The new dream machine for creative professionals
The 14-inch Apple MacBook Pro occupies a new sweet spot among professional content creator laptops: much more powerful than consumer-grade alternatives, but much cheaper than its 16-inch sibling and bulky Windows workstations.
Apple's M1 chip made its debut a year ago with much fanfare, injecting the entry-level 2020 MacBook Air with the extraordinary computing power of a notebook computer of the same size and price. At the time, the 13-inch MacBook Pro was of lower value because of its higher cost, but it used the same M1 processor as the MacBook Air. Apple has now changed the equation-and opened Pro to a wider range of content professionals with the 14-inch MacBook Pro (starting at $1,999; tested at $2,899). This MacBook Pro introduces a new screen size for Apple laptops. It is the laptop that Mac-savvy creative professionals have been waiting for. It is equipped with a more powerful Apple chip (M1 Pro) and a wide range of port options (including some old ones). Necessities return) and revolutionary screen technology to justify its rather high price. It won the Editor's Choice Award and is a powerful tool for Mac creatives. Unlike most workstation-class laptops, it retains reasonable portability.
The new 14-inch MacBook Pro has so many advantages over the 13-inch model. If you are a professional user bound by macOS and have enough cash to invest in a powerful main machine, then your decision It actually comes down to whether you should buy a 14-inch or 16-inch model. You can safely exclude the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro model. (At the time of writing, Apple continued to sell it without updating it from the normal M1 configuration announced last year.)
To be sure, Apple’s online configurator for its new 2021 MacBook Pro is flexible and a bit confusing, but most of the standard and optional features are the same in 14-inch and 16-inch screen sizes. Your choice really depends on size, weight and price.
If you can bear to spend a lot of extra money and carry a larger and heavier case to add two inches of screen space, then 16 inches will suffice. However, if you are like many professionals looking for a combination of portability and powerful features, we suspect that these compromises may discourage you, especially if you already have a more powerful desktop at home or office to do most of the heavy rendering And compile. That's why we awarded the editor's choice award to the 14-inch model reviewed here.
If the opposite is true, please skip the rest of this review and continue our analysis of the 16-inch model-if you have a sufficient budget and stronger shoulders, then you can't go wrong. For everyone else, let us continue to compare the physical differences between the two models.
The 14-inch MacBook Pro measures 0.61 x 12.3 x 8.7 inches (HWD) and weighs 3.5 pounds. This exceeds the 3 pound limit we usually use to describe whether a laptop falls into the "ultraportable" category, and the 13-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air undoubtedly fall into this category.
On the other hand, 14 inches is more portable than 16 inches, which measures 0.66 x 14 x 9.8 inches and weighs 4.8 pounds. The 14-inch MacBook Pro is also more compact than most of its direct Windows competitors, which tend to be bulky 15-inch mobile workstation laptops that weigh 4 pounds or more. Yes, there are many 14-inch Windows laptops that do meet ultra-portable standards, including our favorite business laptop Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9. But these machines provide far less functions than the M1 Pro or M1 Max processor professionals in the 2021 MacBook. They really prefer basic productivity rather than serious content creation.
However, regardless of size differences, the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro have almost the same physical characteristics: ports, keyboard, display technology, and even the choice of Apple M1 Pro or M1 Max processors. Even the camera notch at the top of the screen (one of the most controversial features in the new design) is the same between the two. Both provide you with space gray or silver color schemes, following in the footsteps of countless Apple products.
Although you might think that the performance is different between the two, the larger laptop naturally has the potential to design a more powerful thermal management system to keep the M1 Pro or M1 Max chip running at its peak for a longer period of time. Prove that this is not the case for most workflows you might perform. So let's not talk about performance at the end of this review, but take a look at the new accessibility features of the 14-inch MacBook Pro.
Input and output ports are usually not the main function of a laptop, but the new MacBook Pro does. Five years ago, Apple gave up most of the ports on the laptop and put all the connections in the USB-C/Thunderbolt basket. There is a sorrow in the online Apple field, with critics and commentators complaining that laptops require more than just one type of port.
