The next-gen MacBook Pro with Retina Display Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 23, 2012 4:14 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
- Apple
- MacBook Pro
- Laptops
- Notebooks
The Design
The problem with being on the forefront of design is every iteration is expected to significantly outdo the one before it. The unibody MacBook Pro design took build quality to a new level for Apple. By constructing all parts of the machine that you generally interact with out of the same piece of aluminum, Apple significantly reduced the amount of flex and creaks you’d encounter during normal use.
The next-gen MacBook Pro chassis doesn’t revolutionize the design, but it does make some significant evolutionary improvements. The most tangible impact as I’ve already mentioned is the reduction in size and weight of the machine. At its thickest part, the 13-inch MacBook Air is actually a little thicker than the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro. Unlike the MacBook Air however, the rMBP does not feature a tapered design. Instead you get a constant thickness which is definitely reminiscent of the previous design.
The backlit keyboard and glass covered trackpad remain, although the key travel has been reduced somewhat - likely to help thin down the chassis. It's not worse, just different in my opinion.
The reduction in thickness also comes at the expense of a missing optical drive and no mechanical storage. Once again Apple has opted to use its own custom form factor and custom SATA connector for the NAND based storage in the rMBP. You’ll hear no complaints from me on the move away from mechanical storage as I’ve been recommending SSDs as upgrades for the past few years. The battery continues to be integrated but it’s no longer easily user removable as the custom cells are now glued to the chassis. A few years down the road your rMBP will have to take a trip to the Apple store (or a clever third party service center) to get its battery replaced.
The MacBook Pro with Retina Display, Image Courtesy iFixit
This is the first Pro appliance that Apple has ever produced. The CPU, GPU, DRAM, battery, display and, for now, the SSD are either non-removable or at least not user-upgradeable. On a $499 iPad that’s one thing, but on a $2199 professional notebook that’s a completely different matter. I can even make an exception for the MacBook Air as it is more of a consumer device, where computing needs have largely slowed down over the past several years. But for a professional machine, to have such a fixed configuration seems very worrisome.
MacBook Pro with Retina Display Comparison | |||||
15-inch Mid 2012 MacBook Pro | MacBook Pro with Retina Display | ||||
Dimensions | 0.95 H x 14.35 W x 9.82" D | 0.71 H x 14.13 W x 9.73" D | |||
Weight | 5.6 lbs (2.54 kg) | 4.46 lbs (2.02 kg) | |||
CPU | Core i7-3615QM | Core i7-3720QM | Core i7-3615QM | ||
L3 Cache | 6MB | 6MB | 6MB | ||
Base CPU Clock | 2.3GHz | 2.6GHz | 2.3GHz | ||
Max CPU Turbo | 3.3GHz | 3.6GHz | 3.3GHz | ||
GPU | Intel HD 4000 + NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M | ||||
GPU Memory | 512MB GDDR5 | 1GB GDDR5 | |||
System Memory | 4GB DDR3-1600 | 8GB DDR3-1600 | 8GB DDR3L-1600 | ||
Primary Storage | 500GB 5400RPM HDD | 750GB 5400RPM HDD | 256GB SSD | ||
Optical Drive | Y | Y | N | ||
Display Size | 15.4-inches | ||||
Display Resolution | 1440 x 900 | 2880 x 1800 | |||
Thunderbolt Ports | 1 | 2 | |||
USB Ports | 2 x USB 3.0 | ||||
Other Ports | 1 x Firewire 800, 1 x Audio Line in, 1 x Audio Line out, SDXC reader, Kensington Lock slot | SDXC reader, HDMI out, headphone out | |||
Battery Capacity | 77.5 Wh | 95 Wh | |||
Price | $1799 | $2199 | $2199 |
Apple has definitely made accommodations to make this unupgradeable reality more palatable. Sure the primary silicon is fixed, but all Retina MacBook Pro configurations ship with a minimum of 8GB of DDR3L-1600 memory. The only available upgrade is a move to 16GB, which will surely suit most needs for at least a few years to come (if not more).
