Apple introduced the “completely reimagined” MacBook Pro powered by the all-new M1 Pro way back in 2021, offering developers, photographers, filmmakers, 3D artists, scientists, music producers, and power as well as business users a pro laptop that could handle a more sustained performance workload while making zero compromises on battery life. Today in 2024, this gem of a notebook is still worth it for power users looking for a capable portable PC that boasts desktop level performance in a stylish long lasting package.
Measuring in at 0.61″ (1.55 cm) x 12.31″ (31.26 cm) x 8.71″ (22.12 cm) and tipping the laptop scales at around 1.6 kg, this stylish metallic packs Apple’s Magic Keyboard that is set in a double-anodized black well, which elegantly highlights the backlit glyphs on the keys, Touch ID to pay for purchases and login to the machine, and features a full-height function row. Physical function keys — including a wider escape key — replace the Touch Bar, bringing back the familiar, tactile feel of mechanical keys that Apple and pro users love, while the new keyboard is further complemented by the Cupertino-based company’s Force Touch trackpad that works well for pro applications and multitouch gestures to seamlessly navigate macOS. Speaking of which, this notebook will look and feel brand new with another lease on life once macOS Sonoma arrives with Apple Intelligence in toe.
If you prefer to consume content that the M1 MacBook Pro 14 does not disappoint, boasting a 14.2-inch (diagonal) Liquid Retina XDR (Extreme Dynamic Range) display with a resolution of 3024-by-1964 at a sumptouos 254 pixels per inch, 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, and can be safely used outdoors thanks to its 1000 nits sustained full-screen brightness, 1600 nits peak (HDR content only) brightness and SDR brightness of 500 nits. The viewing angles are great, the detail levels due to the high resolution is fantastic and the display simply makes content ‘pop’ whilst the accompanying sound is equally impressive due to the MacBook Pro 14’s high-fidelity six-speaker sound system with force-cancelling woofers that delivers wide stereo sound and offers support for spatial audio when playing music or video with Dolby Atmos on built-in speakers.
These speakers are the perfect companion for the screen and its extreme dynamic range that brings HDR content to life with unbelievable detail in shadows, brilliant specular highlights, deeper blacks, and more vivid colors. It has a gorgeous P3 wide color gamut and supports one billion colors for smoother gradients, and moreover, the ProMotion technology allows for an adaptive refresh rate up to 120Hz. ProMotion automatically varies the refresh rate to match the motion of a user’s onscreen content to help preserve battery life, and makes tasks more fluid and even more responsive. Video editors can also lock in a refresh rate that is optimal for their footage.
Despite this amazing display, battery life still stays sublime thanks to the 70-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery delivering up to 17 hours Apple TV app movie playback or up to 11 hours of web browsing. Under the hood performance also impresses thanks to snappy and smooth performance whilst navigating the OS, running applications, multitasking, or even gaming, due to Apple’s M1 Pro chip consisting of an 8-core CPU with 6 performance cores and 2 efficiency cores, 14-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine, and 200GB/s memory bandwidth. This chip is paired with 16GB unified memory (also configurable with 32GB of RAM on the M1 Pro version of this laptop or up to 64GB of RAM on the M1 Max powered version. You also get a fast 512GB SSD whilst the chip also sports a Media engine that makes video editing a breeze and much quicker thanks to hardware-accelerated H.264, HEVC, ProRes, and ProRes RAW, Video decode engine, Video encode engine and ProRes encode as well as decode engine.
In terms of connectivity and ports, the laptop does not disappoint due to a myriad of ports unlike the MacBook Air that includes SDXC card slot, HDMI port, 3.5 mm headphone jack, MagSafe 3 port, and no less than three Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) ports, 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 wireless networking, and Bluetooth 5.0 wireless technology. Other features include a 1080p FaceTime HD camera for FaceTime and video calls through other apps like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or Skype.
Ultimately, the MacBook Pro 14 M1 is still a powerhouse of a laptop that can cater to all your multimedia consumption and creation needs and will work with all your essential Microsoft Office applications including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Microsoft Teams. You can purchase a used one for around R28 000 from a local retailer like MacShack, or check out PC alternatives such as a Dell XPS 15 (R30 000), ASUS Vivobook S15 (R30 000) powered by a similar chip in the form of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite Processor as to the MacBook whilst also delivering astonishing battery life, or if you love Apple MacBooks but do not need a Pro device and prefer new to pre-loved, then checkout the Apple MacBook Air 15 M3 for around R32 000.
