Apple 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: Only if you've deep pockets

Introducing the new MacBook Pro

A few weeks ago, I reviewed Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar and found it to be a competent but slightly flawed device. It is well built, fast and powerful; but it only came with USB Type-C ports and had no SD card slots, which will no doubt inconvenience many users.

The new 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is essentially an upsized version of the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar (hereafter referred to simply as the MacBook Pro). Apart from the size and the internals, they share the same design, keyboard, Touch Bar, and connectivity options. So, if you want to read about the features of the new 15-inch MacBook Pro, you can look it up here.  But in a nutshell, here are some of the key features of the new 15-inch MacBook Pro:

• Comes in space grey and silver
• Touch Bar and Touch ID
• Four USB Type-C Thunderbolt 3 ports
• Improved display supporting wider color gamut (DCI-P3)
• Improved speakers
• New MacBook-style flat keyboards and larger trackpad

That said, it’s worth mentioning at this point before we dive into the performance analysis that the new 15-inch MacBook Pro is smaller than the model it replaces. The new 15-inch MacBook Pro measures 15.5mm thick and weighs 1.83kg, while the model it replaces was 2.04kg and 18mm thick. According to Apple, this means that the new model takes up 20% less volume, which is certainly quite impressive.

Hardware ( and a note about the new Radeon Pro GPUs)

The latest 15-inch MacBook Pro notebooks will be equipped with Intel’s sixth generation Core processors, also known as “Skylake” (not the 7th generation Kaby Lake models unfortunately as the quad-core mobile models aren't out yet). There will be two off the shelf models and both will be equipped with quad-core Core i7 processors. Both will also get 16GB of 2133MHz LPDRR3 RAM as well as AMD’s latest Radeon Pro mobile GPUs as standard. Both models will also get Apple’s newest PCIe-based SSDs that are capable of read and write speeds of over 3GB/s and 2GB/s respectively. 

Our review unit was the entry-level model and it comes with the quad-core Core i7-6700HQ processor (2.6GHz, 6MB L3 cache), 16GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and Radeon Pro 450 discrete GPU with 2GB of GDDR5 RAM. 

The decision to go with AMD GPUs are interesting and it’s worth talking about it in greater detail. For starts, Radeon Pro is AMD’s new brand of professional-oriented GPUs and it replaces the FirePro. Its direct competitors are NVIDIA’s Quadro and Tesla GPUs. This is also the first time Apple has decided to put professional-oriented GPUs into their MacBook Pro notebooks. In the past, they used regular consumer GPUs. 

There is actually not much difference on a hardware level to separate professional and consumer GPUs. Professional GPUs typically use the same chip as their consumer counterparts, but distinguish themselves by having specialized drivers so that they are optimized to run professional graphics utilities like AutoCAD and Maya. Also, they are supposedly more rigorsly tested and command a premium for their professional grade deployment.

In any case, the new Radeon Pro GPUs are based on AMD’s latest 14nm FinFET Polaris architecture, which is the same used in AMD’s desktop graphics cards like the Radeon RX 480. However, the Radeon Pro GPUs are really designed for maximum power efficiency, and they only have a TDP of just 35W.

As a result, the Radeon Pro 450 isn’t all that powerful. It has 640 stream processors, a maximum memory bandwidth of 80GB/s and a peak compute performance of 1 teraflop. Even the Radeon Pro 460, the most powerful GPU you can opt to spec your 15-inch MacBook Pro with, has just 1024 stream processors, a maximum memory bandwidth of 80GB/s, and a maximum compute performance of 1.85 teraflops. 

In comparison, NVIDIA’s latest entry-level notebook GPU, the GeForce GTX 1060, has a maximum compute performance of around 3.6 teraflops, and is capable of up to 4.2 teraflops depending on the manufacturer’s implementation. In case you were wondering, the range-topping GeForce GTX 1080 has over 8 teraflops of computing horsepower. 

But while NVIDIA’s mobile GPU offerings are undeniably more powerful, they are also more power hungry. Even the GeForce GTX 1060’s TDP of 85W is over twice that of the Radeon Pro 460’s TDP of 35W. So clearly, Apple is favoring lower power consumption over outright performance. How this will affect performance will be interesting to see.

Performance Analysis

I tested the MacBook Pro using our standard benchmarking utilities, which meant that I had to install Windows 10 using Bootcamp. This will allow me to peg its performances against comparable Windows notebooks that we have reviewed. 

Here is the list of benchmarking software used:

• PCMark 8
• 3DMark 2013
• Tomb Raider

To get a gauge of where the new 15-inch MacBook Pro stands, I included results from the LG Gram 15, ASUS G501 and HP Omen. All three are slim 15-inch notebooks, with comparable design elements and performance. The Gram 15 is super slim and light; while the ASUS and HP,  though a little old, should still serve as a good reference for the new MacBook Pro’s performance.

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PCMark 8

Unsurprisingly, given its more powerful components, the 15-inch MacBook Pro consistently scored better than the 13-inch MacBook Pro. The gulf in performance ranges from about 7% to 15%, which is pretty substantial. You can feel the difference in the real world too as the 15-inch MacBook Pro launches apps and loads quicker. That’s not to say the 13-inch MacBook Pro is a slouch, but the 15-inch MacBook Pro is just marginally quicker.

