Macbook Pro 13 Pouces 512 Go

Laptop Mag Verdict

The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch on Bar delivers even faster functioning and a slightly ameliorate keyboard, but the bombardment life could be better.

Pros

+
Blazing-fast functioning
+
Brilliant and colorful Retina display
+
Slightly improved keyboard
+
Not bad speakers
+
Helpful Affect ID button

Cons

-
Thick bezels
-
Heavier than other thirteen-inch laptops
-
Battery life could be longer
-
Pricey

Editor's Note 7.19.21: Laptop Magazine doesn't generally recommend laptops two years or older. If you're in the market for a new MacBook, please bank check out our reviews on the MacBook Pro 2020 (13-inch) and Apple MacBook Pro (13-inch, M1, 2020) .

It's a stretch to call the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Affect Bar new for 2019. That's because it's generally but a spec upgrade -- with one important exception. Now featuring faster quad-core processors, the xiii-inch MacBook Pro (starting at $one,799, or $1,999 as tested) offers more speed than last year'south model, along with the zippiest SSD you can arrive a laptop.

Merely it's the keyboard that'southward getting the most attending, equally Apple quietly changed a cloth in its butterfly mechanism then that it's less prone to problems. Those updates assistance the MacBook Pro retain its spot as one of the best 13-inch laptops you can buy.

I've been using the updated 13-inch MacBook Pro for a week, and information technology remains 1 of the all-time performing laptops in its class. And while I didn't encounter whatsoever problems with the keyboard, it will take more than time to determine whether Apple's design change will exist enough to accost the bulk of complaints. The battery life and design both remain expert, simply they could exist better.

13-Inch MacBook Pro 2019 Price and Configuration Options

The xiii-inch MacBook Pro with Bear upon Bar (released in Baronial 2019) is still i of the most expensive thirteen-inch laptops out in that location. The MacBook Pro'southward cost starts at a steep $one,799 with an eighth-Gen, 2.4-GHz Intel Cadre i5 processor, 8GB of RAM and 246GB of storage. We opted for 16GB of RAM (which I highly recommend for those who keep multiple apps and dozens of tabs open), which adds $200 to the price.

Other upgrades include a Core i7 CPU ($300) and several SSD options. Upgrading to 512GB costs $200, while 1TB ($600) and 2TB ($1,200) price considerably more.

Design

Cease me if you've seen and heard this earlier. The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is a solid and elegant slice of aluminum available in Infinite Grayness or Silver. But the look is getting stale at this point, as the bezels around the screen look pretty thick compared to the likes of the Dell XPS 13 and other Windows notebooks and 2-in-1 laptops.

This MacBook Pro is fairly portable, at 3.02 pounds and 0.59 inches thick, simply again, other Windows laptops are much sleeker. The XPS xiii, for example, weighs 2.vii pounds and is 0.3 to 0.v inches thick. The HP Spectre x360 is a fleck lighter (2.nine pounds) and slimmer (0.5 inches) than the MacBook Pro, too, despite packing a touch screen.

Ports

One of the benefits of splurging for the Bear on Bar model of the 13-inch MacBook Pro is that you go 4 Thunderbolt three ports (two on the left and two on the correct).

The non-Touch on Bar MacBook Pro makes do with just two Thunderbolt iii ports, on the left side. The headphone jack is on the correct on this Touch Bar MacBook Pro.

What's missing is any sort of retentiveness card slot; the Dell XPS 13, HP Spectre x360 13-inch model and Lenovo Yoga C930 all squeeze in a microSD card reader. Plus, the HP and Lenovo include a full-size USB 3.1 port.

Keyboard

The bad news is that the latest version of Apple tree'due south butterfly keyboard on the xiii-inch MacBook Pro offers the same shallow travel as previous editions. It'south but 0.6mm, when nosotros prefer 1mm or to a higher place for ultraportable laptops and Ultrabooks. The proficient news is that I typed speedily and comfortably on this laptop, as the actuation force of 60 grams provided enough feedback that typing didn't experience mushy.

On the 10fastfingers.com typing test, I surpassed 77 words per infinitesimal with 95% accuracy. That's slightly faster than the 72 wpm I got on the 2018 MacBook Pro, but I achieved even better accuracy on that arrangement, with 97.six%. On my everyday 2016 MacBook Pro without Touch Bar, I hit 75 wpm with 93.8% accurateness.

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So, what about this new material on the keyboard, and what will it do? Apple isn't providing any details, other than to say that the changes should prevent bug like the double typing of letters or keys that neglect to annals. Co-ordinate to iFixit, which performed a tear down on the xv-inch MacBook Pro with the same blueprint alter, the switch cover now seems to be fabricated of polyamide (aka, nylon) instead of polyacetylene, but the do good to users of that alter is not clear.

