14 Inch MacBook Pro Review After One Year

Vemuda Techno - I've had the 14 inch MacBook Pro for almost a year now and I think it's the best value that Apple has to offer for someone who actually needs a MacBook Pro, and maybe even for someone who's considering getting the M2 MacBook Air.

Beyond performance, which will get to later on, there are a few things that I need and there are a few things that I want when I'm shopping for a MacBook, and by the way, I was actually able to find this laptop for $1,586, which is nuts.

All right, so the first thing I need is a good display and the very first time that I looked at the 14 and 16 inch MacBook Pro displays, I was blown away by how much better they were than the 13 inch M1 MacBooks.

It's easier to look online and just see that the 14 inch has better specs and of course it's a little bit bigger but that doesn't really do it justice. And having them side by side, it's a very noticeable difference and one that I appreciate even after a full year.

Now because the MacBook Pro can display a wider color gamut and it can render over a billion colors, you probably expect it to be great for a photo and video editing and you'd be right but it's also a fantastic display for watching video and even for general office type work.

You're getting a higher resolution than the smaller MacBook so you'll be able to see more of your spreadsheet or your document without having to scroll.

Of course, if you want the same quality display at an even higher resolution, even bigger display, then you can go ahead and get the 16 inch model. But I'll come back to that later.

The M2 MacBook Air is kind of in the middle. Has a better display than the other 13 inch models. It can render over 1 billion colors and it's slightly larger, but it's not a liquid XDR display, like the 14 and 16 inch models.

So while it does have the same 500 nits max brightness for SDR content, it doesn't have the 1000 nits of sustained full screen brightness or the 1600 nits peak brightness for HDR content.

Now, most people aren't editing HDR content. If you are, obviously it's a no brainer but even if you're just watching HDR content, it's a very meaningful difference and it's a difference that's gonna continue to benefit you as more and more HDR content is released.

Now with the 14 inch MacBook Pro, we're also getting 120 Hertz adaptive refresh rate with Apple's Promotion. Now, personally, that's not something that I need in a work computer, but it does make the user experience better.

Animations look more fluid and scrolling is smoother so I'm gonna go ahead and put it in my nice to have category.

Now, the next thing that's important to me with a Pro laptop are the ports. So that's the number of ports, the types of ports and the location and this sort of goes hand in hand with external display support.

So I really like that Apple brought back MagSafe so I no longer have to use one of the USB-C ports for charging. It's also safer when I travel and if I'm at the airport or on airplane, there's a lot of people moving around.

Now, it's kind of funny that Apple celebrated bringing back MagSafe after they took it away. I mean, I guess they could have just kept it, but anyways, I'm still happy to have it.

I know most people aren't creative professionals but over the past year I've really enjoyed not having to remember to bring an SD card reader with me. And I know it's just a small thing, but it just contributes to a more streamlined process for me.

Also, having ports on both sides isn't the biggest thing in the world, but with the 13 inch models, we only have ports on the left side, which is frustrating when you're in a situation where it would be more convenient to have the accessory attached on the right.

Now finally, external display support is something that's super important to me, like my main workstation which is over there, has seven monitors attached to it.

So I'm used to that type of workflow but I think that at the bare minimum, a Pro laptop needs to support two external displays.

I have the M1 Pro and the M1 Max versions of this laptop and they both come with Thunderbolt four ports.

So with the M1 Pro, you can connect up to two 6K displays and with the M1 Max, you can connect up to three 6K displays and one 4K display.

Now with all these capabilities, you may be wondering about battery life and that's where real life use is more important to me than what you see in product announcement videos.

For example, this MacBook is rated for 17 hours but if you continue reading, it says of video playback which is kind of the opposite of work.

At the same time for how I use this MacBook if I'm doing general work, like browsing the web emails, some photo editing and light video editing, I get to a full day of work without any issues and I don't even really get close to needing a charge. So I've been super happy with it.

Now, if I have a super heavy day of editing and I'm gonna be working all day, then of course I'm gonna need to charge it during the day and that's true for any laptop that I've ever used.

And speaking of charging, the base model of the 14 inch MacBook Pro comes with a 67W power adapter and you can upgrade to a 96W adapter for 20 bucks.

But what I've been using instead brings me to today's sponsor, "UGREEN" and their Nexode 140W GaN charger. It has two USB-C ports and one USB-A port. So I can charge my 14 or 16 inch MacBook Pro, my iPad Pro and my iPhone 14 Pro Max all at the same time.

It's smaller than the 140W adapter that I bought with my 16 inch MacBook Pro. So it's more convenient for me to pack when I travel and it's also more versatile.

If I need more power, I can just use the power delivery 3.1 port, which outputs the full 140 watts. Then I can charge my 16 inch MacBook Pro from zero to 56% in 30 minutes.

And whether I charge one or multiple devices, UGREEN's Thermal guard technology scans the system 800 times per second to safeguard my devices from overheating, which is super important to me for maintaining battery health.

Now, I do a lot of typing on my laptop and the keyboard and the track pad are super important to me.

