- Our new pick is the 13-inch MacBook Pro (2019, two Thunderbolt 3 ports), and the MacBook Air (2019) is our new budget pick.
Feb 20, 2015 - When buying a Mac Pro, it pays to upgrade the processor. One GPU is used for basic display duties, while the other covers the compute tasks. Which MacBook Should You Actually Buy? The new Air is a lot like the new MacBook Pro models, with a sharp, 13-inch Retina display, a responsive trackpad, an improved butterfly keyboard (with a.
Your guide
- Andrew Cunningham
The best Mac laptop for most people is the 13-inch MacBook Pro (2019, two Thunderbolt 3 ports). It’s more than fast enough for the things that most people use a computer for—Web browsing, working on documents, and photo and video editing—and it has an excellent high-resolution screen, a great trackpad, enough battery life to get most people through a day of work, and a (relatively) reasonable price.
Our pick
Apple MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2019, two Thunderbolt 3 ports)
The entry-level MacBook Pro has a fantastic screen, a fast quad-core processor, and a reasonable price, though we wish it came with more ports and more storage.
Buying Options
The entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro includes a quad-core processor and much faster integrated graphics than in the Air, both of which will make your work go significantly faster—2019’s 13-inch Pro is almost as fast as 15-inch models from past years. The laptop does have some shortcomings, but they’re almost all shared by other modern Apple laptops: the low-travel keyboard, a small number of homogenous ports (in this case, two Thunderbolt 3 ports) that may require the use of USB-C hubs or new cables, and a high price relative to Windows laptops with similar performance and features, especially if you need more than 128 GB of storage. But the Pro’s light weight, solid construction, and industry-leading support make it a good laptop, especially if you also own an iPhone or other Apple devices.
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Budget pick
Apple MacBook Air (2019)
The Air includes most of the good stuff from the Pro, such as the great screen, the solid construction, and the Touch ID fingerprint sensor, for a bit less money. But its dual-core processor is noticeably slower.
Buying Options
The 2019 MacBook Air is a couple hundred dollars cheaper and a quarter-pound lighter than the 13-inch MacBook Pro. It also has slightly better battery life, and it’s functionally an identical laptop in most of the important ways: screen, memory and storage, ports, keyboard and touchpad, construction. But its dual-core processor and slower integrated graphics make it a worse choice if you plan on doing much photo and video editing or programming, or if you plan on connecting it to high-resolution external monitors. It also skips the Touch Bar in favor of a row of physical function keys and a standalone Touch ID fingerprint sensor, though depending on how you feel about the flashy but superfluous Touch Bar, you might prefer this.
Upgrade pick
Apple MacBook Pro with Touch Bar (15-inch, 2019)
The 15-inch MacBook Pro has a larger screen and the fastest, most powerful components Apple ships in a laptop, and it’s still relatively thin and light. But you pay a lot for that extra speed.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $2,500.
The 15-inch MacBook Pro is our top Mac pick in our guide to laptops for video and photo editing. You won’t notice a huge speed boost in everyday computing tasks, but our recommended configuration’s six-core Intel Core processor can give it a speed boost of around 30 percent over the 13-inch Pro when rendering video or compiling code, and its discrete AMD Radeon GPUs provide better performance when running 3D drafting programs or games.
Because you can’t upgrade Apple’s current laptops later—the memory, storage, and processors are all built in—you need to make sure to buy the right configuration. We’ve listed our recommended configuration for each of our picks in the sections below.
If you aren’t wedded to macOS, we have a separate guide dedicated to helping you find the right laptop.
Everything we recommend
Our pick
Apple MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2019, two Thunderbolt 3 ports)
The entry-level MacBook Pro has a fantastic screen, a fast quad-core processor, and a reasonable price, though we wish it came with more ports and more storage.
Buying Options
Budget pick
Apple MacBook Air (2019)
The Air includes most of the good stuff from the Pro, such as the great screen, the solid construction, and the Touch ID fingerprint sensor, for a bit less money. But its dual-core processor is noticeably slower.