To be fair, the oval USB-C port is as versatile as the port, and some versions can handle everything from battery charging to display output to 40GBps maximum Thunderbolt transfer using an external hard drive. However, professional users with complex peripheral settings only need more I/O diversity. Fortunately, Apple has restored this diversity with the new MacBook Pro.
Not only is there a dedicated HDMI output to connect an external monitor without an adapter or special cable, but the SD card reader has also reappeared. Apple has claimed that inserting an SD card reader into your laptop is an indecent solution for transferring photos and videos. But professional photographers (including a group of people I know) condemn this function of sacrifice on the altar of form. It's nice to see the SD card reader again, even though it and HDMI output look like retro steps.
The MagSafe power connector (now called "MagSafe 3") is the last port to reappear on the new MacBook Pro. It provides a dedicated power connector that is easy to connect because the magnet guides it in place. The MagSafe 3 port is not compatible with previous MacBook power adapters, and it has nothing to do with the MagSafe accessories for iPhone and iPad. But it does provide a double advantage. If you happen to be tripped by a wire, you can completely detach it, and it will not consume the USB-C/Thunderbolt connector to charge the battery.
Saving one port is not as good as other aspects, because the new laptop includes three USB-C/Thunderbolt ports instead of the four that the high-end version of the 13-inch MacBook Pro has. (There are only two basic models of the 13-inch Pro. You must use one of them when charging.) But they all support the latest version of the Thunderbolt interface, Thunderbolt 4. There is also a 3.5mm audio jack onboard-it's good to see that Apple (so far, anyway) has not abandoned this endangered port like some of its competitors.
The MacBook Pros from 2016 to 2020 lack physical connections, and they make up for the opportunity for touch input: Apple’s unique touch screen interface, called the Touch Bar. The touch bar is a touch screen that replaces a row of function keys on the keyboard. It is a controversial way to add touch functions to macOS. So far, macOS has not been redesigned like Windows 11 to provide comprehensive Touch support. The 14-inch MacBook Pro comes with macOS Monterey.
In the heyday of the Touch Bar, Apple touted it as a boon for creative professionals who could use it to browse the video timeline and quickly access the settings they needed to adjust for any given task. (The screen will be adjusted according to the real-time application.) Some professionals did accept it. But many people (including us) complain that the Touch Bar is a gimmick, a halfway alternative to adding touch support to the main display. Apple has obviously changed its mind-although it is not adding touch to its screen, please pay attention. The Touch Bar disappeared completely in the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro.
Once again, like the port, the old school is back. It is replaced by a row of familiar traditional function keys, including brightness and volume controls, as well as buttons for activating Spotlight search and mission control. Programmers may particularly welcome the return of the full-size physical Escape key, which is very useful when you compile code. In the upper left corner, you will find a power button with a built-in Touch ID sensor for fingerprint login to your macOS account.
The rest of the keyboard and Force Touch trackpad are basically the same as the excellent keyboards of the previous 16-inch MacBook Pro and the current 13-inch model. Apple Magic Keyboard provides sturdy keys, sufficient travel distance and tactile switches, and uses an ambient light sensor to automatically adjust the backlight intensity of the keys. It is the same as the improved keyboard seen and felt on the latest MacBook Pro, and is different from the troublesome keyboards of earlier years. The touchpad on the 14-inch model has a wide proportions, no matter where your fingertips are located, you can provide an even click through tactile feedback.
The only significant change in the keyboard area is the addition of a new black enclosure that matches the color of the keycaps. If you choose silver, this is in stark contrast to the rest of the chassis, although not much different from the darker space gray option. (In both cases, the keys and the keyboard back panel are the same black.) On previous MacBook Pros, the keyboard back panel matches the silver or space gray of the rest of the case.
After returning to I/O diversity and adding the Apple M1 Pro processor, the XDR screen technology on the 14-inch MacBook Pro is the next most noteworthy feature. In Apple's statement, XDR stands for "Extreme Dynamic Range", a marketing term for what many other personal technology devices call "High Dynamic Range" or HDR.
