It’s also pressure sensitive and can respond differently depending on how hard you press down. This isn’t something that Apple did first-Synaptics has shipped a clickless ForcePad for years-but Apple’s implementation is the first that approximates the feel of a standard trackpad. To accommodate that system’s thinness, the trackpad doesn’t physically move as most current trackpads do. Playing with the new Force Touch trackpad. The biggest change is the replacement of the standard trackpad with Apple's new Force Touch trackpad, the same one that's coming to the new MacBook. The backlit scissor-switch chiclet keyboard is the same one that Apple has been using in its laptops for quite a while. Some users may dislike the way the palmrest's hard edge can dig into your wrists at certain angles, but we've never had a big problem with it. The laptop's aluminum unibody chassis is as solid as ever. The GPU supports up to three displays at once, so it's easy to connect this laptop to two other monitors and still have a Thunderbolt port left over for other accessories. You only get two USB 3.0 ports, but there are two Thunderbolt 2 ports and a full-size HDMI port alongside the standard card reader and headphone jack. While the port selection on the MacBook Air isn't as skimpy as it will be on the new Retina MacBook, the Pro still squeezes in more. We're talking about a few dropped frames, not a flipbook effect. Things likewise stuttered occasionally when we connected our 60Hz 3840×2160 4K display to one of the Thunderbolt ports, but by and large the Iris GPU can drive the laptop's display plus a separate 4K display at a tolerable framerate. AdvertisementĪnimations can get a bit choppy at the 1680×1050 setting-remember, the GPU is drawing a 3360×2100 image and then scaling it to fit the 2560×1600 screen. OS X includes scaling options that can make the laptop look like it has a 1440×900 or 1680×1050 screen in exchange for small drops in sharpness and graphics performance. Using Apple's own terminology, by default the screen looks like a sharper version of a 1280×800 screen, which means that out of the box you can actually see fewer things at once on the Pro than you can on the Air. The Retina MacBook Pro has a 2560×1600, 227 PPI IPS display that has much better detail, color, and viewing angles. Size and weight is still an advantage for the MacBook Air, but not by nearly the margin it was a couple of years ago.Ĭhoosing the slightly heavier laptop fixes the single biggest problem we have with the 2015 MacBook Air: its screen. The Retina redesign slimmed the Pro down by around a quarter of an inch and dropped it to 3.48 pounds. Compared to that, the tapered 2.96-pound 13-inch MacBook Air design was indeed svelte. The original aluminum unibody MacBook Pro was nearly an inch thick and weighed 4.5 pounds. ![]() Webcam, backlit keyboard, dual integrated mics Specs at a glance: 13-inch 2015 Apple Retina MacBook ProĢ.7GHz Intel Core i5-5257U (Turbo up to 3.3GHz)ĨGB 1866MHz LPDDR3 (soldered, upgradeable to 16GB at purchase)Ģx USB 3.0, 2x Thunderbolt 2, HDMI, card reader, headphonesġ2.35" × 8.62" × 0.71" (314 mm × 219 mm × 18 mm) Good screen, relatively compact design, and the Force Touch trackpad If you were hoping for a more straightforward Retina refresh of the Air without the more drastic changes of the Retina MacBook, this is the laptop you should be looking at. Between the performance improvements and battery life gains, the new Pro acts as good alternative to the 13-inch Air rather than a laptop you only buy if you need the extra performance. The design is the same as last year's, and it picks up only a handful of truly new features-Thunderbolt 2 and improved 4K support are probably the biggest ones. ![]() We've already compared the Air and the Pro head-to-head, but today we're taking some time to talk about the Pro by itself. Its design is just a couple of years old, and it still makes a strong case for itself next to the MacBook Air and the MacBook Air-alikes that dominate the market for high-end 13-inch laptops. The 2015 MacBook Air is a bit out-of-step with the times, but the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro doesn't have that problem yet. Andrew Cunningham reader comments 65 with
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