The SSD is physically removable although there isn’t presently a source of 3rd party upgrades. I suspect we will see some in the future although there are always concerns about any legal claims to Apple’s unique form factor and physical interface. Apple’s concession here is it offers as much NAND as is physically possible today: up to 768GB if you’re willing to pay the handsome upgrade fee.
We’ve long given up on upgrading mobile CPUs or GPUs, and more recently abandoning the removable battery in favor of increasing capacity and reducing form factors is a trade off we’ve accepted as well. Apple has tried to help on the memory and SSD sides but the whole package is still very...fixed.
Despite all of this my only real complaint about Apple’s fixed configuration is the $2199 spec comes with too little storage by default. If I want to carelessly use my machine and not worry about regularly deleting unused files I find that I need 512GB of storage. At 256GB it’s too easy to run out of space, particularly if I’m on the road and dealing with lots of photos and videos. If you’re like me then you’re shoehorned into getting the $2799 configuration as there’s no way to just upgrade the size of the SSD in the $2199 model. And if you’re spending $2799 you might as well get the 16GB memory upgrade, if you can convince yourself that you’re not going to buy the Haswell version next year.
Retina MacBook Pro Silicon: One Big Happy Family
Powering the Retina Display MacBook Pro is Intel’s latest and greatest quad-core Core i7. A part of the new 22nm Ivy Bridge family the Intel silicon in the system is well done as always. The default configuration ships with a 2.3GHz quad-core offering, while the upgraded option is clocked at 2.6GHz. Apple offers one more upgrade at 2.7GHz while upping the L3 cache to 8MB. Since these are i7s all of them have Hyper Threading enabled, making the major difference between parts frequency and cache size in the case of the most upgraded part.
Apple MacBook Pro with Retina Display CPU Comparison | |||||
2.3GHz quad-core | 2.6GHz quad-core | 2.7GHz quad-core | |||
Intel Model | Core i7-3615QM | Intel Core i7-3720QM | Intel Core i7-3820QM | ||
Base Clock Speed | 2.3GHz | 2.6GHz | 2.7GHz | ||
Max SC Turbo | 3.3GHz | 3.6GHz | 3.7GHz | ||
Max DC Turbo | 3.2GHz | 3.5GHz | 3.6GHz | ||
Max QC Turbo | 3.1GHz | 3.4GHz | 3.5GHz | ||
L3 Cache | 6MB | 6MB | 8MB | ||
AES-NI | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
VT-x | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
VT-d | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
TDP | 45W | 45W | 45W | ||
Processor Graphics | Intel HD 4000 | Intel HD 4000 | Intel HD 4000 | ||
GPU Clock (Base/Max) | 650/1250MHz | 650/1250MHz | 650/1250MHz |
Turbo Boost is supported and active on all options. As always I verified its support in OS X as well as its functional operation:
889A refers to the max number of speed bins supported by Turbo Boost for 4, 3, 2 and 1 active core, respectively, in hex. For example, the 2.6GHz base clock of the Core i7 in my test system can turbo up a maximum of 8 bins with three/four cores active (2.6GHz + 800MHz = 3.4GHz), or 9 bins with 2 cores active (3.5GHz) or 10 bins (A in hex) with 1 core active (3.6GHz). Just as with previous mobile Macs, CPU clocks remain unchanged regardless of whether the system is running on AC or battery power.
Intel's quad-core 22nm Ivy Bridge
All of the CPU options feature Intel’s HD 4000 graphics, which handles the majority of graphics duties unless you fire up an application that triggers the discrete GPU. All of the rMBPs feature NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 650M equipped with 1GB of GDDR5. Apple went aggressive on the Kepler implementation and ships a full 384 core GK107 in the rMBP. The GPU clock is set at a very aggressive 900MHz with a 1254MHz memory clock. I do appreciate that there’s no variance in GPU/memory configuration across all of the Retina MacBook Pro options, it greatly simplifies the purchasing experience.