In addition to the increase in the range of colors that can be displayed, the Liquid Retina XDR screen has many things that can be unlocked, so let's start with the simplest addition: ProMotion's 120Hz refresh rate. This technology has been used on Apple's iPad and iPhone for some time, but the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro are the first generation of laptops to use it. The maximum refresh rate is twice the maximum value of 60Hz that has been the standard for notebook computer displays for many years. It makes scrolling through websites and documents silky smooth. (A screen refresh rate higher than 60Hz is now the standard configuration of gaming laptops, but it is not common in mainstream non-gaming models.)
ProMotion works out of the box by default, but you don't have to always run at a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz. Since MacBook Pro is a content creation workstation, the System Preferences application provides other presets with refresh rates of 60Hz and below, so you can match the frequency of the screen with the frequency of the video you are currently editing.
Compared with the previous Retina display, another major advancement of the XDR screen is its LED technology, which provides brighter whites, deeper blacks, and overall more vivid colors than the 13-inch MacBook Pro can display. Thanks to multiple local dimming zones, a display backlight technology called Mini-LED, XDR screens can achieve an extraordinary rated contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1. (For more information on how it works, check out our explanation of Mini-LED technology and its relationship to MacBook Pro.)
On Windows workstations, is XDR really better than other advanced display technologies (such as OLED screens) for content creation tasks that require excellent contrast and color accuracy? It depends on the situation. After viewing a set of sample images and videos sent by Apple for testing, even my untrained eyes can clearly see that the local dimming area will produce amazingly bright white. How "stunning" is it? When viewing optimized content, the local brightness of the screen is up to 1,600 nits, which is the same as the $5,000 Apple Pro Display XDR, and is much higher than the 500 to 1,000 nits that laptops consider to be exceptionally bright.
The problem is that the content you are viewing does need to be optimized for high contrast. When we used the DataColor SpyderX sensor and software to test the screen of the 14-inch MacBook Pro, it deployed a non-optimized test screen, which recorded a maximum brightness of 500 nits.
As mentioned earlier, the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro have a "notch" (a downwardly extending protrusion) in the middle of the top edge of the screen to accommodate the laptop's camera and lens. There is nothing new in particular here, except that it is on the MacBook-Apple took the lead in adopting this method in its mobile phones on the iPhone X a few years ago, so that the screen frame can be reduced while still having a high-quality camera sensor. Provide space.
It is now common on iPhones and other mobile phones, but it is rare on laptops. In the case of the MacBook Pro, the notch covers the central part of the upper menu bar. If you use a dark color scheme with a black menu bar, you won't notice it at all. It is also not obvious when watching a full-screen 16:9 video, because in this case, the black bars above and below the content will obscure it. However, if you prefer the traditional bright color scheme with a white menu bar, then the notch is on your face.
On the bright side, the notch can indeed hold one of the best cameras I have used on a laptop. This is a 1080p FaceTime HD camera. Although Apple is not the only company offering 1080p devices in new laptops, 720p laptop cameras are still very common. But this is supported by adjustment algorithms that deal with low-light performance. The result is basically equivalent to a similar camera setup on a 24-inch Apple iMac, and far better than a traditional 720p laptop webcam. However, it does not support face recognition for FaceID login. Adding a depth sensor to FaceID is likely to result in a larger gap, so I can ignore this.
At the same time, the audio quality of the 14-inch MacBook Pro is excellent, with a total of six speakers (including four forced cancellation woofers). It is more immersive than the sound output of a 13-inch MacBook Pro or 2020 MacBook Air. This is partly due to the number of speakers and the lack of spatial audio capabilities of the two small-screen laptops. Moreover, because it has the same speaker setup as the 16-inch MacBook Pro, which has a larger chassis, there is an additional reason to choose the 14-inch instead of its big brother: it weighs more in terms of audio impact than its weight.
The wireless connection of the 14-inch MacBook Pro includes 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 wireless network and Bluetooth 5.0. If you want to have a MacBook Pro that supports 5G, you may have to wait a few years.