We plan on using this MacBook Pro for several weeks to encounter how the improved butterfly keyboard holds upwardly.

Touchpad, Touch Bar and Touch ID

At 5.3 ten iii.2 inches, the trackpad on the thirteen-inch MacBook Pro is every bit massive every bit ever, and information technology's but as responsive and accurate. Scrolling on this laptop is silky smooth, and it's a sure-fire to execute gestures like swiping upwardly with 3 fingers for Mission Control or spreading three fingers to show the desktop.

After debuting nearly three years ago, the Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro hasn't get as useful as I initially hoped -- and I was ane of those people who said it was not a gimmick. The Touch Bar can come in handy when you lot're using some apps. For example, in Photos, this narrow secondary brandish lets you skim through photos just past sliding your finger. And in Safari, you tin can click on one of your favorite sites without looking at the master screen.

But the utility of this sliver of real estate pales in comparison to what Asus is doing with its larger ScreenPad and what you lot could do with a full-touch-screen, two-in-one laptop. The upcoming macOS Catalina lets you lot apply an iPad as a secondary display with the Sidecar feature, but that'southward not the same as having a touchscreen baked in.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro does accept a built-in Touch ID button, which doubles as a power push. This makes it piece of cake to log in to your system with a simple press, though I'd like to see Apple tree add together Touch ID to MacBooks to make things even faster. Still, it's nice that y'all can use Touch ID for Apple Pay and passwords on websites.

Display

Although I'd similar to run across Apple tree bound to 4K, it'southward difficult to argue with the beauty of this thirteen-inch MacBook Pro's screen. The 2560 10 1600-pixel Retina display is bright, colorful and authentic. While watching the Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker trailer, I could make out every fold in Rey's outfit and several wisps of her hair off to the right side. Her bluish lightsaber beamed against the sandy backdrop as she flipped over an enemy ship speeding toward her.

The panel itself likewise beamed in our lab tests, equally information technology registered an average brightness of 408 nits. That soundly beats the HP Spectre x360 13-inch model (287 nits) and the Lenovo Yoga C930 (273 nits), and the MacBook's result also outshines the XPS 13's (375 nits).

MORE: Best MacBook - A Guide to Apple Laptops - Laptop Magazine

The MacBook Pro'due south screen isn't the about colorful; it reproduced 118% of the sRGB color gamut in our tests, which is amend than the Yoga C930's result (100%) but behind those from the XPS 13 (119%) and Spectre x360 (150%).

You won't detect a display with more than-accurate hues, though. The 13-inch MacBook Pro'southward panel turned in a Delta-Eastward score of 0.12. A score of zero is perfect.

Audio and "Hey, Siri"

I would put the speakers on the thirteen-inch MacBook Pro up against those on whatever Windows laptop, and Apple would probably win. Not merely is there a ton of power here -- "Dark Running" from Muzzle the Elephant and Brook filled a large conference room with sound at 50% volume -- but there'south besides an impressive corporeality of bass here. I besides appreciated the stereo separation on Twenty Ane Pilots' "Chlorine." The drum line was punchy but perfectly balanced with the slacker-melancholy vocals.

If y'all want to speak to the MacBook Pro, you lot can do just that with "Hey, Siri" support, which is enabled past the laptop's T2 scrap. I could ask Siri to show me what my 24-hour interval looked like, which allowed me to meet my appointments at a glance. Plus, I used the feature to open up Photos and show pictures of just my dogs and open the browser to cnn.com. I too plant information technology useful to switch to other apps with my vocalization, particularly when I had besides much open up.

Performance

The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is easily 1 of the fastest laptops ever of its size. Our configuration packs a quad-cadre eighth-gen Intel Core i5 processor running at 2.four-GHz, 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. I didn't see any lag even as I jumped between 17 tabs in Chrome while also running Skype, Slack and Pixelmator.

On Geekbench 4.1, which measures overall performance, the 13-inch MacBook scored a very high 18,221, which wipes the floor with the Dell XPS 13'south mark of fourteen,936 (Core i7-8565U, 16GB of RAM) and the HP Spectre x360 xiii-inch model'south score of xiv,935 (Core i7-8565U, 8GB of RAM).

In our video-editing exam, in which we transcode a 4K video file to 1080p, the MacBook Pro was a full five minutes faster than its closest competitor, the XPS 13, which needed 19:xx to consummate the same tasks. Both the HP Spectre x360 13 and Yoga C930 took over 20 minutes.

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The MacBook Pro's SSD continues to be off-the-charts fast. On the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test, this organization turned in a write speed of 2,573 MBps. The Dell XPS 13 hit just 226.4 MBps on the same examination, while the HP Spectre x360 13 hit 616.3 MBps.

