Apple 14-inch MacBook Pro (M3) review: Good intentions

Note: This review was first published on 6 November 2023.

An October Surprise

I didn’t see this coming, but Apple has gone and announced its M3 family of chips and updated its lineup of 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pros. A corollary effect of all these announcements is that the 13-inch MacBook Pro (you know, the one with the Touch Bar) is no more. Instead, we now have a 14-inch MacBook Pro that comes with the base M3 chip. Is this now the best MacBook for most people in Apple’s MacBook lineup? How does it compare to the MacBook Air? How fast is the new M3 chip? And can I play Baldur's Gate 3 on it? The answers to all these questions and more are in this review.

The TL;DR version:



The entry-level MacBook Pro finally gets the update it deserves, and it’s an extremely capable machine. The only downer is that it only comes with 8GB of memory as standard.

One way to tell that this 14-inch MacBook Pro has the base M3 chip is that it only has two USB-C ports – the M3 Pro and M3 Max models have three. Another tell-tale sign is if it comes in Space Grey. That colour is now exclusive to the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M3 because the M3 Pro and M3 Max units only come in Silver and Space Black. Otherwise, it looks like any other 14-inch MacBook Pro, which is no bad thing really given that this design is still fresh and there’s really not much wrong about it.

The display is the same 14-inch Liquid Retina XDR display, which uses a mini-LED panel and has a dynamic refresh rate of up to 120Hz. On the whole, it’s a great display with terrific sharpness, colours, and contrast. There's no question it's a significant step up from the MacBook Airs' standard LCD displays. However, blooming continues to be an issue and some people continue to be annoyed by the notch. Maximum brightness remains the same at 1600 nits when displaying HDR content, but it can now get brighter when showing SDR (standard dynamic range) content by going up to 600 nits – up from 500 nits. I can’t say I noticed this extra 100 nits of brightness in normal use.

Apart from the new M3 chip inside (which we’ll get to on the next page), the one thing to note about getting the base 14-inch MacBook Pro is that it’ll only have two USB-C ports and that they support Thunderbolt 3 instead of Thunderbolt 4. It still has a MagSafe port, so charging isn’t really an issue, but connecting peripherals might be an issue if you have e a lot of them and don’t have a hub or dock, or intend to use Thunderbolt 4 accessories. Another shortcoming is that you can only output to a single external display – this has been a limitation of Apple’s base chips and it hasn’t changed.

The rest of the hardware remains best-in-class. The keyboard is a joy to type on and now has a proper row of physical function keys. The trackpad is humongous and extremely accurate and responsive. The six-speaker sound system continues to impress and is easily one of the best speaker systems you’ll hear on any notebook. There’s convincing bass and there's little distortion even at high volumes – weaknesses of many lesser notebook speaker systems. Perhaps what’s most telling is that while watching an episode of Loki, I didn’t feel that the speakers were lacking at all.

Hello M3

Note: Benchmarking results and charts are on the next page

The M3 is Apple’s newest chip for its Macs. It’s built on a 3nm process – the same as the A17 Pro – and is also available in more powerful M3 Pro and M3 Max variants. As usual, Apple is coy about the specifics of these new chips, but it says these new chips are more powerful and efficient. 

Like the A17 Pro, the GPU appears to be the focus of this generation of chips. The GPU supports hardware-accelerating mesh shading and ray tracing – a first for Apple’s Mac chips. It also has Dynamic Caching, a technology that intelligently allocates system memory to the GPU in real-time based on its demands. According to Apple, this increases the average utilisation of the GPU, which in turn increases performance, particularly in “pro” apps and games. Apple calls Dynamic Caching the “cornerstone” of their new GPU architecture.

The CPU configuration is the same as M2 and M1, so it has four high-performance cores and four efficiency cores. However, the transistor count is massively different. M3 has 25 billion transistors, which is 25% more than M2. The clock speeds of the high-performance cores are also higher. 4.06GHz in the M3 versus 3.48GHz in the M2. 

Apple is touting up to 20% faster CPU performance than M2 and 35% faster than M1. As for graphics, Apple says the M3 10-core GPU is up to 20% faster than M2 and 65% faster than M1. 

The 14-inch MacBook Pro that I’m testing has the base M3 chip with 8 CPU cores, 10 GPU cores, 16GB of memory, and a 1TB SSD. 

As the results on the next page show, Apple’s claims are mostly spot on. On CPU-intensive benchmarks like Geekbench and Cinebench, the single-core score of the M3 chip was around 20% and 30% better than the M2 and M1 chips respectively. The multi-core score of the M3 chip was even more impressive and was around 20% and 40% better than the M2 and M1 chips respectively. This improvement in CPU performance is evident in real-world workloads too. In our video transcoding test, the M3 chip was about 30% faster than the M1 chip and 15% faster than the M2 chip. 