Now this is the same keyboard that you get on a few other MacBooks and it could be my favorite keyboard on any laptop.

Source: pocket-lint

Now the track pad is definitely my favorite. It's super responsive, it's accurate. I can press down anywhere and it's bigger than what you get with the 13 inch models.

Now, another significant improvement that I've enjoyed over the past year is the sound quality. The speakers on the 13 inch MacBooks are very good but the ones on the 14 inch are outstanding, like at least for a laptop. Other than the 16 inch model, these are the best speakers on any laptop that I've used.

Now, I do wanna point out that this won't matter to every user, and even in my case for the most part, I'm using headphones so I'm gonna get good audio quality regardless.

But if you do use the speakers on your laptop for things like video calls, to watch movies or even to listen to music, these are really good.

For laptop speakers, the sound is full, it's plenty loud, it has a good amount of presence. And I think that Apple did an impressive job with the six speaker array.

And I know that I just mentioned video calls, so I've been very happy with this new 1080p camera. Its higher resolution than the 13 inch M1 models and it's better in less than optimal lighting conditions.

But keep in mind, that just like with any camera, even a cinema camera, good lighting is always gonna get you better video quality.

Now, before I get to why after a year of use, I think this is a better option than the 16 inch model for most users or even the two M2 MacBooks, let's quickly look at performance. But first we need to put it in context.

So Apple's silicon chips have been super efficient since the M1 and you'll see that for single core performance. The new higher performance cores on the two M2 models actually outperform the M1 Pro and the M1 Max. But that's just benchmarks.

In my experience over the past year, that hasn't translated into a noticeable benefit for simple tasks because the M1 Pro and the M1 max already crushed those tasks.

When we look at multi core performance, which is what's more important to me with a Pro device, that's where I think even though the M1 Pro and the M1 max are older chips, I'm getting better performance simply because there are more high performance cores.

So the M2 chip has four high efficiency cores and four high performance cores, whereas the M1 Pro only has two high efficiency cores, but either six or eight high performance cores.

So even though each high performance core isn't as capable as the ones on the M2 chip, the overall performance is better.

So for more demanding tasks like compiling code or for editing photos or videos or music production, I would choose the 14 inch MacBook Pro over any of the M1 or M2 MacBooks.

We also see an advantage when we look at GPU performance where again, the M1 Pro and the M1 Max can outperform the newer M2 chip because we're getting a higher number of GPU cores.

It's also important that we take into account unified memory if we're gonna talk about how responsive and capable your MacBook is going to be.

The 14 inch MacBook Pro comes with 16 gigabytes and it can be upgraded to 32 gigabytes. The M2 MacBooks, even the MacBook Pr only start with eight gigabytes of unified memory.

And here's why that's so important. Like I said at the beginning, today I found this MacBook for $1,586, and that's renewed on Amazon. And if you want a certified refurbished one from Apple you can get it for 1799.

Now, by the way, if you live outside of the US, let me know if these types of deals are available to you because I don't know that you can get refurbished models everywhere.

And let's quickly compare the 14 inch MacBook Pro to the other models that you might be considering.

So the 13 inch M2 MacBook Pro pretty much only got a chip upgrade and the 14 inch MacBook Pro has a better and larger display, better multi core performance, better GPU performance, better speakers, a better camera system. It has MagSafe, more ports, more powerful ports and better external display support.

Now, the only real advantages that I would give the M2 MacBook Pro is better battery life and on a slight edge, when it comes to portability. But it starts at $1,300.

And if you really need a Pro device, then you're probably upgrading to 512 gigabytes of internal storage and 16 gigabytes of RAM.at which point you're already at $1,700, which is more than the renewed model from Amazon and closer to the refurbished price from Apple.

From my perspective, that's even too close in the $2,000 which is the retail price of the 14 inch base MacBook Pro.

And the reason for that is that these laptops are so powerful that they should last you at least five to seven years and the advantages that you're getting are super worth it when you divide that $300 difference over the life of the device.

Now, when we compare the 14 inch MacBook Pro to the M2 MacBook Air, we're still getting all the same advantages that I mentioned.

Now, if you don't need a Pro device, then the M2 MacBook Air is a great laptop and I even think that you should consider the M1 MacBook Air, which is an incredible value at 899 and I made a video about it right here.

Now, the 16 inch MacBook Pro is an interesting option because it has all the same specs as the 14 inch model, has better battery life and a bigger display.

But it's also $500 more, and you can use that money to upgrade the unified memory even more, the internal storage, you can buy accessories or you can just save it.

Now, on top of that, if you travel a lot, the larger size makes it heavier and less portable and it's less comfortable to use on an airplane or in other more congested environments.

Having said all that, now you should see why I actually used the 16 inch MacBook Pro more than the 14 inch.

You know what I always say,."Buy it nice or buy it twice." Good luck and see you soon. Thank for reading at Vemuda Techno. 

We have also posted 12.9 Inch iPad Pro Final Review. 

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