£999 inc VAT • apple.com/uk • tinyurl.com/5td25pq
With its £999 price tag, Apple's 13.3in-screen MacBook Pro only just
made it into our group test. But we're glad it did. The MacBook Pro
is an attractive, superbly built laptop.
If you're considering the switch to Mac OS X, but can't bear to
part with Microsoft's OS, you can dual-boot Windows using Boot
Camp. Remember to factor in the cost of a Windows licence.
We did exactly that to run our WorldBench 6 real-world speed
test, which works only in Windows. The MacBook Pro recorded a
respectable score of 117 points, placing it some way ahead of the
Toshiba (page 61) and HP (page 58).
At this price, much of the competition has dedicated graphics
cards; the MacBook does not. The Intel Core İ5-2415M processor's
integrated graphics produced a Fear framerate of just 18fps.
The MacBook battery-life test result was more impressive,
with it producing the best score of 389 minutes.
If you're looking for a laptop that won't be used exclusively in the
home, the MacBook will appeal not only for its long battery life but
its portability. This laptop weighs 2kg, and is very solidly built.
Although the MacBook Pro is significantly smaller than some
of its rivals in this group, well-spaced buttons make its keyboard
comfortable to use while typing out long documents. The large
multitouch trackpad is also welcome, which enables plenty of gesture
control of the system in its OS X environment.
An entertainment model it is not, the Apple MacBook Pro
includes neither a Blu-ray drive, nor a large, full-HD screen. It also
has the joint-smallest hard-drive capacity on test, at 320GB. You do
get a slot-loading dual-layer DVD writer and an HD webcam, plus
two USB 2.0 ports and, uniquely, FireWire 800 and Thunderbolt
connections, but there's no support for USB 3.0.
Apple launched Mac OS X 10.7 Lion as we went to press. This OS
provides a host of new features, but was too late for this review.
VERDICT: The MacBook Pro is expensive and lacks some features,
but is a powerful, versatile and very well-constructed laptop.
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