The 15-inch MacBook Pro also comfortably outscored the LG Gram 15, because even though the Gram 15 is a 15-inch notebook, it relies on a less powerful dual-core processor. It is therefore pretty impressive than Apple has managed to cram a quad-core processor into a notebook the size of the 15-inch MacBook Pro.

3DMark

On 3DMark, the 15-inch MacBook Pro scored significantly higher than the 13-inch MacBook Pro. It scored about 77% higher than on the Cloud Gate scenario, and nearly twice as high on the more intensive Fire Strike scenario. 

However, the 15-inch MacBook Pro and its Radeon Pro 450 was outclassed by the ASUS G501 and HP Omen. The ASUS G501 and HP Omen are powered by NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 960M and 860M mobile GPUs respectively. The GeForce GTX 960M is really just a higher clocked version of the GeForce GTX 860M, which in turn was released over two years ago.

Tomb Raider

The presence of the discrete Radeon Pro 450 GPU in the 15-inch MacBook Pro meant that it easily outperformed the 13-inch MacBook Pro. On Tomb Raider, the 15-inch MacBook Pro was about 55% faster than the 13-inch MacBook Pro.

However, it found itself thoroughly trumped by the ASUS G501 and HP Omen. On average, the ASUS and HP notebooks were about 50% faster than the 15-inch MacBook Pro even though they were powered by aging mobile GPUs. Clearly, the Radeon Pro 450 GPU in the MacBook Pro isn’t great for gaming.

 

Battery Life & Power Consumption

In our review of the new 13-inch MacBook Pro, we found that Apple had drastically reduced the size of its battery from 74.9Wh in last year’s model to 49.2Wh. They have also done the same for new 15-inch MacBook Pro, which saw its battery capacity reduced from 99.5Wh to 76Wh - a reduction of around 23%. 

Having never tested last year’s 15-inch MacBook Pro, it’s hard for me to say how much this has affected battery life. But in my own battery life test, I found that the 15-inch MacBook lasted 170 minutes or just shy of three hours. 

Power consumption stands at 26.82W, which is just about on a par with the ASUS G501. Bear in mind that the ASUS G501 has a more power hungry GPU and it also has a 4K display. This seems to suggest that 15-inch MacBook Pro isn’t quite as power efficient it should have been.

 

Portability Index

On the portability front, the new 15-inch MacBook Pro did well as it was the only 15-inch notebook to manage a ratio of more than 1.00. That said, if portability is your utmost priority and you don’t mind sacrificing some performance, the 13-inch MacBook Pro is a much better bet.

Final Thoughts & Buying Advice

The 15-inch MacBook Pro is clearly more powerful than the 13-inch MacBook Pro. If you are a creative professional that relies heavily on apps that can take advantage of GPU acceleration or the processing power of a quad-core processor, then the 15-inch MacBook Pro makes perfect sense. For everyone else, the 13-inch MacBook Pro offers plenty of grunt, and there’s little point in splashing the cash.

Personally, the 13-inch MacBook Pro has enough computing power for my needs. And the only reason I would consider the 15-inch MacBook Pro is: a) for its gorgeous 15-inch display or b) I was swimming in cash.

Speaking about cash, the new 15-inch MacBook Pro notebooks are pricey machines. The entry-level that I’m testing comes in at S$3,388, while the top-of-the-line off-the-shelf model is an eye-watering S$3,948. At these prices, let me remind you that there are loads of 15-inch Windows notebooks that are far more powerful. Of course, they aren’t running macOS, but if all you want is computing power, then that’s something to think about.

To sum up, new 15-inch MacBook Pro are very capable machines, but also flawed in the same ways as their smaller 13-inch siblings. The lack of commonly used ports and an SD card reader is going to be a hassle for most users. But most of all, I’m not entirely sure that going with AMD’s new Radeon Pro GPUs is the best choice given that their graphics performance isn’t convincing at all. Don't forget that the 'professional' nature of these GPUs also add to the sticker price of the new 15-inch MacBook Pro - perhaps unnecessarily more? That all boils down to what you intend to do with these machines and if the "pro-grade" graphics is worth your while.

Furthermore, it seems like power consumption isn’t that much better even when compared to gaming notebooks using older NVIDIA GPUs. A colleague of mine is currently working on reviewing 15-inch gaming notebooks outfitted with NVIDIA’s latest 10 series GPUs and I found the notebooks to feature the new GeForce GTX 1060 to consume more or less the same amount of power as the 15-inch MacBook Pro - around 20W to 30W.

On the flip side, the new 15-inch MacBook Pro is a really well-built machine and it is also one of the more portable 15-inch notebooks around. In addition, general computing performance is really good, the new Touch Bar can be useful, and I really like the keyboard and the extra large trackpad. If you can stomach the high prices of the new 15-inch MacBook Pro notebooks, and don’t mind the weak choice of GPUs, they are nice notebooks to have.

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