living, but this is not a device where they matter all that much because, if you’re the kind of person running benchmarks or the kind of person to whom benchmark scores are at all relevant, I’m going to tell you right at the top that you shouldn’t be buying this.
Let us explore the current MacBook market. This MacBook Pro has the exact same chassis as the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro that was released in 2020 (which itself used a design that dates 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 tapered sides. Remember all those cool new (technically old) design features, like HDMI ports, SDXC slots, and MagSafe charging Apple put on the MacBook Pro models it released in late 2021? Yeah, none of those are here. Neither is the fancy Mini LED display or upgraded 1080p webcam.
There has, basically, only been one change made to the MacBook Pro from 2020: it has a new processor. (Okay, so Apple’s also added a 24GB memory option, the speakers now support Spatial Audio, the jack has “advanced support for high-impedance headphones,” and the adapter is a whole six watts more powerful… but the processor is the main thing.) Like the M1, the M2 uses Apple’s custom Arm silicon. It has more transistors than the M1, more memory bandwidth, and an updated media engine as well as additional GPU cores (10 to the M1’s eight). It’s a new chip in what is, at this point, a dated chassis.
The 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro starts at $1,299. For that base price, you get an eight-core CPU with a 10-core GPU, 8GB of unified memory, and 256GB of SSD storage. (You might very well want to avoid that model entirely as reports show the SSD inside is actually slower than the M1 MacBook Pro’s.) The very cheapest model of the 14-inch MacBook Pro comes with an M1 Pro processor (eight-core CPU, 14-core GPU) but with 16GB of unified memory and 512GB of storage. That model would cost $1,999. Now, Apple sent me an M2 model that’s a step up from the base; this one has 16GB of unified memory and 1TB of storage. It costs $1,899 on Apple’s website, while a 14-inch M1 Pro model with those RAM and storage specs would be $2,199.
Basically, the MacBook Pro with M2 is floating consistently around several hundred dollars under its more powerful and modern-looking 14-inch sibling. But those several hundred dollars buy you a heck of a lot of perks that will be of particular benefit to professional users, including a bigger screen, MagSafe, more ports, and all the extra cores. The M1 Pro CPU also has more performance-oriented cores, while the M2 has more efficiency cores aimed at extending battery life.