Under the hood, the 14-inch MacBook Pro offers a significantly improved version of the M1 processor in the 13-inch model. The basic configuration is equipped with an Apple M1 Pro processor with 8 CPU cores, of which 6 are suitable for resource-intensive tasks such as rendering or compiling code, while two handle light tasks such as video playback or web browsing. You can also get 14 graphics cores for image output and GPU acceleration tasks. The chip is equipped with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD.
However, the M1 Pro chip version in the basic model is not the only version of the processor. Apple also offers M1 Pro variants. The upgraded configuration I tested has an M1 Pro, but this version adds two high-performance CPU cores and two additional graphics cores (16). The overall configuration also doubled the memory to 32GB and the SSD storage to 1TB. These chips, RAM, and storage devices add $900 to the already high starting price of $1,999, pushing the MacBook Pro closer to Intel Xeon and Core i9 powered Windows workstations equipped with Nvidia Quadro GPUs, such as Dell Precision 7560, HP ZBook Power G8 and Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2. In fact, in the configuration we tested, many of these Windows-based laptops cost far more than $3,000.
For our benchmark test, we not only compared the 14-inch Pro with its 16-inch equivalent and the older M1 Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch, but also compared a series of workstation-grade laptops mentioned above, as well as several Core i7 and Alienware and Lenovo’s Core i9 game console.
Our following tests show that the 14-inch MacBook Pro has no problem keeping up with these systems in a variety of demanding workflows. Even more surprisingly, they also showed that the M1 Max processor in the 16-inch MacBook Pro we tested at the initial benchmark meeting kept pace with the M1 Max processor. In our test unit, the only notable difference between the M1 Max and M1 Pro versions is a bunch of additional graphics cores (up to 32) and memory bandwidth doubled to 400GBps.
Although we did not have the opportunity to test it, in some specific cases, Apple M1 Max should produce significant performance differences. This mainly involves workloads performed using Apple's own software or using Apple technologies such as ProRes. For example, the high-end M1 Max is equipped with two ProRes hardware encoders/decoders, which means it can process 7 8K video streams at the same time-7! Even Apple Mac Pro desktops with only one ProRes decoder and no encoder can't be used out of the box.
Unless any of these have any impact on your daily work style, there is no reason to use the M1 Max configuration on the 10-core version of M1 Pro. (See more information on how we test laptops.)
To understand why, check out the chart below, which shows the performance of non-Apple specific workflows, such as transcoding video in the open source Handbrake application, rendering 3D images using Blender and Maxon's Cinebench R23, or using Geekbench CPU to simulate various Daily task benchmarks. All of these scenarios can be done on a Windows laptop or MacBook Pro. Obviously, the 14-inch MacBook Pro and the aforementioned workstation laptops and gaming laptops like Alienware x17 and Lenovo Legion 7i have their own advantages.
Also note that in most cases, the score of the 14-inch machine equipped with the M1 Pro is close enough to the 16-inch machine equipped with the M1 Max, we might as well call it a tie. At the same time, both machines beat the performance of the 13-inch machine equipped with M1, which explains why it is best to avoid this model if you can afford it.
Except for the PugetBench test made by workstation manufacturer Puget Systems for simulating image editing in Adobe Photoshop, all of our benchmark tests are run locally on Apple chips and Intel chips. I have included this benchmark run in the Rosetta 2 emulation layer to understand what performance can be expected when performing demanding tasks with old software originally designed for Intel-powered Macs. In this case, performance will be slightly affected, and all Windows computers will perform better. (Their Intel processors do run tests locally.) However, if you only need to use older software occasionally, the difference is not that big.
The MacBook Pro is a content creation workstation, not a gaming laptop, but the line between the two is becoming increasingly blurred, so it’s worth a quick look at the gaming performance measured by the cross-platform GFXBench suite. (We will focus more on gaming and graphics performance in subsequent articles; there is no time to run detailed gaming benchmarks before the sale date of these laptops.) Important note: Think of these tests more as between laptops Compare measures rather than as an absolute value of the frame rate you should get in any given game. Please also note that the GFXBench test runs in an off-screen buffer, so this benchmark measures the relative strength of the graphics system in the test laptop, regardless of its original screen resolution.
