Apple Unveils 14-Inch And 16-Inch MacBook Pro With New Design, Chips & MagSafe Charging (Photos)

By Edna Wande On Oct 18, 2021

As part of its October Unleashed event, Apple today unveiled new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro featuring new designs.

The new system is powered by the new M1 Pro and M1 Max, souped up versions of the chip the company unveiled at today’s event. The company says the 10-core chip is capable of allowing up to 3x the memory bandwidth and up to of the M1, coupled with a 16 core GPU. The Max, meanwhile, bumps the GPU up to 32 cores.

Everything that Apple announced for its all-new MacBook Pro range (Image: APPLE )

M1 Pro chip is an upscaled version of M1 chip, with up to 200 GB/s memory bandwidth, up to 32 GB RAM, and more than double the number of transistors.

Apple said the CPU performance is about 70% faster than M1, and GPU performance is about double. M1 Max doubles RAM to 64 GB, and doubles the GPU size to 32 cores.

The design of MacBook Pro has been completely redesigned, now featuring thinner bezels albeit with a notch housing the webcam.

For the first time, the new MacBook Pro is available with a 14.2-inch size, alongside the 16-inch model. The screen resolutions have also been substantially increased for even higher Dots Per Inch (DPI) displays. The overall industrial design of the laptop has also been revised, with a boxier shape.

They also feature built-in fans for high-performance applications, though the company says it will rarely turn on. The system also marks the end of the middling-received Touchbar, with a full function key in its place.

Gone is the Touch Bar, replaced with a good ol’ fashioned function row of keys (Image: APPLE )

The mini-LED display has more pixels, supports high contrast and 1600 nits of peak brightness, and also runs at 120Hz with ProMotion technology. The MacBook Pro now also features a HDMI port, SD card reader, and MagSafe for magnetic charging.

There are a total of 3 Thunderbolt 4 ports available, an SDXC card slot, and even the headphone jack has been upgraded. MagSafe returns with a higher power throughput, but users will be able to continue charging through the Thunderbolt/USB-C ports.

Dubbed MagSafe 3, the new charger is capable of fast-charging the Mac for the first time (Image: APPLE).

Due to the power efficiency of Apple Silicon, customers will be able to edit 8K video on battery power — unheard of in other laptops of this size class.

Apple is also touting up to 2-4x longer battery life when performing intensive tasks. Video playback is rated at 17 hours for the 14-inch model, and 21 hours for the 16-inch model. You can also fast charge the battery, topping up to 50% capacity in 30 minutes.

One of the more controversial design decisions about this generation will inevitably be the display notch. Apple says overall display bezels are 24-60% thinner. The height of the menubar is extended to accommodate the notch height.

The webcam is upgraded to 1080p resolution, with up to 2x better low-light performance. Unfortunately, no 4k, but an improvement over the long-standing model with a larger sensor and wider aperture.

The microphone and speaker array has also been upgraded. The speaker tweeters are almost 2x larger for increased sound reproduction, with Spatial Audio sound reproduction.

The 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro are available in silver and space gray color options. The 14-inch starts at $1,999, while the 16-inch costs $2,499.

The Max version of the M1 is available as an upgrade, adding an additional $200 for the 24-core GPU and $400 for the 36-core version.