You shouldn't expect the greatest graphics performance from this MacBook Pro, still. On low settings, information technology turned in a frame rate of 38 fps on the Dirt 3 racing game, while the XPS 13 hitting 88 fps and the Spectre x350 reached 56 fps. The Yoga C930 was comparable to the MacBook Pro, at 37 fps.

Battery Life

Although Apple tree rates the 13-inch MacBook Pro for upwards to 10 hours of spider web surfing, nosotros saw less endurance in our testing. Apple's laptop lasted for viii hours and 41 minutes on the Laptop Mag bombardment exam, which involves continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of screen brightness. That's about the same runtime equally terminal twelvemonth'due south 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar and a Core i7 CPU (8:43).

This runtime beats the result from the XPS 13 with a 4K brandish (7:50), merely the HP Spectre x360 13-inch lasted an epic 12:07 and the Lenovo Yoga C930 (10:10) besides outlasted the MacBook Pro significantly.

Oestrus

Though it's 1 of the fastest 13-inch laptops always, the MacBook Pro with Bear upon Bar kept its absurd. Afterward streaming video for 15 minutes, nosotros measured temperatures of 84 degrees Fahrenheit on the touchpad, xc.5 degrees betwixt the One thousand and H keys, and 90.5 degrees on the lesser of the chassis. All of those temps fall below our comfort threshold.

macOS Catalina

Out of the box, the 2019 xiii-inch MacBook Pro with Affect Bar ran macOS Mojave, which includes welcome features like Dark Mode (which makes content easier on the eyes) and desktop Stacks (for better management of all your clutter).

You can now upgrade to macOS Catalina for gratis. That update says goodbye to iTunes in favor of dedicated Music, Podcast and Boob tube apps. And Project Catalyst brings more than iPadOS apps to the Mac App Shop, including quality games. Another large highlight is Sidecar, which allows iPad owners to use the tablet every bit a secondary display, complete with support for Apple tree Pencil.

MacBook comparison

If you're looking to salvage money, the thirteen-inch MacBook Air ($1,199) is a solid selection, equally it delivers a lot of the same benefits as the xiii-inch MacBook Pro, including a Retina Display, Affect ID and superfast SSD storage. The Air besides lasts nearly an 60 minutes longer on a accuse (9:32).

More: Apple Volition Discontinue iPhone SE and iPhone 10 (Report)

Withal, the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar sports a full-ability U-serial processor, while the Y-series flake on the MacBook Air is slower. You lot likewise get a brighter screen on the MacBook Pro and more Thunderbolt 3 ports (four versus two), plus the improved keyboard. The Touch Bar can exist prissy to accept, merely I don't encounter it as a deciding factor.

To effigy out which 13-inch MacBook is best for you, check out our MacBook Pro vs Air (2019) face up-off.

Bottom Line

Overall, the 13-inch MacBook Pro is the Apple laptop I would buy for myself, even with its $1,799 starting cost. It gives me all the power I could want, a brilliant display, great audio and an improved keyboard that should testify more reliable over time. I besides go on to appreciate such amenities as Bear upon ID button and "Hey, Siri"

If y'all prefer Windows, y'all have plenty of bang-up alternatives, such equally Dell's XPS thirteen; information technology'southward lighter and thinner, with a better keyboard and a more aggressive price. Prefer a 2-in-1? HP'due south Spectre x360 13 boasts 3 hours more battery life than the MacBook Pro. Only neither of these systems beats Apple on sheer performance.

I do wish Apple would debut a sleeker design with slimmer bezels and that the company could squeeze more battery life out of this platform. Simply overall, the xiii-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is a blazing-fast laptop for power users on the go.

Credit: Laptop Magazine

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MacBook Pro 13-inch with Touch on Bar (2019) Specs

Bluetooth	Bluetooth 5.0
Brand	Apple
CPU	2.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Heave upwards to four.1GHz, with 128MB of eDRAM
Company Website	https://www.apple.com
Display Size	thirteen
Graphics Card	Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655
Hard Bulldoze Size	256GB SSD
Highest Available Resolution	2560 x 1600
Operating Organization	macOS High Sierra
RAM	8GB
RAM Upgradable to	16GB
Size	0.59 in x xi.97 in ten viii.36 in
Touchpad Size	v.3 ten three.2-inch
Weight	iii.02 pounds
Wi-Fi	802.11ac

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Responsible for the editorial vision for Laptopmag.com, Marker Spoonauer has been Editor in Chief of LAPTOP since 2003 and has covered technology for nearly 15 years. Marking speaks at key tech industry events and makes regular media appearances on CNBC, Fox and CNN. Mark was previously reviews editor at Mobile Computing, and his piece of work has appeared in Wired, Popular Science and Inc.