MacBook Pro Review

MacBook Pro Product Information – Review & Buyer’s Guide

Overview

Top of the range Mac Laptop aimed at professional users. Available with either 13″, 15″, or 17″ displays in a sleek casing milled from a single block of Aluminium. Although it’s slim, lightweight and beautiful to look at, Apple have allowed for the realities of laptop use and made the MacBook Pro more durable than ever so you can sling it in your briefcase and even trip over the power lead without damaging it! The display is the best ever with a glass screen (most are plastic) and the battery life is now up to 10 hours without recharging. The new MacBook Pro batteries also last up to 5 years, during which time most laptops would have used three batteries. A superb new keyboard (automatically backlit in low-light) and a spacious glass trackpad that has no button (the pad is the button!) and which supports gestures such as pinching to zoom in and out, make this machine more more pleasant to use than laptops usually are. Using a laptop used to be a cramped and awkward experience, a bit like painting your hall through the letterbox, but this one is a sheer joy to use.

Features

• 13″, 15″, or 17″ LED-backlit glossy widescreen display
• Intel Core 2 Duo processors ranging from 2.4GHz to 2.66GHz (13″)
• Intel Core i5 and i7 processors ranging from 2.4GHz to 2.66GHz (15″ & 17″)
• Unibody casing precision milled from a solid block of aluminium
• Up to 10 hours battery life (batteries last 5 years)
• 8 Speed SuperDrive
• Built-in full-size backlit keyboard
• Multi-Touch trackpad with gesturing – pinch, rotate, swipe, drag etc.
• Comes with iLife: iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iDVD, and iWeb
• Build-in iSight video camera (webcam) & stereo speakers
• BlueTooth, Airport Extreme (802.11n) wireless networking + Gigabit Ethernet

Opinion

Apple have displayed their usual flair for design and innovation and removed most of the problems associated with laptops – poor displays & keyboards, short battery life, susceptibility to damage etc. This is one stunning laptop that is not only sleek and powerful but is also very usable all day every day. It isn’t particularly cheap but if you consider what’s gone into it and the way it has pushed the boundaries of laptop design and usability then you’d have to agree it’s not particularly expensive either. The top of the range 17″ model starts at £1,899 (which is twice the price of an iMac) but for a top of the range anything that’s not a huge amount. More people will probably buy the 13″ and 15″ models which start at a much more affordable £999, and there are enough options within the range to be able to find the optimum balance between price and features. Although I have always said “don’t buy a laptop unless you really need it to be portable”, this is one laptop that you could work quite happily on all day everyday, even if you only used it’s portability very occasionally. You would still be paying a premium for the portability but in this case it might just be worth it.

Buying a MacBook Pro

The best place to buy a new MacBook Pro is the online Apple Store. Not only do you have the comfort and security of buying directly from the manufacturer, you also get free delivery and 90 days free support from Apple.

The online Apple Store allows you to configure your Mac to your own requirements: you can choose processor, display, memory, hard drive capacity and other options and build your own Mac. For the latest MacBook Pro prices, configuration options and specifications visit the online Apple Store.

MacBook Pro 13″ starts from £999

MacBook Pro 15″ starts from £1,499

MacBook Pro 17″ starts from £1,899

Secondhand MacBook Pro
If you’re interested in a secondhand MacBook Pro instead of a new one check out the secondhand MacBook Pros on MacBooty. This site finds the best deals on MacBook Pros on eBay and saves you from having to sort through all the eBay listings yourself.