Macbook Pro 16 Review

Kenn Muguna Avatar

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Updated 11:24 pm

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97

If you’re on the lookout for a Macbook Pro, then you probably have work that needs a heavy amount of processing power, and also prefer a much larger display than what the other Apple laptops have to offer. Well, the 16-inch macbook pro easily fits that bill, and comes with a new keyboard that offers a much better typing experience. Dubbed the most powerful macbook that Apple has ever made, the 16-inch apple macbook pro is available with either a 2.6GHz 6-core 9th Gen Intel Core i7 processor for the base model, or the 2.3GHz 8-core 9th Gen Intel Core i9 processor for even better performance. Sit back and go through this review to figure out why it’s one of the best Apple laptops you could actually go for. If you’re interested in other brand-name computers, check out our best laptops list.

Why We Like It – Macbook Pro 16

The Apple Macbook pro is a very capable machine that’ll probably handle anything you’ll throw at it with style and grace. It comes with a 16-inch display, an 11-hour battery life on a single charge, and a core i7 or a core i9 processor depending on what you need for your work.

Pros
  • Impressive battery life
  • Excellent speakers
  • New Magic Keyboard
Cons
  • No SD card slot

Performance

The 16-inch Apple macbook pro is more well suited than the Apple Macbook Pro 13 to carry out any work that a sound producer, game designer or software programmer would be doing with relative ease, and part of this capability comes from the 7nm AMD Radeon Pro 5000M series graphics card that it’s got in store. This kind of graphics support coupled with a core i9 or a core i7 processor leaves out very few things that the laptop cannot do. It’s battery life keeps it going for up to 11 hours, and with the new magic keyboard, you might notice your typing speed go up by just a bit. You can also have any amount of storage you need with the new macbook pro from 512GB all the way to 8TB. Take some time to really think about what kind of storage space you’ll opt for considering the fact that the 16-inch macbook doesn’t have a SD card reader. If you’re looking for another laptop with a large screen, then check out our Apple Macbook Pro 16 inch review.

Design

Lookswise, the 16-inch macbook pro isn’t that different to what we’re used to from Apple. On the keyboard chassis, you’ll find that the touch bar comes with an escape key to its left, a touch id button to its right, and a total of 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports which is more than the ones on the Apple Macbook Air 13″ (2011) 1.8GHz. It’s 16-inch screen is a retina display that features True Tone technology, and can get up to 500 nits in brightness. Despite all this, the one bone to pick with the new macbook is its 720p webcam. It’s good enough for face id, but just too low quality considering all the other high spec features that the laptop has to offer. Nonetheless, the speakers on the new macbook are bound to be a highlight for most music fans. The laptop comes with a six-speaker stereo system with Dolby Atmos, offering one of the best listening experiences you can get from a laptop. Out of the box, the macbook includes a 96W USB-C charger, and at about 4.3 pounds, it’s almost double the weight of the macbook air, but almost equal to that of the Dell XPS 15.

Value

At the highest end of the spec options, you could choose to get a new macbook pro that has up to 64GB of RAM, 8TB of storage, and an AMD Radeon Pro 5500M GPU with 8GB of GDDR6 memory. This will of course be the most expensive model of the laptop, but then again, once you buy it you won’t be needing a new laptop for a very long period of time. If the price might be a bit too steep for you, then maybe the cheaper Macbook Pro 2017 might help you save a few more dollars. The Macbook Pro 16-inch laptop is the one with the biggest screen size in Apple’s macbook range, and the only way you can get one that is bigger is if you opted for an iMac. For those that would want to take extra care of their Macbooks, there’s an extended warranty offered by Apple that’s called Apple care. You will have to pay an extra fee for this, but it adds three years on top of the 1 year warranty that every 16-inch Macbook pro comes with, even though Apple holds the rights reserved to the extent of damage that is covered.

Macbook Pro 16 Wrap Up

With the wide variety of upgrades and super fast processor speeds that you get with the different spec combos of the 16-inch model Macbook pros, working on them ultimately feels like slicing through butter. Your programs run faster, battery life lasts longer, and with the vast amount of technical support available, there’s nothing that should stop you from bringing forth the best quality of your work yet.