The improvements in GPU performance are applaudable too, even if the gains were dependent on the benchmark/workload. On Geekbench’s Compute benchmark, the M3 gains against the M2 were just a measly 3%. But on the GFXBench, that rose to 9%. And it rose even further still on the new Cinebench benchmark, where the M3 chip was a whopping 76% faster than the M2. In games, on Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Deus Ex, the M3 recorded frame rates that were about 18% higher. 

Against the M1 chip, however, the increases were much more significant. The M3’s Geekbench Compute score was about 42% higher. On GFXbench and Cinebench, it was about 50% and 239% higher respectively. As for games, the M3’s frame rates were about 70% higher. 

As for efficiency and battery life, Apple claims up to 22 hours for the M3-powered 14-inch MacBook Pro and it sounds about right. Even with the display's brightness set to a reasonable 60% or so, it could very easily last an entire day of emails, writing, photo-editing, watching the occasional YouTube video, and playing Apple Music.

Mostly fantastic

This may be Apple’s entry-level MacBook Pro but it’s a tricky product to evaluate once you consider its target audience and its responsibilities. I’ll expand on this conundrum below, but on the whole, this is a mostly fantastic notebook. The controversial Touch Bar is gone and it now has a fresh design that puts it on a par with the modern 14 and the 16-inch MacBook Pros. And this means a gorgeous display, irreproachable build quality, improved connectivity, and insane performance and battery life. If you are still using an Intel-based MacBook Pro, there’s no better time to upgrade.

Readers who already have an Apple Silicon Mac should weigh their needs carefully. In the real world, I can’t say I noticed this new model to be significantly quicker than the older M2 or even M1 13-inch MacBook Pros. Those remain very capable machines. But if you have a M1 or M2 MacBook Air, you might want to upgrade for the better display, connectivity, and superior performance. Crucially, this model has active cooling and can sustain its peak performance better, which can be especially handy if you are involved in a lot of intensive work or simply want to play modern games. 

Speaking of games, I tried playing Baldur’s Gate 3 on it and the 13-inch MacBook Air with M2. Even though, the MacBook Air started brightly, you could tell that it couldn’t sustain its performance. After about 10 minutes, it was clear that its frame rates had diminished because it wasn’t running as smoothly. This wasn't a problem with the M3-powered 14-inch MacBook Pro. For those serious about gaming, this new entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro could be the ideal entry-level MacBook, as long as you are willing to pay the extra S$300 to upgrade the memory from 8GB to 16GB.

The memory quandary (aka why only 8GB?)

Even though it is ostensibly targeted at professionals, its more accessible price makes it a viable option for casual/mainstream users who want something that’s a step up from the 13 and 15-inch MacBook Air. Its size screen is in between the two but the quality of the display is much better because of the mini-LED panel. The port selection is also better because it has a MagSafe port, an SD card reader, and an HDMI port. And even though it only has a base M3 chip, it’s the cheapest MacBook with active cooling – essential for sustained workloads. Certainly, for the reasons I mentioned above, I think it’s a nicer MacBook to have than the 13 and 15-inch MacBook Air.

We then come to the thorny issue of price and spec. Its starting price of S$2,299 seems entirely reasonable and comparable to the model it replaces, but it only comes with 8GB of memory. Now, 8GB may be sufficient for the majority of users, but for a machine that purports to be for professional use, I can’t help but think it really should come with at least 16GB of memory.

And if you do customise your MacBook Pro to have 16GB of memory, that bumps the price up to S$2,599, at which point its value proposition starts to look weaker. And if you do intend to use it for professional work or if you are serious about gaming, 16GB should be the way to go. 

And at S$2,599, you might be tempted to splash the case for the S$2,899 M3 Pro variant. This has 18GB of memory and has an M3 Pro chip with 11 CPU cores and 14 GPU cores, which is a significant step up from the M3. However, I suggest you cool your jets because those extra cores are overkill if you are not going to be doing a lot of CPU or graphics-intensive work. Apple is very good at upselling. 

Can you make do with 8GB? I suppose you can if you are only going to use it to reply to emails, check spreadsheets, work on presentations, and do the occasional light video editing. But it would severely limit the longevity of the machine. Remember, you cannot upgrade the memory. With storage, you can still make up in other ways like subscribing to iCloud+ and external storage drives.

Ultimately, it is Apple’s stubborn refusal to outfit its entry-level machines with 16GB of memory as standard that prevents this MacBook Pro from getting a hearty and unreserved recommendation. But even then, this remains to be a mostly fantastic machine. Make sure you weigh your needs and spec your machine accordingly.

Note: You can find the new 14-inch MacBook Pro at Amazon, Lazada, Shopee, and the Apple Online Store.

Benchmarking results

Here are the 14-inch MacBook Pro's benchmarking results. As a reminder, the unit I'm testing has an M3 chip with 8 CPU cores, 10 GPU cores, 16GB of memory, and 1TB SSD. Configured as such, a unit with similar specs will set you back S$2,899.

This was how it performed:

Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.