Apple MacBook Pro (16-inch) Review: More Than Just a New Keyboard

[harlan4096]

The 16-inch MacBook Pro has a big screen, improved keyboard and long battery life, but it’s time to add some more ports.

Our Verdict

The 16-inch MacBook Pro has the keyboard Mac users have been waiting for, along with amazing speakers and long battery life. But it’s time to add more ports for pros.

For

Magic keyboard is great
Best audio I’ve ever heard from a laptop
Long battery life
Strong performance

Against

Pros need more ports and SD card slot
32-bit apps and games need replacements or fixing

This is the MacBook Pro people have been hoping for. The 16-inch MacBook Pro ($2,399 to start; $3,899 as tested) has brought back the scissor switch keyboard. That may be enough for some, but it also boasts the most impressive audio we’ve seen in a laptop, long battery life and powerful productivity performance. There is more that we’d like to see Apple address, like a lack of ports, but if macOS is what you want and power is what you need, this is the MacBook Pro that creatives have long been awaiting.

Design

The MacBook Pro’s overall design hasn’t changed very much. It’s a silver, aluminum rectangle, but it’s bigger than the 15-inch model of yesteryear. Ours came in space gray, but Apple also sells it in silver. There’s a reflective Apple logo on the lid, but it’s otherwise spartan. The design is a few years old, but it’s still classy and understated, albeit it very minimalist. The changes are more evident when you lift the lid. The 16-inch, 3072 x 1920 display features True Tone technology, which is supposed to automatically adjust the screen based on your room's lighting to make colors seem more natural, and is surrounded by the thinnest bezels on a modern MacBook Pro.

The keyboard has a few slight aesthetic and functionality changes. (See the Keyboard, Touchpad and Touch Bar section below for the full details.) At first glance, you’ll notice that the escape key is back and that the power button with Touch ID has been separated from the Touch Bar. Additionally, Apple has adjusted the arrow keys to an upside down “T” layout, making all of the keys the same size and easier to distinguish from each other. Speaker grills flank both sides of the keyboard.

At 16-inches, the MacBook Pro is between the more popular 15 and 17-inch screen sizes. It weighs 4.3 pounds and measures 14.1 x 9.7 x 0.6 inches (358 x 246 x 16mm). The Dell XPS 15 measures 14.9 x 9.7 x 0.7 inches and weighs 4.5 pounds, while the Razer Blade Pro 17 is 6 pounds and 15.6 x 10.2 x 0.7 inches.

The ports are somewhat sparse on this laptop. There are four Thunderbolt 3 ports (two on each side of the machine), and a headphone jack on the right side. While that’s more Thunderbolt 3 ports than most laptops, which can be used for charging, video output and peripherals and storage with USB-C. But I do wish that with the extra space, Apple would have added a more common video out port, like HDMI. A full-size SD card slot would also be more than welcome. I think many pros would even put up with some extra thickness for it.
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