Buying Options
Upgrade pick
Apple MacBook Pro with Touch Bar (15-inch, 2019)
The 15-inch MacBook Pro has a larger screen and the fastest, most powerful components Apple ships in a laptop, and it’s still relatively thin and light. But you pay a lot for that extra speed.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $2,500.
Why you should trust us
Andrew Cunningham spent more than six years testing, reviewing, and otherwise writing about PCs, Macs, and other gadgets for AnandTech and Ars Technica. He has been building, upgrading, and fixing PCs for more than 15 years, and he spent five of those years in IT departments buying and repairing laptops and desktops as well as helping people buy the best tech for their needs. He has also used just about every Mac laptop that Apple has released in the past two decades.
Who this is for, and when to buy
The best reason to buy a MacBook is if you need or prefer macOS instead of Windows. The operating system is stable and easy to use, but more important, it integrates well with iPhones and iPads—iMessages and SMS messages sent from your Mac also appear on your iPhone and vice versa, and features such as AirDrop and iCloud make it easy to share notes, pictures, videos, reminders, contacts, passwords, bookmarks, and other data between your devices.
Macs are also a good choice if you want great support. Apple’s tech support is routinely rated above that of all other PC and phone makers, and Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers offer accessible in-person tech support and repairs in many locations.
Macs aren’t a great choice if you have less than $1,000 to spend on a laptop, if you want to get the most performance for your money, or if you want to run high-end games. Windows ultrabooks provide as good or better performance, more kinds of ports, and more storage at or below the price Apple charges for the MacBook Air. Budget Chrome OS and Windows laptops are a better choice if you have only $500 to spend. And Windows gaming notebooks, while larger and bulkier than any MacBook, usually have newer and faster dedicated graphics processors than Apple’s laptops do (and you can buy some of them for less than half of what a 15-inch MacBook Pro costs).
The Best Laptops
From budget-friendly options to thin-and-light ultrabooks to powerful gaming laptops, we’ve spent hundreds of hours finding the best laptops for most people.
The Mac Pro isn't for everybody, and not just because it's Apple's highest-priced computer. It is made to excel with a certain type of app: professional software that uses multiple processing cores, like software commonly used by videographers, photographers, animators, designers, scientists, and musicians. If that describes what you do on a daily basis, then you'll benefit from a Mac Pro -- you'll make your money back in time saved.
This guide takes a look at the Mac Pro's specifications, design, and performance. If you're in the market for a Mac Pro and you're not sure which model to buy, this guide will help you sort it all out.
Specifications
Apple offers two standard configurations. You can pick one of the standard configurations, but the Mac Pro is all about custom configurations. Think of the standard configurations as a starting point, and you can then customize your order to better suit your needs.
The $2999 Mac Pro:
- 3.7GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5 processor
- 12GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory
- Dual 2GB AMD FirePro D300 graphics cards
- 256GB PCIe-based flash storage
- 3.5GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5 processor
- 16GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory
- Dual 3GB AMD FirePro D500 graphics cards
- 256GB PCIe-based flash storage
Apple offers the following upgrades for the Mac Pro:
- 3.0GHz 8-core processor or 2.7GHz 12-core processor ($500 to $3,500 extra)
- 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of RAM ($100 to $1,300 extra)
- 512GB or 1TB of flash storage ($300 to $800 extra)
- Dual 6GB AMD FirePro D700 graphics cards ($1000 extra)
Since the Mac Pro is such a compact computer, there's no room for adding extra drives or expansion cards like you would in the old Mac Pro tower, so you have to rely on the external ports. Fortunately, Apple includes a lot of them, but it also means you may have several external boxes sitting next to your Mac Pro, as well as a bunch of power plugs. Apple includes the following ports:
- Four USB 3 ports
- Six Thunderbolt 2 ports
- Dual Gigabit Ethernet
- One HDMI port
Get more details on the Mac Pro specifications in our roundup.