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wendoman - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
Coming soon as usual.I've been using QuickSync fast encoding for free for over a year.
Spoony - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
That's really great for you. Fast encoding with QuickSync is nice. I've used it too, and wished it would get OS X support. Happy to see that is is now.Side note, all of the Windows-based encoders that execute QuickSync use an application-internal package. OS X will be implementing this at the system level, all software today that asks for an encode from QTKit should get it handed off to the fixed-function encoder. It's a much nicer solution, in my opinion.
AnotherNetNarcissist - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
Well done. Your medal is in the post.Taft12 - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
That makes you and Anand who seem to care. We're up to two! I've yet to meet anyone else that does.iCrunch - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
...for an amazingly detailed review! This is what I had been waiting for, but nobody else comes even close to the technical knowledge and its applications.I have the "entry-level" rMBP (2.3GHz/8GB/256GB "SSD" NAND Flash) and the first thing I did was to remove Lion and install Mountain Lion DP4 with its thus far single major update. No UI elements ever flashed on me and everything seems to render just right in Safari 6 as well as throughout ML's UI elements and text. That's in both the "Ideal" Retina mode as well as WSXGA+ (1680x1050) and WUXGA (1920x1200). In the latter two modi, everything is just smaller, as you'd expect, but I find that under ML and Safari, it looks (virtually) as good as in "Retina" mode (1440x900).
Have you found any evidence of WUXGA icons in native resolution, for example, as a possible explanation as to why it scales so unbelievably well? I was truly hoping for a second native resolution for SXGA+, which would have entailed an even higher (3360x2100) native resolution, but as I'm typing this in WUXGA, in the highest of the 5 resolution modes, I find everything to appear as though it were native resolution. The crispness of text and images/icons throughout OS X 10.8 ML as well as the absurdly fast Safari 6, or is it all scaling, almost disproving the rule that any display's native (=highest) resolution works best?
As for the SSD, co-incidentally, I had two 180GB Intel 520 Series SSD's in my now former Late-2011 antiglare 17" MBP. I was happy to read through tons and tons of benchmarks spread throughout various articles right here on Anandtech, and even happier to find out that the Samsung 830 Flash that's in my Retina MBP (the 256GB version) and the Intel 520 (180GB) that I had before seemed to be highly comparable in virtually all categories. I am thinking about getting the 2.6 version with the 512GB Flash, but as seems to be the case with the 480GB Intel 520 Series, the 1/2 TB SSD's seem to be a tad slower than those in the 240/256GB range. Any ideas as to why?
IKeelU - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
I believe calling this a "revolution in computing" is hyperbole. I/O is evolving, as it always has. Computer density is increasing, as it always has. If anything, the new Mac Pro demonstrates that much improvement can be had in the device itself. It's not just a matter of improving connectivity to more capable devices.DeciusStrabo - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
I agree, but in the last few years we saw a backslide in screen resolutions on mobile devices. We had 1920x1200, IPS years ago. Suddenly we got 1366x768, TN, glare on the large majority of laptops. So the change to larger resolutions again (not only Apple, others too have started to include 1080p screens with their laptops as mainstream option).But generally you're correct. We moved from 1024x768 on 15-17" screens everywhere to 27" 2560x1440 IPS being available for as low as 600 USD. Over the next 2-3 years 4k displays will become mainstream for TVs. Technology is moving on, Apple is just one to seize if first here.
solipsism - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
Why is 1080p being compared to this display? Even the display in the iPad being powered by a mobile iGPU far exceeds that of 1080p.DeciusStrabo - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
Because it is the mainstream option available to laptops outside of one single one (and some old ones like the T61)?dagamer34 - Sunday, June 24, 2012 - link
The iPad doesn't have to deal with a window layering system which greatly reduces the amount of overdraw it has to deal with.