In the less demanding test (1080p Car Chase scene) of the two tests we ran, the graphics core of the M1 Pro easily competed with the graphics core of the Nvidia-powered Windows laptop and the M1 Max. However, the 14-inch MacBook Pro staggers slightly in the more demanding Aztec Ruins scene, and the 16-inch MacBook Pro is far ahead in this regard. However, this does not apply to every game. Unlike GFXBench, most games still run in the Rosetta 2 emulation layer on macOS, which limits performance to a certain extent. Our in-depth study of game test results explains what you can expect if you want to run AAA games on MacBook Pro.
One of the best features of previous MacBook Pros is that they can maintain marathon battery life despite using power-hungry CPU and GPU. Powerful Windows workstations and gaming laptops are the opposite. They usually only charge for a few hours. This situation persists on the 14-inch MacBook Pro, whose 19-hour battery life exceeds that of its Windows competitors, as shown in the figure below.
For all the above tests, including the video battery drain test, we left the performance settings of the MacBook Pro at the default values. If you enable the "Low Power" mode in "System Preferences", you may get better battery life results, which will reduce power to extend battery life. This setting also reduces the noise of the cooling system, which did cause a considerable amount of fan noise in some of the more intense benchmark tests. On the contrary, unlike the 16-inch MacBook Pro, the 14-inch model does not have a high-power mode, which increases the cooling capacity and processing power.
The 14-inch MacBook Pro is a major leap forward for Apple's laptops, while the 13-inch Pro model is not. For creative professionals who need mobile workstations for content creation, it is an obvious choice that can take into account the three competing needs of portability, economy, and functionality. If two of the legs-portability and economy-are not so important to you, then the 16-inch MacBook Pro may be a better choice because of its larger screen. But it does not provide a lot of extra computing performance for non-professional tasks. If you know that you can take advantage of the professional features of M1 Max, you can also configure a 14-inch MacBook Pro through this upgrade.
On the other hand, if you only need an Apple laptop for basic tasks, then you should stay away from any version of MacBook Pro; its dose is too strong. The 2020 MacBook Air is your best choice because it offers almost the same features as the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and it starts at $999, which is more delicious.
The 14-inch Apple MacBook Pro occupies a new sweet spot among professional content creator laptops: much more powerful than consumer-grade alternatives, but much cheaper than its 16-inch sibling and bulky Windows workstations.
Sign up for our weekly Apple Brief to get the latest news, comments, tips and more delivered directly to your inbox.
This newsletter may contain advertisements, transactions or affiliate links. By subscribing to the newsletter, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy. You can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time.
Your subscription has been confirmed. Pay close attention to your inbox!
As a hardware analyst, Tom tests and reviews laptops, peripherals, etc. in the PC Lab in New York City. He previously worked as a PCMag news reporter in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, covering consumer technology beats, where he drove several self-driving cars and witnessed the rise and fall of many startups. Prior to this, he worked at PCMag’s sister site Computer Shopper, where he occasionally soaked waterproof hard drives in a water glass. In his spare time, he writes on various topics, such as the tropical rainforest of Borneo, the Middle East Airlines, and the role of big data in the presidential election. Tom graduated from Middlebury College and also has a master's degree in journalism and French studies from New York University. Follow him on Twitter @branttom.
PCMag.com is a leading technical authority, providing independent laboratory-based reviews of the latest products and services. Our professional industry analysis and practical solutions can help you make better purchasing decisions and get more benefits from technology.
© 1996-2021 Ziff Davis. PCMag Digital Group
PCMag, PCMag.com and PC Magazine are federally registered trademarks of Ziff Davis and may not be used by third parties without express permission. The third-party trademarks and trade names displayed on this website do not necessarily indicate any affiliation or endorsement with PCMag. If you click an affiliate link and purchase a product or service, the merchant may pay us a fee.