Performance benchmarks
You've probably heard all the talk about the Mac Pro being Apple's fastest Mac. It's true, for the most part. The Mac Pro is designed with multi-core processing in mind, and the Mac Pro does its best when using apps that can take advantage of multiple cores -- high-end video editors, 3D renderers, audio editors, compilers, and other apps used by professionals.
The benchmarks prove this out. Several sites have published benchmarks that demonstrate the Mac Pro's multi-core prowess. Geekbench 3 results show that in its 64-bit multi-core tests, the 12-core Mac Pro is unsurprisingly the top performer.
The results also predictably show that performance increases when you have more cores. After the 12-core Mac Pro is the 8-core model, followed by the 6-core and quad-core Mac Pros. When buying a Mac Pro, it pays to upgrade the processor. Get what you can afford. AnandTech and Macworld have more details about pro apps and performance.
The Mac Pro stumbles a little when it comes to single-core performance. Apps that only take advantage of a single-core include those that most general consumers would use every day -- email, browser, productivity apps, consumer level video and audio editors, etc. In fact, the iMac is a better single-core performer.
If your Mac is an everyday general use computer and you have the desk space, you're better off getting an iMac than a Mac Pro.
To get more performance out of your Mac Pro, consider upgrading the graphics cards. AnandTech's testing shows that some apps, like Final Cut Pro, take advantage of the two graphics processors in the Mac Pro, especially when rendering effects. However, there are apps (and most games) that aren't written to split compute tasks over two GPUs; one GPU is used for basic display duties, while the other covers the compute tasks, so there isn't a distinct advantage to a graphics card upgrade. If you work in pro apps, do some research to see if they can take full advantage of a dual graphics card setup.
The role of the Retina iMac
Apple released the 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K Display in October of 2014. With its 5120 by 2880 pixel display, it seems like a desirable computer for pros.
However, in multi-core performance, the Mac Pro is still king. In Geekbench multi-core testing, the 12-core Mac Pro is nearly 100 percent faster than the Retina iMac, while the 8-core is 55 percent faster and the 6-core is 27 percent faster. The Retina iMac does outperform the quad-core Mac Pro, by about 15 percent.
The Retina iMac does beat the Mac Pro in single-core performance, as you can see in the Geekbench charts above. Primate Labs, the developers of Geekbench, took a closer look at the performance between the Retina iMac and the Mac Pro.
The Mac Pro doesn't have the ability (yet) to drive a 5K display, but it can support up to three 4K displays. Apple had to build a custom controller for the Retina iMac to support a 5K display, so if you absolutely need a 5K display, the Retina iMac is your only choice.
If you're thinking of using the Retina iMac as an external display for the Mac Pro, you're out of luck. The Retina iMac doesn't support target display mode.
Which Mac Pro should you buy?
First, should you buy a Mac Pro in the first place? If you're a professional using high-end apps that can take advantage of multiple processing cores, then yes, a Mac Pro is the right computer for you. The Mac Pro is made for those kind of apps, and you'll be quite productive with such a machine.
If you just love the design of the Mac Pro and have the money, who's going to stop you from buying one? It is, after all, the smallest headless desktop computer Apple offers that isn't crippled like the Mac mini. Just understand what the Mac Pro is designed to do.
OK, so you're getting a Mac Pro. Which one? It's worth it to go for the $3999 model with the six-core processor. If you can afford to upgrade to eight or 12 cores, go for it. You'll see the performance boost with apps that can take advantage of multiple cores. The $2999 quad-core Mac Pro is a good performer, but in Geekbench 3 multi-core benchmarks, it's actually outperformed by the $2499 Retina iMac, which ends up being a better value. (It has been nearly a year since the Mac Pro was released, so a processor speed bump could happen sooner than later.)
The more RAM the better is also a good general guide, so try to bump up to at least 32GB if you're going to be doing intensive work on the machine. Storage is one area where you might be able to skimp, however, if only because the Mac Pro maxes out at 1TB and professional level users are likely going to be using much larger external RAID drives for speed, data protection, and capacity.
Buyer's Guide: Mac Pro (Don't Buy)
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