2015 MacBook Pro has seen a pretty decent update but is it worth it? Take one look around

and you’ll see the design hasn’t changed much. That’s not really a complaint though,

the Retina MacBook Pro has been one of the best built laptops for a few years now and

the 2015 model is no exception. It’s a solid aluminum chassis with some of the tightest

tolerances out there and subtle touches like a nicely weighted hinge so you can open up

the lid without picking up the entire laptop. It’s got a pair of decent speakers hidden

on the edges by the ports that double as intakes for the fan. The MacBook vents above the keyboard

which can still breathe even with the lid closed. The keyboard is still about as good

as it gets for a laptop. They could add just a touch more key travel in my opinion but

it’s nicely spaced and keeps the adjustable backlighting which automatically kicks on

in darker environments. Something shared from the new MacBook is the Force Touch trackpad.

It looks the same however instead of being a normal clickpad there’s a Taptic Engine

which vibrates the trackpad when you click. It sounds bizarre but it actually works, you

can notice the lack of travel compared with a normal MacBook but it does feel like you’re

clicking. Turn off the laptop and it’s really trippy, it moves a tiny amount but nowhere

near as much as it feels like when it’s actually on.

It’s also pressure sensitive which lets you use the new Force Touch gesture in OS

X. For example the harder you press the more you fast forward in QuickTime with a slight

bit of feedback as you go through each of the speeds. The coolest way to use this is

in Safari where you can Force Click on a link to preview before actually opening it. It

took me a few days to get used to it but the new trackpad is a nice addition. For ports

you’ve got an SDXC card reader, HDMI and USB 3.0 on the right side along with MagSafe

2 for charging, a pair of Thunderbolt 2 ports along with one more USB and a combo headphone

microphone jack. The Thunderbolt ports are the most interesting, having that much bandwidth

is mostly useful for high end RAID arrays and docks that give you things like extra

USB ports, Ethernet and HDMI off a single cable. They also double as Mini DisplayPorts

with the ability to drive 4K monitors at 60 hertz. It won’t be buttery smooth but it

is totally possible. Speaking of that screen, the MacBook Pro is sporting a 13.3 inch IPS

display with a resolution of 2560 by 1600. While this has been passed by Windows laptops

pushing resolutions up to 4K in practice the MacBook is more than sharp enough. It’s

got solid viewing angles, a far cry from the MacBook Air which washes out almost immediately.

OS X scaling is quite a bit better than on Windows too, it scales the resolution by double

giving you the same screen real estate as a 1280 by 800 display by default. You can

adjust this up to 1680 by 1050 but for me the sweet spot was 1440 by 900, giving you

a decent amount of resolution without making things too tiny. There are also apps like

SetResX that will drop the Retina scaling altogether if you really need every single

pixel which I use for some apps like SpeedGrade. Things like the design and screen are important

but a laptop is basically a paperweight without some decent specs.

The base configuration comes with a Broadwell Core i5 with Iris 6100 graphics, eight gigabytes

of RAM and a 128 gigabyte SSD. Compare this with the New MacBook and for the same price

you get a 256 gigabyte drive but a much less powerful Core M processor. We’ll see how

they actually compare soon so be sure to subscribe to catch my video on the New MacBook but the

Pro is looking pretty solid right now. The 13 inch Pro I’ve got here is upgraded with

the Core i7, sixteen gigabytes of memory and a 512 gigabyte SSD. One of the big behind

the scenes upgrades on the new MacBook is a faster PCIe based SSD. It’s fast. Like

the fastest SSD I’ve ever tested with read and write speeds over 1300 megabytes per second.

Things get a little less exciting when you look at the CPU though. We’re still looking

at a dual core chip across the board on the 13 inch MacBook, if you want quad core you’ll

have to take the step up to the 15 inch. The new 14 nanometer Broadwell chips do keep the

clocks relatively high, even the base 13 inch starts at 2.7 gigahertz and goes up to 3.4

gigahertz with the Core i7. Still though we’ve only got two cores and the Geekbench numbers

top out at just about half of what the 15 inch MacBook can muster. On the graphics side

things are a bit better, the Iris graphics are able to keep OS X running nice and smooth

and it posts a solid improvement over the MacBook Air and last gen Pro in Cinebench.

No one should buy a Mac for gaming but that graphics performance does make some light

gaming possible. Minecraft runs no problem here with everything turned up and even a

heavier title like Tomb Raider is playable as long as you don’t mind turning down the

settings a bit. One of the biggest questions I’ve had was how the 13 inch Pro handles

video. I’ve edited my last three videos with Adobe Premiere CC on the MacBook and

I’ve been pleasantly surprised. It’s able to keep up with editing 1080p AVCHD clips

just fine, only slowing down when I'm working with complicated effects. Where I really miss

a quad core CPU is when exporting but for the actual edit the 13 inch MacBook Pro is

absolutely usable. Battery life isn’t too bad either. With lighter use like listening

to music and web browsing you should expect around nine hours of longevity where things

like gaming and video editing will bring that closer to three hours. The MacBook Pro is

an expensive laptop. You do get a solid build, excellent screen, impressive new trackpad

and a blisteringly fast SSD. The lack of dedicated graphics is a slight disappointment but not

having a quad core CPU option is a big problem for a laptop at this price. 95 percent of

the time you won’t notice but I would happily trade a couple hours of battery life to have

the extra power when I need it. If you’re looking at a MacBook the 13 inch Pro is the

best trade off between power and portability but you’re going to have to pay for it.

So what do you guys think about the new MacBook Pro? Let me know in the comments below and

if you enjoyed and want to see more videos like this definitely be sure to subscribe

to the channel! Anyway guys thank you so much for watching and I will catch you in the next

one!