Extremely limited repairability and upgradeability. Limited number of ports, limited port selection, and need for dongles will be inconvenient, especially at first. Impressive speakers for a 13-inch laptop. Stellar battery life under light-to-medium use, battery life comparable to the 2015 MBPs under heavy use. Much-improved integrated GPU performance, which will help if you’re trying to drive a 4K or 5K display. Low-travel keyboard still isn’t for everyone, but it’s a marked improvement over the first-generation version in the MacBook. Thunderbolt 3 is a tremendously versatile port, and Apple will benefit from increased adoption in the wider PC industry. Rock-solid design that looks and feels great. At its current price, the $1,499 Pro feels like a laptop with a new design that just happens to be missing a bunch of the features that make the new design worthwhile.

This would be a great laptop if it was positioned at the $1,300 starting price of the old MacBook Pros, though the 12-inch MacBook might need to move downmarket a bit to make room for it.

Those two extra ports and the extra speed bump will go a long way, and both the Touch Bar and Touch ID have a lot of potential (they should also only improve over the course of the three-to-five years that you’ll be using the laptop). They’ve never been particularly “pro.”Įven so, the $1,499 version of the laptop isn’t the one I’d recommend first, not unless the presence of a physical function row is make-or-break and you value it over the other stuff that’s missing. Some pros will claim that it isn’t “pro” enough, but the 13-inch models have always served as more of a bridge between the consumer MacBooks and MacBook Airs on the low end and the 15-inch Pros and the desktop lineup on the high end. …the new MacBook Pro is a very solid design that should serve Apple well over the next few years.

Late 2016 macbook pro 13